Programme
Meetings are held on the first Wednesday of each month in the East Horsley Village Hall, Kingston Avenue, KT24 6QT, off the B2039 just south of Horsley Railway Station, (OS Ref. TQ090542; phone 01483 285019). The meetings normally start at 10:15 for coffee. Partners are welcome; no attendance fee is payable. Parking at the Hall is very restricted and members are requested to make best use of the space available.
Technical meetings are indicated below by #. Funding assistance is supplied by the IET.
The programme for 2010 can be found here and that for 2011 can be found here.
The committee tries to determine the programme for some time in the future. Inevitably it it possible that talks many months ahead may be subject to change.
| 2012 | ||
| June 6th | Displays in the flat panel age and the technologies
behind them # That the days of the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) are numbered is not news. We are now confronted with a baffling new array of acronyms, but it is the technology behind the Plasma, LCD, LED backlights, SED and OLED displays which interests engineers! What other display technologies may appear in the years to come? How do 3D displays work? Could they work better in the future? All this, along with the inevitable questions about what type of TV to buy (well, it depends…), will be covered! |
Richard Salmon, Lead Research Engineer, Displays and HDTV
specialist Richard is a Lead Research Engineer at BBC R&D, with particular expertise in TV colorimetry and display technology, and as one of the UK's pioneers in HDTV research, has a deep technical understanding of the entire image chain from the studio set and its lighting, via the camera, compression systems, to the display and the viewer's impression of that image. He is chairman of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) project group on Displays, and is also active in the EBU's Beyond HD and LED Lighting technical groups, and the UK Digital TV Group. He is a member of the SMPTE, the Society for Information Display and the IET. |
| July 4th 2.30pm | Cream Tea followed by The looting of the Wanborough hoard Note that the talk on The Thames Tunnel project will be re-scheduled later. |
'An ex-policeman' |
| August 1st | Canyon lands of America | Peter Dulley |
| September 5th | Formula I cars development and design # McLaren: The MP4-12C project and current Formula 1 Cars |
Richard Farquhar C.Eng MIMechE |
| October 3rd | The history of the Cavity Magnetron # The development of the High Power Microwave Resonant Cavity Magnetron by Randal and Boot in 1940 had a profound effect on the outcome of the Second World War. It enabled compact airborne radar systems such as H2S to be be developed. These helped defeat the U-boat threat to allied trans-Atlantic convoys among others. The talk will explain how developments around the world contributed to this breakthrough. |
Richard Trim, RMS member |
| November 7th | 'Meteorogy' What affects the climate? | Bill Turnill |
| December 5th | The introduction of frequency modulation for sound broadcasting in Britain # Britain played a pioneering role in the development of television, with the introduction of the world's first high-definition (405-line) broadcast service in 1936. This was a major advance over many competing systems in USA, Germany and Britain. By contrast, FM sound broadcasting in Britain did not begin until 1955, initially only for listeners in the south-east of England, long after its introduction in USA and some countries in continental Europe. The talk will review the background to this introduction of FM in Britain, illustrated by photos of transmitting and receiving equipment, and the subsequent developments and impact. |
Prof Anthony Davies, Visiting Professor, Kingston University and Emeritus Professor, King's College London |
| December 11th | Christmas Lunch at Leatherhead Leisure Centre |
The Committee |
| 2013 | ||
| January 2nd | A Brief History and Technology of Window glass # Don invites you to take a light hearted voyage through the land of his ancestors, Lorraine. He will trace the development of window glass from there and the society in which it was crafted. Eventually problems drove skilled persons with the gift of making glass to England. There they prospered for a while under Elizabeth's monopoly until a new prohibition hit them. The story of window glass ends with the recent invention of Float Glass. |
Don Tyzack, RMS Member |
| February 6th | Communications - past and present # |
Stephen Hearnden Director, Telecommunications and Technology, Intellect |
| March 6th | Being an expert witness From time to time we see in the press references (usually in controversial cases) to the evidence given by Expert Witness. What is an Expert? How does one become an Expert Witness? What does an Expert Witness do? What should an Expert witness not do? Is there a difference between Civil and Criminal cases? What are the difficulties? What are the pitfalls? David, who worked as an expert witness in the electrical field for nearly 20 years, will explain all these things and illustrate his talk with references to cases (and the difficulties and potential pitfalls) in which he has been involved |
David Latimer, RMS Member |
| April 3rd | Bailey: the bridge and the man # |
Martin Stoneham, Chairman, Friends of the Royal Engineers' Museum at Chatham |
| May 1st | Parliament Building Equipment - Installation & history # |
Mike McCann MSc BEng(Hons) CEng MInstE |
| June 5th | Earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear power # |
John Steel, RMS Member |
Past Meetings
| 2012 | ||||
| May 2nd | AGM Starting at 10.30. Click
here for the agenda,
