‘Mr Eureka’ bows out: Interview with Dr Tom Shelley

PF: What first drew you to engineering? TS: My father would take me on a Saturday morning to Blaw-Knox, where he worked as chief draughtsman to meet all the other engineers and see the machines and go for a ride on the latest piece of construction equipment – something that came to a rather abrupt end when one of the hydraulic leads blew. After that, how can one fail to become an engineer? I was about nine then, but it probably started even earlier than that with my first Meccano set. I was encouraged to make things from an early age. I went on from there to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I studied Natural Sciences. I was interested in Physics, but I had a very bright supervision partner whose brilliance depressed me thoroughly and I thought I probably wouldn't make it as a physicist. Having been brought up as an engineer, I found myself drawn to metallurgy, which is a strongly technical, hands-on subject. I specialised in metallurgy and ended up an engineer – to my father's inimitable relief. He didn't feel there was much of a future in physics! 'You need a real job,' he said. PF: What was your career path from there? TS: I invented something while I was doing my Doctorate and my supervisor and I started a company called Arc Electrolysis. It was a process for recovering tin from residues and low-grade ores. It used rather a lot of electricity, so although we took out a patent with the National Research Development Corporation, it never made anyone much money. It was used industrially, but they didn't pay a licence fee! My attention was then drawn to a job being offered in Iran with what is now called Sharif University, so I went there for a couple of years. From there I was offered a job in the United States. I thought I was going to MIT, but it turned out to be MT – not the Massachussets Institute of Technology, but Montana Tech! However, I stayed there three years and came up with a process for treating cathodes from aluminium smelters, which I was believed. I also did my first green energy project. Then, I was going to go back to Iran to be an advisor for the Iranian Copper Industries Company. However, they had this revolution and, after the man I was to work with was shot, I decided I probably wouldn't be going after all. The upshot was that I ended up working for Blaw-Knox as Research Officer to try and bring some new technology into the company. I spent four and half years there fighting middle management, who were of the 'we've always done it this way' persuasion." PF: So how did you come to work for Eureka? TS: There was an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph that said: "This Ad Will Change Your Life". And it did. Within 10 days of reading it, I was working here. I was asked to write a trial article. I wrote it, phoned up the editor a few days later and asked if it was any good, to which he said: "I hope so. We're running it in the next issue, so I gathered I was hired! PF: I've become aware just in the last 18 months that working on Eureka gives one a unique and privileged perspective on industry. Having been 'both sides of the fence', is that something you feel as well? TS: Absolutely. It gives one a totally unique perspective. When you work in a particular branch of industry, you only see your part of it. But when you get here, you get this total overview of the industry, which forces you to learn new things. We're in a unique position and get a remarkable picture of the industry. And that overview is important. I see one of our main jobs as being to take an idea from one part of industry and introducing it to other parts of industry so other people can make use of it. The problem is that you're often taking ideas from one area where the person understands the technology very well to another where they will be less familiar. So we have to be able to act as translators to some extent. It's such a fast-moving business. When people say to me 'How do you find enough stories', the only answer is that there is never any shortage of stories. It's always a question of 'What do we use? What do we ignore?' As you know, I've got thick files at home of stories we have never used, which I've always kept just in case one needs to revisit them. What's interesting is how many of those stories are still live in one form or another. PF: Do you think most people understand how difficult and complex the process whereby something goes from being an idea to being a manufactured product can be – not to mention how long it can take? TS: Probably not. A classic example is the cover story of our very first issue 30 years ago, which is still being developed! Three-Dimensional weaving – it's used to make plastic manhole covers for petrol forecourts, but its original application for aerospace is still at the R&D stage and is still being proven. And it will be some time yet before you see this process being widely used in aerospace – but you will. Materials are the worst and always take the longest because the whole thing depends on them and, if they go wrong, the whole thing falls apart. Electronics is the quickest. PF: Do the advances in computing represent the single biggest change in engineers' lives, do you think? TS: I've seen CAD come from calculations on a Commodore PET to a highly sophisticated tool that every engineer has on their desktop. The change has been unimaginably fast. There used to be those who modelled and those who did experiments. In those days, it was a great achievement when the model bore any relation to what was actually happening. PF: Which areas of engineering do you find particularly exciting at the moment? TS: We are at the most exciting period for an automotive designer there has ever been. Automotive design was fairly routine, but now nobody knows which way it's going to go next. You see all these concept cars with completely different transmission systems and gas-powered and petrol-powered and solar-powered and obviously all sorts of hybrid technology. So it's a wonderful time to be an engineer because it's a time of radical change – a time where you really can innovate and everything's up for grabs. PF: So those are the upsides. But what do you see as the big problems facing the industry? TS: The big problem is that the banks have gone from being over-generous to being incredibly difficult to deal with. Every entrepreneur you talk to at the moment says the same thing. They're only too happy to loan you money, but when it comes to financial support, they're incredibly difficult. PF: If you were put in charge of industrial policy, what would you do? TS: I would set up a national investment bank – not staffed by civil servants, preferably, but with people from industry to support those branches of industry that look most promising. It should have an expert staff. Owning LloydsTSB, the Government has that chance, but hasn't really taken it so far. PF: Obviously, you'll be keeping your hand in to some extent with Eureka following your retirement, but what else are you planning to keep you busy? TS: I have taken on a venture called Blast Absorption Systems Ltd, which is a new company with a start up technology that depends on pre-stress in composites. Pre-stress occurs in composites anyway even if you don't want it to. We put it there deliberately in quite a complex way. The idea is to take weight out of constructions. It was invented by an architect and I'm just there as a technical advisor and expediter and hold 30% of the company. PF: You talk a lot about the woodland that you own. Will that be playing a part in your retirement? TS: Yes, certainly. It's all to do with green issues. I've always believed in putting my money where my mouth is and we bought this wood outright and put a lot of our own money into this. I don't expect to see much back from it, but that's because we believe in the environment. We've turned it into a very nice nature reserve and we're now going to try and put it into production and write a book encouraging others to do the same. I see wood as a great future resource not just as a source of heat, but as a source of materials, so that will be another thing that will keep me busy.