Development of a brand new product was a lengthy and costly process involving many people from different departments within the company, and some from outside. I was only peripherally involved in most of the development process, so I don’t know all the details. However, many books and articles have been written about product development, some of which with special reference to B&O are included in the bibliography.
Before the actual product development there is an idea phase where a product concept is defined. It may be that a gap is found in the product range where there could be a demand. Or some research is done that results in a method or feature that can be further developed. Or it may be a further development of an existing product where new features or functions can be introduced.
B&O had previously developed products with an integrated radio, record player and cassette recorder, including the Beocenter 4600. A device with an integrated radio and gramophone was the Beocenter 3300, whose design was very similar to the forthcoming Beocenter 7000, with a sloping front and a lid that hid the secondary controls. However, these sets could not be remotely controlled, and the remote controls in B&O’s product range at the time used ultrasound rather than infrared light. So the idea behind the Beocenter 7000 was remote control with infrared light, a built-in microprocessor to control the functions, and additional functions such as a clock and timer. For Beocord 8000 it included real-time tape position display and remote control via communication with Beomaster 8000 and for Beocord 9000 it was calibration for optimal recording on different tape types and HX-Pro.
After the idea phase comes a design phase. Design has long been a hallmark of B&O, with well-known designers and products that visibly and operationally stand out from other products on the market. A number of them have won design awards. It is probably this part of product development that has received the most coverage in the press, in magazines, and in books.
There are many considerations to take into account in a new design besides just the look. Such as materials, colours, finishes, buttons, space for circuit boards and components, mechanisms such as those for opening and closing, heat sinks, and manufacturability. Sketches, cardboard models, plastic models and the like are made until a design is arrived at that satisfies the ‘judges’. With the computer tools and 3D printers available today, the design process has changed considerably from that of 40 years ago.
Product development itself has many participants and many processes running in parallel. These include mechanical development, electrical/electronic development, software development for microprocessors, test set-ups, documentation, and marketing.
For the purely mechanical and structural aspects, moulds, cabinets, turntables for gramophones and tape recorders, hinges for doors, keys or buttons for controls, turntables, glass, packaging, loudspeaker units, and much else must be developed. Moving parts must be tested to ensure that they are durable over time and that they continue to meet specifications after extended use. Touch surfaces such as keys must have a surface and graphics that do not wear off with use, and must be able to withstand cleaning.
Special mechanical developments include a cooling fan in the Beomaster 5000 that is so quiet that most owners will probably never notice it is there, and a mechanism for sliding a drawer with cassette and drive in and out of the Beocord 5000. One mechanical part that caused some problems was the tacho disk for the Beogram 8000. It had to be produced to very tight tolerances but at an affordable price. It ended up with a film that unfortunately had a limited lifetime. It was too expensive at the time to have laser-cut metal discs produced.
Drop tests were also carried out on appliances and packaging to ensure that appliances could survive rough treatment during transport or in use.
Apart from attending tests of running gear for gramophone and tape recorder, and sitting in the same large office space, I had little interaction with the mechanical development people.
The electrical and electronic development was also compartmentalized. For example, there was development of power supplies, the high frequency parts like radio and TV receivers, high voltage as for TV tubes, and low voltage as amplifiers and signals, and digital technology like microprocessor circuits. The physical space available in the devices often limited how components could be placed, how many and how large circuit boards could be fitted, and how easy it would be to test, troubleshoot and repair. The basic design of some of the parts, such as power supplies, power amplifiers and radio receivers could often be carried over from a previous product, but many new items also had to be developed and tested.
It was of course the electronics and controls that had the greatest influence on programming. Some of the new features where I was involved in testing were the infrared remote control in terms of range and noise, controlling the motor of the Beogram 8000 gramophone, measuring tape thickness for the Beocord 8000, calibrating tapes for the Beocord 9000, sensi-touch keys for the Beomaster 2000, and reducing noise emission from the microprocessors.
B&O had for some years had a terminal with access to a time-share service. One could write and execute programs written in BASIC for various circuit calculations. Later, minicomputers with terminals were installed, and in the 1980s, microcomputers such as IBM PC and BBC Micro. The BBC computers were also used as terminals for HP minicomputers. I don’t know if it was developed in-house, but one of the programs used was called tolra. It could do simulations and calculate tolerances on electrical components in a circuit.
In electronics development, other major changes have occurred in the last 40 years, including the size of components and their mounting directly on the board, the so-called SMT or Surface Mount Technology, instead of having pins sticking through the boards and soldered on the underside. And also in PCB layout, which at the time was done manually.
This was done on large sheets of heavy, squared paper to which an adhesive black film was applied in strips or various predetermined formats such as round or oblong islands. The islands were applied where holes were to be drilled in the circuit board for mounting components, or for measuring points for test equipment. The black tape could be removed and reapplied when the layout needed to be changed. The diagram was then photographically reduced to the correct size and transferred to an insulating board where either copper traces could be applied where the black film was applied, or the copper on the board could be etched away where no black film existed.
On the Beocord 9000 diagram, the black film, and hence the copper tracks, are shown as light grey areas. This is the board seen from the copper side, i.e. the underside in relation to the components which are shown as if the board is transparent. The Intel 8049 microprocessor and the two 8355 external circuits are shown at the bottom left. The numbering is reversed from normal as they are seen from the underside. The islands where holes are to be drilled for the component pins must of course be the correct distance apart. For the three 40-pin packages, the distance is 0.1 English inch, or 2.54 mm.
The circuit boards had to be developed so that the components could be assembled with machines instead of having to be assembled manually. They also needed to be able to be tested in the production department before being mounted in the machine. Islands or other test points were placed where the test equipment could apply or measure a signal. The test equipment could have a ‘bed of nails’ arrangement, which was a plate with pin probes on which the circuit board could be held so that the probes made contact with the various test points. A computer-controlled test routine was then executed to ensure that the circuit board with components performed as expected. Otherwise it could be removed and sent for manual testing and repair.
Many of the devices also had to be developed in different country variants. Typically a different power supply was used for countries with 110/120V mains voltage, and there were a number of different mains plugs for the different countries. Some countries had different frequency ranges for FM radio, and for TV in particular there were many different standards to take into account, partly in terms of channel allocation and ranges, colours (PAL, SECAM, NTSC), frame rate, and audio frequency.
Electromagnetic noise emissions from the equipment also had to be measured and kept within certain limits. Some of these measurements were made at external laboratories.
The test equipment and test functions for the circuit boards and for final testing after the finished sets were produced were developed in parallel with the electronic development. This was done in what was then called the instrument department.
User testing was mostly done on sample production devices that were lent to employees involved in the development project for use in their own homes.
Another important part of the development was documentation, which could also be carried out in parallel. Operating manuals had to be written for users, service manuals or technical product information had to be produced for service workshops, white papers with technical descriptions often had to be written for magazines and marketing, and product brochures had to be produced for general information and distributed by dealers. For marketing, other materials were also needed, e.g. for display in shops or at trade fairs, for informing journalists, and for advertising in various places.
Next chapter: Program development
Microprocessors in B&O consumer products 