Part 18
There are so many different areas of life that have changed radically over the decades. One area that I can clearly recall from the 1950s is security.
When I returned to Britain after leaving school in South Africa and spending a year in Namibia, I worked my passage on a Swiss cargo ship called the Anunciada. Yes, the Swiss do have a navy, albeit a merchant navy!
My “generous” father gave me £10 when I left and wished me well – more likely it was “good riddance,” under his breath. Anyway, I arrived in Britain with about a fiver, having spent the rest on a ferry from Rotterdam to Harwich. My grandmother was living in a residential hotel in Weybridge where I had been born. She kindly paid for a room for me at the hotel while I sorted myself out.
Sorting myself out consisted, as far as I was concerned, with finding a good rugby club as my first priority. I joined Richmond, near Twickenham, which was at the time one of the top clubs in London. The players were quite friendly, and when asking around for a job, the CEO of a massive company, Cementation, who was also playing for England at the time, said that if I didn’t mind getting my hands dirty I could work for their pile-driving unit. He wasn’t kidding! It was filthy, muddy work sinking piles through the clay on which much of London is situated to hit bedrock, usually about forty feet below ground. It was seriously tough work, mostly in frozen mud, and with numbed fingers sticking to steel.
On my first day at work, the foreman pointed to a guy sweeping out the office. “See that bloke. Notice anything wrong with ‘im?”
“Yup. One of his hands is missing.”
“Right. The job you’ll be doin’ is the one where ‘e lost ‘it. ‘e got careless an all. So don’ get careless, mate!”
Duly noted.
A few months later, I did hurt my hand, but fortunately it was still attached to the arm. I decided enough was enough and became a night watchman. This was my first introduction to the world of security. For a week or so I was assigned to a major department store in Bond Street, in the center of London. I quickly learned that my fellow night watchmen were skilled in taking naps whenever they could. Otherwise, the job was excruciatingly boring. I discovered a comfortable couch in one of the changing rooms for the ladies clothing department. Only problem was that I woke up to find myself staring at three or four naked mannequins (the English call them dummies). Disconcerting, to say the least.
I was then transferred to the maintenance hangars of the now-defunct BEA (British European Airlines). This is where security gets serious, I thought.
Well, it was in a way, I suppose, but the watchmen themselves treated it as a bit of a joke. On my first shift, I was taken around the place by the sergeant in charge of our team. We all carried a clock on a strap over the shoulder. At various points around the hangar, keys were chained to the walls. At each “clocking point” we would insert the key into the clock to prove that we had been there at a specific time. As we approached “clocking point 21,” I saw there was a chair obstructing the key. I reached forward to move the chair. The sergeant nearly had a heart attack and told me that if I touched the chair everyone would come out on strike. What we had to do was to report the obstruction to the shop steward who would then appoint one of the workers to move the chair – my first contact with Trade Unionism of the 1950s! I shrugged and started to reach over the chair to put the key in my clock. Again the sergeant was horrified, and said that if I fell and hurt myself, the workers would be out on strike for six weeks at least.
Once again, the watchmen took every opportunity to sleep when and where they could. I found that some of the watchmen were not exactly the type of people one would expect in such a job. One guy was an up-and-coming artist who still needed an income to supplement his sales of paintings. Another character was the Honourable (title for a person due to become a Lord on the death of his father) so-and-so. I forget his name. Apparently he ran various charities, but when none were available he was happy to watch the night!
So, what did I learn from all of this? Basically, security was not taken that seriously at certain levels of commerce and industry in the 1950s. Today we are all paranoid about our security. Will our bank account be hacked if we go online? Is someone listening in on our phones? Has our email been hacked? Are there security cameras in the street or in the buildings?
Security is virtually all electronic today. And while most of us appreciate the need (people fear being hacked and having confidential material stolen), this remedy has its own problems. It’s true that state-of-the-art systems offer anti-virus programs, but they’re often bypassed and cost the customer money.
With ExoTechnology there’s a difference: this is a new type of software construction. Whereas today’s computing starts with a completely open system to which the security industry then closes doors, an ExoBrain has an entirely closed system where doors are opened by the user as needed. An ExoBrain is exceptionally secure. Encrypted, it is freely available to anyone who has permission to use it.
ExoBrain offers complete peace of mind in terms of security…in other words, no one is sleeping on our watch.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.