The benefits
of hindsight
Techno Talk
Mark Nelson
We ignore the importance of hindsight – and foresight – at our peril. Hindsight doesn’t deliver all the
answers, but it can shine a useful spotlight on vital information and insights that might not otherwise be
obvious. Applying hindsight, this article may help you assess some past predictions in a new light.
O
f course, the greatest value
of hindsight is that it provides
the purest form of 20:20 vision.
This is in total contrast to foresight,
which is notoriously hazy, no matter
what policy leaders may claim. This
key shortcoming was best summed up
by Danish scientist and Nobel Prize
winner Niels Bohr, who famously
stated: ‘Prediction is very difficult,
especially if it’s about the future.’
Examining hindsight, on the other
hand, often provides clues to the best
course to follow in the future. It also
gives us the ability to recognise truly
far-sighted vision, albeit long after the
event. Two examples demonstrate how.
The Internet vision of 1942
Here’s a report from the May 1942 issue
of trade magazine Electrical Trading. In
the middle of the Second World War,
radio pioneer and first chief engineer
of the BBC, Peter Eckersley offered
his opinions on ‘The Future of Radio
Communication’ when he addressed
members of the British Institution of
Radio Engineers at their April meeting.
He described the limitation of radio
communication channels currently
available and in explaining how ‘wired
wireless’ alias ‘radio relay’ could be
developed to advantage, he accurately
predicted Internet Radio.
‘Dealing with wired broadcasting,
Captain Eckersley thought this system
would provide a solution to ether congestion, and envisaged a future when
perhaps a special cable would be laid
to every house, not only in this country,
but in every country of the world, linking continents as far apart as Europe
and America, although he realised
the present difficulties of operating a
submarine cable of such dimensions.
The number of channels available in
a wired system would be infinite, and
in this he saw in the future a solution
of our broadcasting problems.’
When Eckersley spoke, many towns
in Britain already had radio relay
systems delivering a choice of interference-free radio programmes by cable.
10
David Elliott recalls: ‘My parents
were on radio relay in Chelsea in
London in October 1939. They paid
seven shillings for the loudspeaker,
which they then owned. It was wired
up to the relay system, for which they
paid around one shilling a week. There
were two programmes, the BBC Home
Service and later BBC Forces. In 1945,
The Forces service became BBC Light
Programme. In 1949 two more stations
were added: BBC Third Programme
and a fourth station which provided
popular music from abroad and Radio
Luxembourg in the evening. In 1955,
BBC and ITV television were added.’
More memories of wired wireless at:
https://bit.ly/pe-aug20-relay
Cellphones foreseen in 1946
Today, the name of prolific author
Miles Henslow is little remembered,
although you may have come across
the annual Hi-Fi Yearbook publications
that he produced during the 1950s and
60s. In 1946, he wrote a comprehensive book titled The Miracle of Radio
that is a detailed survey of how wireless contributed to the Allied success
in World War Two. What caught my
eye is the uncanny accuracy of his
prediction of how cellular radio might
develop, at a time when the only mobile radio equipment in day-to-day use
was in selected police cars (the radio
apparatus completely filled the boot
of a squad car).
‘Maybe it will sound a far-fetched
idea today, but the time is surely approaching when everyone will be
able to carry about with him a small
radio telephone. War-time development of apparatus to work on very
short wavelengths has opened up
many new entrancing possibilities.
Hundreds of thousands of ‘radio-telephone channels’ can be used over short
distances without interference; and the
installation of a network of automatic
telephone exchanges might well be
utilised for handling the calls from a
multitude of pedestrian or automobile
telephone subscribers, to sort them out
and to pass them by line – or radio link
– to main exchanges. Certainly, it is
but a matter of time before the railway
traveller is able to pick up the ’phone
and dial his office or his home.’
The matter of time was in fact 39
years; Vodafone and BT Cellnet introduced cellular mobile radio in 1985.
The hand-portable phones used were
the Motorola ‘brick’, costing around
£1,000 in 1985 money (equivalent to
£2,630 or £3,050 today, according to
which inflation calculator you use).
Correcting errors
Although hindsight doesn’t give us the
ability to alter past mistakes, it does
enable us to acknowledge and correct
the blunders that we’ve made – and
I made an egregious error in the June
issue. I stated that, from memory, the
first S-DeC breadboards cost about £20,
equivalent to £266 in today’s money.
What utter tosh! The actual cost was
29s 6d (plus 6d for post and packing).
This equates to £22.93 according to
the inflation calculator that I used.
How could I get it so utterly wrong? I
blame the fuzzy logic in my befuddled
brain – but I do have an excuse. What
I was remembering, poorly expressed,
was its equivalent price and the £20 I
stated is not far off the £22.93 in 2020
money that the breadboard would have
cost me in 1967. In those days, I was
a bus conductor, earning £6 a week.
Thirty shillings was a quarter of my
weekly pay packet, so you can see
why I couldn’t afford to fork out that
much money for an S-DeC!
If you’re wondering how I suddenly developed this miraculous feat of
total recall, I’ll tell you. I was shifting a pile of paperwork last week
and tucked under this I discovered
a long-forgotten October 1967 copy
of Practical Electronics. Back then I
never dreamed I would one day write
for the publication. In this issue was
a full-page advertisement introducing
S-Dec as ‘the breadboard for the transistor age’. We have come a long way
since then, haven’t we?
Practical Electronics | August | 2020
