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TATLOCK EARLY HISTORY by John Tatlock submitted through Laval Desbiens
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 John Tatlock's Alumni page
CHAPTER 2 Start of Career at Northern Electric Company
My career at the Northern Electric Company started in June 1947 in their main production plant on Shearer Street in the old section of Montreal. Throughout the years – this period was rewarding and enjoyable. The ability to learn while earning was there for the partaking – and I took every advantage of it.
The company factory produced all varieties of telecommunications equipment of that early era. In my initial years I was assigned to work in their engineering laboratory, the most technically challenging section of the factory where they designed the testing facilities for the manufactured product. This was an extra premium. In addition, classes in advanced engineering studies were available at McGill University in the evenings, later resulting in my graduation with a Master of Engineering Degree and a Master in Business Administration.
As junior engineer I was assigned to their laboratory for test equipment and product design which was also responsible for technical support of the factory assembly lines. At that time the World War II war was drawing to a close and my job was to improve the quality of production of defense products. The production assembly lines were fully staffed, with as many as twenty workers in a row, each person performing an individual task on the specific product and then passing it on to the next in line. When the item reached the end it was placed in a test jig and checked for performance prior to packaging and shipping.
In this large factory, the varied production lines were its life-line and my job was to ensure that they kept functioning at top efficiency. On the more important product lines a Line Supervisor with his whistle in hand, was seated on a tall stool on an elevated platform located on one side near the center of the line. His job was to enforce discipline and keep the assembly moving! The discipline was serious -- no talking or fooling around was allowed. Can you imagine tolerating such strict control in factories today?
My position involved top secret security clearance which was extended to the United States to permit trips to Bell Telephone Laboratories and several of the Western Electric plants which were producing this same line of defense equipment. These specialized products, including high performance vacuum tubes and other devices, were shipped overseas for use by the military. Being given the highest priority authorization and security clearance to visit the American factories in support of this essential production was an indication of the confidence and responsibility provided to this young engineer.
In those days other parts of the factory were still manufacturing domestic products like the wooden backed wall mounted telephones, the type people now find for sale in the antique shops. These wooden panels were cut to size from lumber which had to be dried to prevent warping. Long before microwave ovens were commonplace in every home, state of the art micro-wave ovens were used to evaporate the moisture from the wood material. The item passed along a moving assembly line into the tunnel shaped oven for a programmed interval of drying.
A few years later the circular dials on the telephones were changed to pushbuttons transmitting the digital codes which we use today. This was an early application of the digital age to the ordinary telephone.
Reflecting over these times, I realize now that I had been fortunate enough to participate in the conclusion of the era of vacuum tube equipment and their replacement with transistor products and the beginning of the digital telecom world.
One other change, in those days a factory such as Northern Electric or Western Electric (later renamed Lucent) would manufacture within that factory every one of the components for the assembled equipment – because at that time there was almost no outsourcing of major components! Now (in the year 2000) outsourcing of all specialized components has become normal manufacturing practice.
Interesting memories – for me this was an opportunity of a lifetime, to span the greatest technological evolution of the century.
How many people reading this will remember what a personal radio amplifier vacuum tube looked like and what was it used for? In those early days of replacing the vacuum tube by transistors, top executives in our factory would proudly display (because of its rarity) in a prominent place on their desk - a small round plastic disc mounted with a display of two tiny transistors.
About that time in 1948, the vacuum tube was being substituted by the transistor along with a variety of other semi-conductors originally developed by John Bradeen and William Shockley at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Since Northern Electric was partly owned by AT&T, the company had an agreement which permitted our staff at Northern to reproduce the Bell Telephone Laboratories product designs and Western Electric manufacturing techniques. Semi-conductor products were an important part of this transfer of knowledge.
I made regular trips to the Bell Laboratories and to several of the Western Electric plants to transfer this know-how and techniques of manufacture to the Northern Telephone plant in Montreal. For me it was an unforgettable and invaluable learning experience.
In 1950 in the evenings I continued my engineering education at McGill University with the object of obtaining a Master of Engineering degree. In search of an appropriate thesis for this degree I was fortunate to be able to take advantage of a contact I had made at the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
I had chosen a theme which centered on the introduction of thermistor semi-conductor production at the Northern Electric plant. William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, became my mentor for the required development and testing phase.
My Masters Degree in Engineering from McGill University was completed in 1951. Two years later, again at McGill, I completed their Masters degree in Business Administration. They both served me well as a consulting engineer in future years.
To be continued in Chapter 3
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 John Tatlock's Alumni page
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