2011 © Hector MacMillan | Terms & Conditions

Honorary Fellow: Association For Scottish Literary Studies

“If we investigate only by physical and chemical means, we can only get physical and chemical answers.”

Sir Alister Hardy, FRS

Biog 1961 - 67 Technician

COMMERCIAL ELECTRONICS

Employment as Technical Representative of an English electronics company, with a territory covering Scotland and all of Ireland, quickly helped restore the family fortunes though at times it did keep me too long away from home. Some aspects of commercial practice began to prove not entirely to my taste and since I had now embarked on an embryonic writing career it was not long before I tendered my resignation. A few months spent writing some unsaleable stuff on spec drove me back to 'gainful employment' - as the Labour Exchange expressed it.

A small Glasgow company, acting as Scottish agent for Nucleonic equipment with Research, Medical and Industrial applications, had lost its founder. I applied for and got the vacant post.

This work, involving some of the latest technology, was interesting. Radiation-counting equipment could be dealt with in the Renal Units of hospitals one day, the next spent commissioning Nucleonic gauges for a tyre manufacturer or servicing an EEG machine in the State Mental Hospital. The first Gamma Camera was installed for assessment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and nucleonic Density-gauges were fitted in a suction-dredger built at Stephen's Yard, Linthouse, on the Clyde. In a way this last job seemed to bring matters full circle, involving as it did commissioning trials in the Firth of Clyde.

Towards the end of this period the writing bug had bitten so deep that, after STV bought the television play To Stand Alone, the directorship was returned to the Nucleonics company.