Dr Peter Barnwell

Citation

(2005), "Dr Peter Barnwell", Microelectronics International, Vol. 22 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.2005.21822baf.001

Dr Peter Barnwell

Dr Peter Barnwell

Keywords: Electronics industry

The sounds of doors opening...but to where?

Some people are known for what they are, some for what they do. Some people have accomplished much in their life, and have not only put a great deal into it, but they have also put a lot back into the industry that has provided them with their livelihood. Members of ISHM and latterly IMAPS will need no introduction to Dr Peter Barnwell (Plate 1), who is one such person.

Plate 1 Peter Barnwell

Peter Barnwell was born and brought up in Birmingham, where he resided for the first 18 years of his life. Education, for the main part, was at King Edward's Camp Hill School, a pre-eminent grammar school where, unless one excelled at rugby and cricket, life was not at all happy for some. In fact, Peter hated it, but did well with his GCE “A” Levels in maths and physics, at a time when “A” Levels really meant something. He was excellent at metalwork, a skill he found useful later in his career. Did anyone inspire him at school? “Absolutely not”, said Peter, “I couldn't wait to leave, to find my fame and fortune”. He says he's still looking.

“I wanted to take a degree in civil engineering, but the problem was I didn't have a foreign language. You had to matriculate to get to a classic university to read civil engineering, so I went about it via a different route.” Being good at physics allowed him to join the Ministry of Aviation, who sent him to Boscombe Down on the edge of Salisbury Plain. “They paid for me to do a degree course in applied physics at London University. It was the classic sandwich course, 6 months at Boscombe Down and 6 months in London; those courses worked really well. At one time I was sent up to the Royal Aeronautical Establishment at Bedford, to assist in wind tunnel work on the aerodynamics of Concorde. They had a Mach 5 windtunnel, and they used to run it for about an hour or so, then stop. The reason being that having successfully got all the data out, it had to be analysed, and it took three people with mechanical calculators a month to work out what had happened in an hour! They had a computer there, so I went off and wrote a programme for them, that got it down from 30 days to 30 minutes”.

Just like that? “Well”, said Peter, “I did go and read a book about it first”. But this was in 1964, so what qualified you to write a computer programme about windtunnel statistics? Peter replied “Did Ellen McArthur read a book about sailing? No, she bought a boat and learnt how to do it the hard way, getting cold and wet. That was me with computers in a way. I like finding out things for myself. I have always liked physics, and applied physics especially. But I didn't need to get cold and wet”.

Back at Boscombe Down, Peter found himself working in the Photo Reconnaissance Unit. “They were trying to fit cameras into the nose cones of aircraft like the Lightning; cameras are very heavy things and they were having problems, so I made models for them, using cardboard, glue and gaffer tape, and it was great fun.” He then went on to do some work on instrumentation and telemetry, and was sent off to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to work on helicopters static discharge systems. Peter went through a four and a half years degree course, which finished in 1966, and that year saw him still at the Ministry of Aviation, but now using his knowledge of applied physics to the fields of telecoms and electronics.

So you have a well-earned degree. But what comes next? “Getting anywhere at the then Ministry of Aviation was difficult, and protracted; as a result I applied to join several great British companies, including Racal, a very dynamic company in those days, Sperry Gyroscope in Bracknell, Plessey Telecom Research at Taplow, Ferranti also in Bracknell. They all offered me a job. It was a bit different then!”

“In the end I took the Plessey job for no better reason than that I liked the place! They were located in a fine old stately home, which had tennis courts, squash courts, a bar, a grand dining room, it was all very comfortable, and they were paying me a great deal more money. Of course the Ministry, alerted to my imminent departure, immediately offered a promotion straight up the ladder to Scientific Officer but I am not by nature a civil servant, so off I went.”.Peter did do some very interesting work at Plessey on VHF radio, but other matters were stirring.

