After a brief stint in Defence Electronics, I joined the All India Radio as an engineer at Hyderabad in the late 1970s. In those days AIR was a powerful public broadcaster with a mandate to inform, educate and entertain. It was monopolistic and glamorous. In an era when cheap digital clocks and watches had not yet invaded the market, AIR also provided popular means for standard timekeeping. It was common for a privileged owner of a wristwatch to proudly proclaim that his was ‘radio time’.
People synced their clocks and watches to the 9 pm popular news bulletin: “This is All India Radio, the news read by Surjit Sen.”In this context, I had an interesting encounter at AIR Hyderabad which was originally Deccan Radio of the Nizam. It was merged with the national broadcaster only in 1956. For young electronics engineering graduates like us, the studio and transmitter equipment looked archaic in the slowly unfolding silicon chip world of the 1970s.
The central clock in the Hyderabad studio was a mechanical pendulum affair driving half a dozen studio clocks with a relay and battery system. It was accurate and sturdy and we hardly had a second look at this Deccan Radio legacy.One evening as I reached home, my boss sent a message informing me that the clock had failed and asking me to restore the system urgently.
With my stint in Defence Electronics, I was confident we could replace the mechanical clock with a suitable digital chip alternative. I picked up my friend Srinu for consultation, bought necessary chips and components and rushed to the studio. In a matter of hours we could restore the feed to the studio clocks, dispensing with the pendulum clock. The small electronics contrivance kept in a makeshift box averted the crisis. As per procedure, the next day, we prepared a report and sent it to the headquarters at New Delhi. I thought the matter ended there.
After a few months, one afternoon, my boss came to my seat in great excitement. He congratulated me profusely, informing me that the humble clock we assembled had won the Akashvani Technical Excellence Award for that year, for its elegance and simple solution to a major crisis. I was stupefied.
I was given the award at the august Vigyan Bhavan Auditorium in New Delhi by the honourable minister. I was too young and nonchalant to understand the importance of the event. My uncle, who was with some ministry in New Delhi, accompanied me with great enthusiasm explaining to me the privilege of attending such important events in the national capital.