After returning to New Zealand in 1984, I continued to do intermittent programming work for B&O. Mostly for the telephone department.
In February 1985 I wrote some thoughts about “The World’s Best Data Phone” for Kai Rostrup Jensen, former project manager for the Beocenter 7000 and Beomaster 5000. It turned into 10 pages, with many of the proposed features not realized until ‘smartphones’ were introduced. In 1985, I was in Denmark a total of 3 times, first for a review of the TV program with Jørn Aaberg, second for testing and introduction of a program for converting remote control codes to a video tape recorder, and last for testing and delivery of the program for B&O’s first telephone.
The first application for a B&O phone was developed in 1985. The product was a collaboration between Jydsk Telefon (JTAS) and B&O. JTAS would define the operation and write the control program, and B&O would supply the electronics and the physical devices. When B&O had developed the electronics, they needed a program to control the device for testing. JTAS had three employees writing a modular program. Their two main problems were that their program was too large for the chosen processor and the task was more time consuming than expected, so the delivery date for the program was postponed several times. The project leader at B&O was Ole Mølbjerg, whom I had first met in the project team that developed Beogram 8000.
Of course, it is advantageous if a program can be written in a structured, modular way, and in a way that makes it easier to update and maintain. But in some circumstances “quick and dirty” may be the only realistic solution. Although still well documented and with reasonable comments in the source code. In most early projects, program space, data space and schedules put very tight limits on how many resources could be spent on making programs well-structured and easy to update. And there were seldom plans to reuse code for other tasks.
Kai Rostrup requested that I write a program which B&O could use to test the electronics in the B&O/JTAS phone, with as many of the required features implemented as possible. I did this in June/July 1985 without any way of compiling or testing it. In August 1985 I visited B&O, where I borrowed a corner of Søren Borup Jensen’s office with a PC to get the program running. It contained all the desired features, and could fit into the available memory. I reviewed the program with JTAS, and they tested it and agreed that after some minor modifications it could be used for test production of the phones, but they wanted to continue working on their own program so that it could be used for final production. Later, my program was allowed to be used for the first handsets produced. The JTAS program was never finished, and B&O ran the entire production with my program in the phones.
One of the requred changes concerned “keyboard rollover” where a new key is pressed before the previous key is released. It was a question of whether it should stop transmitting the DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) code for the first key when the next one is detected, or whether it should continue transmitting until the key is released and after a short pause then transmit the code for the second key. JTAS thought that all their phones worked a certain way with rollover, until I showed them one of their phones that worked differently from the others. My program was adjusted so that it corresponded to the way most JTAS phones worked.
The first Beocom products used 4-bit processors from Toshiba and Hitachi, a Toshiba TLCS-47 for the first phone. This was the first job I had worked on where an IBM PC could be used as a development system, with a cross assembler and an emulator attached.
Later, I wrote programs and sub-functions for various B&O Telecom products, including four corded telephones, a couple of answering machines, a caller ID display and the phonebook, redial and display functions in some cordless telephones, including data exchange between base and handset. I have also done some programming for the company Bilwinco in Skanderborg. Bilwinco had circuit boards for their controllers produced by Poul Nielsen/Simtec, which later became Mesasys and Printtronic. In all the years since my departure from Denmark I have actually only worked for Danish companies. My assignments for B&O ended in 2008 and for Bilwinco in 2015, barely a year before I could have celebrated my 50th anniversary as a programmer. Since then it has been a retirement without programming assignments.
In 1998 I was interviewed by a Danish journalist by phone and visited on our small lifestyle farm by a local photographer for an article in B&O’s magazine Beolink. The magazine was translated and sent to dealers around the world. The article was published in Beolink No. 3, 1998.
In 1985 B&O published a flash brochure in large format (24x35cm) with the title “Vi tænker anderledes” Bang & Olufsen (We think different), intended for marketing, with a text explaining something about B&O’s strengths and purpose, and pictures of some employees mainly from the development department. The scanned copy is significantly reduced in size. The employees pictured are Peter Petersen and Jørgen Selmer Jensen (page 5), Erik Bækgaard and Villy Hansen (page 7), Tom Jelsing (page 9), Jørgen Palshøj (marketing, page 11), Ole Pejstrup and Egon Bjerre (page 13), Frederik Pedersen and B.P. Jensen (Video Marketing and Head of Video Development, page 15), Peter Pasgaard and Jens Harder (page 17) and Bent Møller Pedersen (page 19). Peter Pasgaard later became CEO of B&O Telecom a/s and was probably the main reason why I got so many assignments for Telecom in the years until his departure in 2000. About the brochure Tom Jelsing adds: “Remember well “Vi tænker anderledes”. It was a big marketing promotion. I was not happy with the picture of me with the terminal because I disagreed with several of the operating details. But couldn’t resist as the writing was planned higher up. There was also a very nice associated film and I remember the film crew shooting a whole day in Ideland, 10 seconds of which was used in the film.”
In 1985 B&O published a flash brochure in large format (24x35cm) with the title “Vi tænker anderledes” Bang & Olufsen (We think different), intended for marketing, with a text explaining something about B&O’s strengths and purpose, and pictures of some employees mainly from the development department. The scanned copy is significantly reduced in size. The employees pictured are Peter Petersen and Jørgen Selmer Jensen (page 5), Erik Bækgaard and Villy Hansen (page 7), Tom Jelsing (page 9), Jørgen Palshøj (marketing, page 11), Ole Pejstrup and Egon Bjerre (page 13), Frederik Pedersen and B.P. Jensen (Video Marketing and Head of Video Development, page 15), Peter Pasgaard and Jens Harder (page 17) and Bent Møller Pedersen (page 19). Peter Pasgaard later became CEO of B&O Telecom a/s and was probably the main reason why I got so many assignments for Telecom in the years until his departure in 2000. About the brochure Tom Jelsing adds: “Remember well “Vi tænker anderledes”. It was a big marketing promotion. I was not happy with the picture of me with the terminal because I disagreed with several of the operating details. But couldn’t resist as the writing was planned higher up. There was also a very nice associated film and I remember the film crew shooting a whole day in Ideland, 10 seconds of which was used in the film.”
Next chapter: Thank you
Microprocessors in B&O consumer products 