here for the minutes of the 2011 AGM. This is followed by Is Everything Electromagnetic? # The title "Is everything electromagnetic?" asks whether electromagnetism is the key to the formation of a Theory of Everything (ToE). A ToE joins all branches of physics together into a coherent framework. But is this at all possible without significant changes in all areas of physics? Will some cherished preconceptions have to go to the wall? The talk is at a general science level and summarises and leads on from a paper presented in the PIERS conference in Marrakesh in March 2011: "A physical model of electro-magnetism for a theory of everything", available in PIERS Online, Vol.7, No. 2, 196-200, 2001 . |
Prof Michael Hill has an Oxford degree in Physics and a Surrey PhD in Electronics. He spent 31 years in industry (MRL, PRL, MEL and Thorn-EMI) and 14 years as Professor of Electronics etc. at Surrey. He was founder and Research Director of Toric (an SME tackling on-chip time jitter and phase noise) for 10 years. He is CEO of Underhill Research Ltd supplying scientific research services to academe, industry and government (MoD). | ||
| April 4th | What is leadership - Taking Ernest Shackleton as an
example. Ivar commanded the Commando Logistics Regiment, Royal Marines, during the Falklands War, and was responsible for the logistics for the land battle. He specialised in Mountain and Winter Warfare as well as serving with Special Forces. Since active service, Ivar has specialised in asymmetric risk; security; risk and crisis management; military logistics and counter-terrorism; lecturing extensively at Cranfield University's Defence Academy. Ivar is also a member of the Harvard Group U.S. think tank. His MPhil was on militant Islam and the roots of Islamic Jihad. |
Colonel (Retd) Ivar Hellberg OBE MPhil FRGS. Ivar is an avid mountaineer having conquered peaks in the Alps and Himalayas, culminating in the 1976 Mount Everest expedition and leading the successful Sasar Kangri expedition in the Karakoram in 1987. He is Patron of Peak Leaders. Ivar is also a Guest Speaker on Cunard Liners. |
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| March 7th | Atkinson's High Efficiency Engines # The talk describes the successful attempts to build practical engines based on a sound theoretical idea, first put forward by James Atkinson in the 1880's, which offers an improved thermal efficiency over that of the usual four stroke Otto cycle. After first discussing the theory of the Atkinson cycle, the talk briefly outlines Atkinson's early life and patents leading up to the formation of the British Gas Engine and Engineering Company. The medal winning 'Differential' engine and the very successful 'Cycle' engine are described together with the comprehensive Society of Arts Trials of 1888, which pitted the engine against three other engine types. Atkinson's story ends with his final engine, the 'Utilité', and the subsequent demise of the Company. The withdrawal of Atkinson from the scene did not signal the end of engines operating on the Atkinson cycle; four more very different machines have been constructed, tested, and sold, over the course of the past one hundred years. These are the Holzwarth Turbine, the Humphrey Pump, the Citroën Andreau Motor and, more recently, the engine of the Toyota Prius Hybrid motor car. The paper examines the operation and thermal efficiency of these designs. This Web site gives an overview of the operation of the Toyota hybrid system. |
E.L. Marshall, C.Eng. MIMech E., Member of Newcomen
Society Ed served an Indentured Apprenticeship in Agricultural Engineering and, following service in the Royal Air Force, he joined British Petroleum Research, carrying out studies into the relationship between engines and their fuels. In 1978 he was elected to a Fellowship at Cambridge University where he spent a number of years investigating combustion in 'lean burn' engines. He returned to BP to set up, and run, a facility designed to carry out fundamental combustion studies in reciprocating engines using Laser Doppler Anemometry. Upon retirement from BP he ran his own consultancy for 10 years. He has published a number of papers and technical articles and is the editor of a book on motor gasoline. He is an active member of the Newcomen Society. |
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| February 1st | Improving sustainability in new and existing homes# We live in a world with dwindling resources, increased reliance on energy supplies from unstable areas and the need to minimise our impact on the environment. The government has set very demanding CO2 reduction targets as we move towards a low-carbon economy, and we are regularly exhorted 'to do our bit' for the environment. This presents us with numerous economic, technical and social challenges which require us to increase efficiency, innovate, and improve our skill base to meet these challenges. This talk focused on the domestic building stock and what is being done to improve its energy efficiency and sustainability. With new dwellings there is a drive towards 'zero carbon' homes in terms of the energy that occupants use, but they also need to be more sustainable with respect to their other impacts - the materials used, the waste produced, the water consumed, etc. Existing dwellings have considerably more impact not only because the stock is so vast in comparison but also because much of it performs so poorly. The talk looked in detail at the challenges faced and the technical solutions being advocated to improve the performance of our homes. Richard referred to the BestFootForward web site as a source of useful information about Sustainability. |
Richard Hartless, Associate Director, Housing Group, Building Research Establishment | ||
| January 4th |
| Paul Whittle | ||