He recalls that shortly after he graduated he was offered a research assistants post at his university. But at the time he was newly married and felt that he ought to pursue a “proper career”. It was during this “proper career” that he was offered a lecturers post at Brighton Polytechnic. This was in November 1967. “They said to me `As you are only 23 we can only offer you an assistant lecturer's post!'. But I was extremely fortunate, I had a boss who `delivered', as they say, in that he did everything that he said he was going to do, and kept his word on promises made; by the following September I had a Lecturers post, and the salary to go with it. And there was I at the age of 23 lecturing on electronics to 4-year degree course students who were mostly older than me!”

At the same time as he was lecturing, Peter was doing some research on microwave related topics, and came across something-called thick film technology, which he thought was “quite interesting”. In April 1968 he went to an IERE-sponsored conference at Imperial College, London, on Thick Film technology. It was here that the United Kingdom chapter of the International Society for Hybrid Microelectronics (ISHM – UK) was founded, and he was one of the founder members. This society was later to become what is now IMAPS.

Peter recalls “There were hundreds of people there, with the conference being relayed by closed circuit television to delegates in another room in the college. The agenda covered microelectronic technology, hybrids, and thick film. David Boswell drove it, Professor Anderson from Imperial was involved, as was Brian Waterfield, and Geoff Loseby. Also there were Larry Hales and Bill Crossland, who wrote many of the early papers, as well as Jack Corkhill and Stan Freeman.”

Exciting times. “I got really involved with the society in April 1971, I went on the committee then. I was still at Brighton, doing my PhD there part- time. I got that in 1972, writing a thesis on high frequency properties of thick film components. It was interesting to remember that being one of few who knew about microwave hybrids, it proved difficult to find an examiner!”.

In 1973 Peter was offered a job with a company called Eurotherm. He had been in Brighton for 6 years, and by now had three young children and a mortgage. “Eurotherm doubled my salary and gave me a company car. But I left somewhat reluctantly having enjoyed my time in Brighton but there were really no further rungs on the ladder for me to climb. Eurotherm gave me the wonderful title of Advanced Methods Engineering Manager; none of us knew what it meant! I had a fascinating time with them, they went from nothing to a world dominant company in very short order, building electronic temperature controllers. But they peaked too soon and ran into financial difficulties (from which they recovered and in due course went public), so I then joined Holsworthy Electronics down in Devon.”

“Holsworthy made metal film resistors, and I set up a division to manufacture thick film hybrids in 1975, by which time I was chairing ISHM UK. Then we had hundreds of members, all individuals, we did not introduce corporate membership until around 1977. I stayed as Chairman for 4 years, and enjoyed it hugely. However, I was not to be with Holsworthy for very long, suffice it to say that the owner and I saw life through different lenses, and I left Devon to set up my own business in 1977”.

The company that he established was and is still called CorinTech. Some astute person lent him some start-up money, which was paid back with interest within 12 months, and Peter set about manufacturing thick film hybrids very successfully. “We did it differently”. How? “You don't need salesmen; you need engineers who can sell. That was our approach and it worked a treat. I started with a loan of £30,000, in Fordingbridge, there were just the three of us initially. We sold on a technical basis and solved people's problems. Yes, it was ` me too' technology, but we knew all about this technology, and we knew how to help our customers employ it. By 1983 we were employing over 70 people and had a turnover of some £5 million. Finally, I had found fame and fortune!”

“I had just over 50 percent of the equity, and all was looking rosy. I was awarded an MBE for services to industry, and the order book was full. But then the venture capitalists who owned the rest of the equity decided that I had been doing it all wrong and insisted on changes being made. So I left. They wanted me to be in the office running the detail of the company, which I would have been hopeless at. What I was good at was worrying about our customers, and looking after them, which kept me out of the office. After all, I had good people running the show, there was no need for me to be there as well.”

