Serving the Teesside Business Community | 15
The Business Buzz
With award-winning writer Harry Pearson
Stockton-born inventor John Walker commercialised the friction match in the 1820s .
Cassette recorders , the internet and other passing fads
It was recently announced that a further £ 100,000 is to be invested in Teesside ’ s burgeoning hi-tech and digital sector . Most people will have greeted this news with a hearty cheer . One man who won ’ t have done is my dad . You see , my dad is 86 and he ’ s convinced that the internet - and everything attached to it - is just a passing fad .
“ Remember cassette recorders ?” he says . “ It ’ ll be like them all over again .”
To be honest , my dad has never got over the slide rule business .
Back in 1973 , he told me : “ If you can use a slide rule accurately , you ’ ll never be out of work .”
His faith in the slide rule was grounded in history . The slide rule was invented in 1620 , and for pretty much the next 350 years it was the indispensable tool for engineers , architects and scientists . If you went into British Steel , Swan Hunters or ICI in the 1960s you ’ d see dozens of people fiddling with them .
The slide rule was a kind of analogue computer that did arithmetic , trigonometry and a range of other things the names of which still make me feel queasy at the school-time reminder of double maths .
My dad had learned to use a slide rule at school in Redcar and then perfected his technique at Dorman Long . Such was his faith in the slide rule that he set himself to teach me to use one .
After school for many painful months he
took me through every aspect of the device ’ s use , patiently correcting my mistakes , offering encouragement and occasionally slapping his head with exasperation .
And then , a week after I had become fully proficient in slide rule usage , Texas Instruments issued a pocket calculator that could do it all in a fraction of the time by punching a couple of buttons .
The new electronic machine was cheekily called the S-R 10 . S-R stood for “ slide rule .” And that was the end of that . Nowadays the only time you ’ ll see a slide rule is on the shelf of retro bric-a-brac in a hipster café .
I guess that ’ s a good example of disruptive technology – that sudden leap or twist that makes something that had once seemed indispensable immediately redundant .
Telex machines were replaced by fax machines , and fax machines … well , I ’ ve got one here if you ’ d like it . It hasn ’ t been used since 1998 – when I got my first laptop .
While my dad wants nothing to do with computers , at the opposite end of the spectrum is my 21-year-old daughter . She ’ s part of a generation that have lived their whole lives in the world wide web .
If she wants to do arithmetic , she does it on her smartphone . If she wants to look up the meaning of a word , she does it on her smartphone . If she wants to know what time it is , where she is and where she ’ s supposed to be , she looks it up on her smartphone . She is lost without it , quite literally .
Once , when her smartphone had run out of charge , she even phoned me , reverse charge , from a call box to ask directions to the restaurant she was heading for . This wouldn ’ t have been so bad , except she was in Finland at the time .
“ You are too reliant on that damned phone ,” I said to her when she returned to England . “ You would be utterly helpless without it .”
My daughter rolled her eyes so dramatically it sounded like ball bearings in a spin dryer . “ Yeah and , like , if electricity runs out will you be able to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together ?” she asked . She had a point . We ’ re nor reliant on computers , but on the inventive human intelligence that creates them . Luckily there ’ s plenty of that on Teesside , and always has been .
After all , thanks to Stockton lad John Walker and his friction matches , if I wanted to light a fire I wouldn ’ t have to rub two sticks together , would I ?