Acorns in Aerospace / Monday 15th October 2018

[helpful]

The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group Of London will be:

Acorns in Aerospace, presented by Keith Emerton
Monday 15th October 2018, 7.45pm
The Blue Eyed Maid, upstairs in the restaurant
173 Borough High Street, SE1 1HR

This month's meeting will give an insight into the use of Acorn computers in testing life-critical aerospace applications, from consumer facing business to government and military.

Computer based testing was a growing part of industry through the 70s, 80s and 90s. Replacing the whim of a tester with programmed tolerances both improved the quality and safety of deployments, but also increased speed and breadth of production. Keith Emerton, a retired Senior Specialist Test Equipment Engineer, explains how Acorn Computers were (and still are) used to conduct tests on core parts of aircraft systems.

The talk will discuss life before Acorn and computer testing, looking at the state of industry. Keith will then explain why he and a team of engineers decided that only Acorn could deliver the reliability and longevity required for improving such tasks.

C.A.T.E, as the BBC Micro, Archimedes and latterly A7000 driven test equipment was affectionately known, was to become the standard in testing Airbus planes, the Chinook helicopter, and numerous other aircraft world-wide.

Finally, Keith will explain why, after 30 years, Acorn equipment is still used in the tests, and only now are these solid reliable workhorses being analysed and reverse-engineered to create a modern equivalent.

More info here - http://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

ROUGOL's venue is easy to reach by public transport from in and around London and the south east:
- 2 minutes walk from Borough tube station
- 5 minutes walk from London Bridge station
- 10 minutes from Waterloo (two stops eastbound on the Jubilee line to London Bridge)
- 20 minutes from Euston and Kings Cross/St Pancras (southbound on the Bank branch of the Northern Line to Borough)

The meetings take over the pub's upstairs restaurant for the evening. Entry is free, food & drink plentiful (but not free!).

Bryan.

[BeebMaster]

This sounds really interesting! A few years ago I sold some BBC Micro spares to RAF Lossiemouth. When I asked them what they were doing with a Beeb, they said it was still in use as a backup to their more modern hardware!

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to make it. Is it going to be recorded/transcribed?

[helpful]

Is it going to be recorded/transcribed?

Not sure yet. I've asked Paul Emerton (Keith's son) as he runs a video production company, so would be the obvious person to do a good job recording it!

[helpful]

Reminder, this is tomorrow!