Brian Melville, Vice President, opened our meeting on Thursday, October 2 with a warm welcome to visitor and potential new member, Stan Adams. A former engineer, Stan had been introduced to the club by an existing member.

George Bourne then warned colleagues about the high cost of accessing the 118118 directory enquiries phone number.

Our speaker this week was Paul Whiting, a consultant electronics engineer of Offenham, who described one of the latest innovations in cars. Under contract to Jaguar Landrover, he had helped develop the world’s first laser Head Up Display (HUD) hologram technology which cost some £9.9 million. This enables a hologram to be projected beyond the windscreen showing all the information that is normally within the cars instrument panel. So, without glancing down, the driver can see what speed they are doing, the speed limit on that road, upcoming junctions as well as all the other information, whilst keeping their attention firmly on the road ahead. The technology had been inspired by systems in use in military aircraft in cars.

Paul exposed us to the technological intricacies and all the issues and obstacles that had to be overcome, as well as the difference between the Jaguar Landrover laser system and the LCD technology used by Audi and BMW. My brain hurt by the time he’d finished!

Paul’s presentation provoked quite a few questions from members and we learned that this system, which was an optional extra on JLR cars, would add about £1,000 to the cost of the car. Grenville Burrows thanked Paul for opening a window on the future.

Our meetings now commence at 10.30 each Thursday and next week we will hear about the city of prunes from Grenville. Do join us.

CHRIS DONOUGH