Engineering in the blood
From the very earliest of my years I showed signs of becoming an engineer, such as I would turn over my pedal car and pretend to fix it (pictures taken on my 2nd birthday) and I was hand drawing in ‘isometric’ at First School. Growing up I would prefer to read encyclopedias rather than story books.
My Grandfather was a Managing Director of an Engineering Company, and my father followed him into the company as a Building Services Engineer and later in life obtained Chartered status.
I’ve always wanted to be an engineer and I think it was my father who noticed that I had some talent for it. As I was growing up I would help him out with jobs and I learnt a lot from him.
Steam Engine
At School I was not particularly academic but did alright with exams and was put in the top set. When it was time to choose a CSE final year project to work on for Craft Design Technology class, I couldn’t think what to do as we could choose anything. The teacher eventually called me into his office to ask me what my project choice was. I looked around his office for inspiration and noticed a model of a steam engine on a shelf – so I said I was going to make a steam engine. I thought that another student had made it, but now in hindsight I think it was my teacher’s apprentice piece.
I was a 16 year old schoolboy at the time and came up with my own design based on the configuration I saw in the teacher’s office. My original hand drawn technical design was for a double action piston engine. However, when making the parts I had to adapt and simplify the design to a single action piston engine due to time constraints and availability of materials from the scrap bin. I managed to complete it in time with some help from the teacher and we tested it by connecting it up to the gas taps in the science lab. It seemed to work well. Later the teacher apologised to me for not entering me for the O Level exam.
I went on to study for my A Levels. I applied to go to Coventry Polytechnic as they seemed the only place offering a multi-disciplined engineering course. At the interview I showed them my steam engine and managed to get on the course, subject to my passes at A level of course. The BEng degree ‘Combined Engineering Studies’ included Electrical, Mechanical and Production Engineering.