For the Beocenter 7000, I was a service technician and had the task of producing the service documentation in collaboration with a technical draughtsman. Part of this was to write “Technical Product Information”. The manual was used as a compendium for training seminars for B&O technicians. The technicians could then use the manual as a reference work for more complicated repairs. In addition to the technical product information, a proper service manual was also produced with disassembly instructions, diagrams, parts lists, etc.
Henning Fihl Jensen was responsible for the service activities on BeoCenter 7000. Together we held technical training courses for B&O’s own technicians and B&O’s national technical trainers who were to train the dealers’ technicians. As these courses had to be held before the launch of the product, access to products was limited and most courses were therefore held in Struer. One exception was in the Netherlands. Henning was a passionate amateur pilot and had his own plane. So we loaded 4 Beocenter 7000 and various materials onto Henning’s plane and flew from Lintorp airfield just outside Struer to Hilversum in the Netherlands where the B&O company was based. Here we held a course for B&O employees from France, Belgium and Holland, before the trip back again. As a small postscript, we were received by Danish customs officers when we landed in Lintorp. We didn’t have customs papers on the products, which was a mistake, but we could talk our way out of it as they were B&O products which the customs officers could see must be Danish. On the other hand, we didn’t escape having to pay customs duty on the slightly too many bottles that we had bought duty-free….
I also had the task of writing the technical product information for the Beolab 8000. On this product Poul Stendorf Hansen was the overall service person.
It was a big, but also exciting task to get the technicians to understand the brave new world.
Next chapter: Appendix 5: Contributed by Bent Møller Pedersen
Microprocessors in B&O consumer products 