Divine Reliability – Ampetronic hearing loop driver installed for 27 years and counting

Sep 14, 2016

Sometimes I stumble come across some delightful facts and figures during the course of a working day at Ampetronic, including one about our hearing loop driver reliability.

Yesterday, I was asked what our oldest working installation was. It’s not something I’ve been asked before, but after a quick roam around the office asking the same question of some of my more venerable colleagues, someone volunteered the following in a ‘this happens all the time – no big deal’ sort of manner:

“We’ve just had an ILD9 Driver that was installed in Newark Baptist Church in 1989 back for a new fuse, it was sent back yesterday to be re-connected… Will that do?”

I would have to say “yes”. As an example of hearing loop driver reliability that most definitely counts!

By my calculation that old ILD9 Hearing Loop Driver has been helping to spread the word in Newark Methodist Church for 27 years and, post fitting of a new fuse, is back in place and ready to keep doing so for years more.

Now, I’ve been working in the electronics industry for a long time, and that still strikes me as extraordinary. To put it into context, a lot of things happened in 1989 (some better than others) that seem like an awfully long time ago to me, or at least I think they did – I’m getting on in years myself:

  • The Berlin Wall came down
  • Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea for the World Wide Web
  • Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was released in cinemas (dude)
  • Taylor Swift & Daniel Radcliffe were both born
  • Japanese Emperor Hirohito died
  • Mobile/Cell phones had just been released and were the size of a house brick

What can you remember from 1989? Leave your comments below.

Alistair Knight
Ampetronic

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