Profile of Charles Henry Exton
|
I was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1921. As my father's profession took him to various parts of the country we seemed to be always moving house. However, my main schooling was at Hereford High School and Sir Thomas Rich's School, Gloucester.
|
My wartime years were spent with E. K. Cole at their 'secret' radar factory in a large country house near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Here the activities were the development, production and testing of airborne radar systems, mostly Al and ASV equipment's. For many years I worked in the Test Apparatus Department designing and building the specialised test apparatus needed for carrying out the considerable and varied tests that the radar units, e.g. transmitters, receivers, indication, modulators, etc., required. For reasons, still not clear to me, I was transferred to the Technical Costs Department where I rapidly became Chief Estimator responsible for the negotiation of contract costs and final prices with the Technical Cost Branch of the Ministry of Supply.
|
At the end of the war, having had my fill of Government contracts, I left E K Cole and joined the Electronics Division of Murphy Radio as a development engineer. I was then moved to Solus Schall Ltd, a Murphy subsidiary company as Manager of Research and Development. Solus Schall designed and manufactured industrial X-ray equipment, a rapidly growing market at that time as the insurance companies insisted that all welding in the shipbuilding industry must be X-rayed. Ultrasonic crack detectors and other non-destructive testing equipment were also produced.
|
I was then invited to join the Magnflux Corporation in Chicago. They were the largest non-destructive testing company in the USA. Some months later I returned to the UK to start up Magnflux Ltd in England. After eight years as MD of that company, I left to start my own business.
|
Eventually I was bought out by Ardrox Ltd, a British manufacturer of non-destructive testing equipment and became Director of Engineering. This involved me in a considerable amount of travelling as Ardrox had many companies world wide. In 1985, I was seconded to the Californian factory where I was responsible for the design and production of a system for the fully automatic inspection of jet-aero engine turbine blades for hairline cracks and other defects, thus eliminating the need for visual inspection. The system included computer-controlled robotics and CCD cameras, along with the computer algorithms necessary to interpret the camera images. On completion of this project and its installation into a USA Naval Air Base in North Carolina, I returned to the UK and retirement. |
Apart from my voluntary work with the Friends of CHiDE, I look after the Communications and Electronics Museum at Bletchley Park. |
Chris Poole - Historian to the website
|
Layout by spitsortie for ekco-electronics.co.uk |
|
