Engineering Gold event in Grenoble

We are happy to say that the Grenoble event is now on IET.tv. If you wish to view the presentation please visit www.iet.tv and input 'Grenoble' or any other obvious search term into the search criteria (such as David James, Engineering Gold, The Physics of Sporting Success...).

Visit to the European Synchronous Radiation Facility in Grenoble

A group of IET members and other engineers visited the European Synchronous Radiation Facility in Grenoble on the 12th of February 2008. The party were given a comprehensive tour of the facility.

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The French Engineering Institutions' annual dinner

The French Engineering Institutions' annual dinner was held at the Wagon Bleu in Paris on the 11th January. The restaurant is a railway dining car from 1927 which overlooks the tracks of the Gare Saint Lazare; a setting which is really quite exceptional. Apart from some worries about leaving the bar when it was in motion, the dinner was a great success; good food, good company and entertaining after-dinner speeches.

Joint ICE / IET event at Aix en Provence

ICE Senior Vice President Jean Venables and husband Roger (FICE) were among 50 participants at the joint ICE / IET event centred at Aix en Provence on the 9th, 10th and 11th November. The first day was at Cadarache for the ITER fusion project, while the second day concentrated on a visit to Toulon for a briefing on the new Toulon motorway tunnel.

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Visit to Airbus

The meeting in Toulouse over the weekend of May 26th was a great success. We knew it was a sell-out many weeks before but our expectations were fulfilled with the talk in the morning and the VIP visit in the afternoon.

On Friday morning we had an interesting lecture on the A380 in the hotel salle de reunion by Brian Endersby, including some fascinating detail on the flight control systems; this was followed in the afternoon by a visit to the final assembly buildings of both the A330/340 and the A380. In the evening we had a dinner at which the British Consul to Toulouse gave an address.

Seen from a distance the A380 looks very much like any other modern jetliner, but at close quarters, when the scale of the thing becomes apparent, only one adjective comes to mind: "mind-boggling". The same adjective applies to the scale of the production facilities - assembly jigs and the hangars that house them - and the production rates - up to one per working day from the A330/340 line.

Saturday was intended to feature a walking tour around old Toulouse, but was unfortunately cancelled due to the torrential rain.

Biometric recognition

On 24 April 2007 Dr John Daugman OBE of Cambridge University presented a paper on biometric recognition to the IET French centre. He described how people can be identified with almost zero doubt and possibly without even being aware that they are being identified. Dr Daugman's slides can be found here.

Biometrics & Methods of Personal Identification

Thirteen members of the French section attended a presentation on Biometrics & Methods of Personal Identification at the Hotel Mercure Montmartre in Paris on the 29th March. They heard Johann Caubergh, Founder of Biometric Service Provider QiSQi, discuss:

• Short basic introduction to Biometrics.
• Overview of Biometric applications and their Providers
• International Biometric Standards
• Biometric Issues
• Biometric Data Protection
• Search for new Biometric Technology.

A PDF version of the presentation is available here.

Designing the Pegasus computer

Ian Merry drew on personal experience to tell a meeting on the 5th October about the design of the Pegasus computer.

Pegasus was the first "mass-produced" computer produced by Ferranti at Manchester. This valve-based computer involved new type of logic design which made them easy and logical to programme, and thus popular with their users. The text and slides of the talk are here and here.

Two for the price of one

At the meeting on 13 May IET Trustee, Nick Baines, discussed the way forward for the IET with a select group of members from the French centre. This was followed by a short question and answer session with Mike Bridgefoot, Manager, Qualifications Support.

Notes on the meeting are available here.

Renewable Energy from the Sea

Mike Eggleton's lecture on renewable energy from the sea was a great success. The text and slides of his presentation are available for downloading here.

AGM 2005

The Annual General Meeting for the year 2005 was held on the 23rd February 2006 at the Royal British Legion Club in Paris. The Chairman's report, with notes on the associated business, is available here in PDF format.