Concretopia by Grindrod John

Author:Grindrod, John [John Grindrod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908699404
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Published: 2013-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

It was like the paperless office in reverse, the computer not just generating paper but ingesting it too. I was reminded of the punch-cards Alan Turing’s crypto-analysts were using for their proto-computers at Bletchley Park in their efforts to decode Enigma over two decades earlier.

Not all of Stanley Miller’s experimental systems worked smoothly. The timber-framed windows were a weakness on the MWM blocks. ‘A window on a two-storey house is subject to wind-driven rain at a fairly low level,’ John explained. ‘Stick the same window 28 storeys up and the same window doesn’t perform very well at all. And it’s not the window itself, it’s the seals. So they had to experiment with lots of different seals. There was a period of going back to refit seals into windows which had leaked.’ One particular memory, of his sister-in-law’s family, turned John a little sheepish. ‘When her father died they moved her mother to Harlow Green, Allerdine, which was another Stanley Miller development, and every time I saw her she would complain: “Can’t you have another word with the people at your place, ’cos it pours through the window?”’ He was actually blushing at this point. ‘But they also had problems with the panels below the window, which tended to be an aggregate panel or a glass panel or whatever, again, with the mastic that was used. Again you’re talking about cutting edge technology.’

Sometimes the innovations could have unforeseen tragic consequences. John recalled a sad story related to him by a former colleague, John Gunning.

‘John was actually standing on one of the floor panels, the tables – and we don’t know whether there were some chocks underneath the front edge, or whether someone had lowered the little jacks. But anyway, there’s two of them stepped to one edge of it – and in those days although health and safety was important to the company, you didn’t have any lanyards to tie you onto anything. Anyway, to cut a long story short, two of them slipped off. The table went with them. John managed to hold onto the table and swing himself into the floor below, but the guy he was with went off and he was killed. As far as I know that was the only fatality that they ever had.’

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