These venture capitalists then put someone else in to run it. In the summer of 1985, they asked Peter to go back. To which he agreed, provided he had overall control. He went back to find that his replacement had effectively lost most of the business. Peter's views on it are clear. “Customers are everything. You need to understand them, you need to understand the technology and you need to understand the industry you are in. DEK is a classic example of this philosophy, and is a case in point here.” So Peter went back for a bit, but had been appointed as Head of the Electronics Department at Kingston Polytechnic, so happily he was able to sell his shareholding in CorinTech to a man who is still running it, and very successfully, too. It improved, he said, “when the venture capitalists left!”

The year 1987 was a notable year, it was the one in which ISHM-UK ran the European Microelectronics Conference in Bournemouth, a huge success by all accounts. In 1986 he had been appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Technology at Kingston, and also started another company, called Custom Interconnect – CIL. He is still involved with them, they are based at Whitchurch Hampshire, and run by one John Boston. Peter recruited him in 1988 as a design engineer, and he is now the MD. John, like Peter, prefers to spend a lot of his time with his customers. Custom Interconnect manufactures micropackaged assemblies, they use whatever interconnect makes sense. Peter thinks of them as a “sophisticated contract manufacturing company”, who are doing well, employing 60 people, running at about £4-5 million t/o per annum. They saw growth throughout the 2001-2002 period and maintained profitability.

Looking back to his latter days at Kingston, Peter recalls that he started to reduce his commitment to ISHM. His marriage was going through a difficult period, and he was under pressure from two other areas as well. Coventry University had appointed him as Head of External Affairs, and he had been asked to start up a spin-off from Johnson Matthey, working on a novel thick film technology. As if this was not enough, an American company came along and bought the spin-off company, which Peter had (he thought rather craftily) entitled KonserQ. He explained that the conductors and circuits should have low K and high Q, hence the name.

“Anyway, the Americans wanted me to run this part of the business in the States, so there I was, jetting backwards and forwards, and thinking that I had quite enough to do, when the man who was to become Chairman of ISHM – which was just about to change its name to IMAPS, the International Microelectronics and Packaging Society – had a sudden career change. So they called me in, and I suddenly found that I was in charge of running their 1999 European Conference. Well, I must have done something right, as they appointed me the European Chairman in 1999, and I then in 2002 became President of IMAPs in the USA”. For someone with these commitments it is hardly surprising to learn that Peter never actually lived in the States, he lived on aeroplanes. “You had to learn to sleep when you could! As their Business Manager in the States, I was much involved with the technical marketing, making lots of presentations and customer visits, and you had to hit the ground running.”

Peter is still hitting the ground running, he takes part in the London Marathon in April this year in support of the Salisbury Hospice. “They looked after my partner Gillian superbly when she was in her final days and I owe them a great deal”. Gill's death affected Peter deeply. “Three wonderful years together then four more watching her fade away.” No longer commuting across the Atlantic, he keeps his eye on his company CIL, and is also, as a complete change, now running a holiday complex down on the Devon coast. It is in the South Hams, near Kingsbridge, and comprises converted farm buildings in a stunning location above Thurlestone beach.

“And now I've been offered a very nice job in California, which is very tempting. But I have to say that at my age, and now on my own, do I really want to? It's a full-time job, running the technology department of an early-stage company, but they can't get me a visa immediately so I may have to float backwards and forwards. Again! On the other hand I have got four grandchildren here who I adore, and my family, of course. But I am not settled, and have no wish to retire. Too much energy!”

Peter maintains that he has led an unstructured life, a claim that lacks originality. He thought for a moment. “I lost nearly all my money at the age of 40. When I got divorced I was 50, and lost it all again. I was 60 last summer. What do you think might happen now?!” Peter sees himself as “flitting around the edges rather than doing something serious. I would like a fresh challenge. But I would have to be free to do what I want when I got there. I'm still waiting to see what will happen next!”

More than a few people will be interested as well. No sounds of doors closing down in Salisbury for him, or anywhere else for that matter. Too much energy.