Laser-guided down memory lane

The man who made it real

The news of the death of Charles H. Townes at 99 yesterday had me travelling down memory lane about an interesting science lesson that came from some of my early days of activism.

Charles H. Townes according to Wikipedia is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser for which he got the fundamental patent and this was the precursor to the laser and for this and a greater body of work in quantum electronics, he shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with two others, taking a 50% share.

A short history of failure

Now, my story was a simply one. After completing my diploma in Electrical/Electronic Engineering at the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, I was on the mandatory one-year Industrial Attachment programme at an Information Technology services outfit known as I. T. Systems.

I had always been involved in the Students’ Union movement from when I was at the Yaba College of Technology where I was the class representative in the Senate with the resulting academic exercise in futility. Smart, depressed and suffering too many things I never had any idea to get help for, I had nothing to speak of academically, two polytechnics and 4 years after secondary school.

It took a whole year to find my bearings again where an uncle, shielded me from scathing criticism and mentored me towards rebuilding my life again, this is how I eventually ended up at the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro with my uncle as my guardian, distant and removed from the influence of my restless parents.

Back in my mettle

This time, moving from being one of the youngest in class all through primary, secondary and two tertiary schools to being a grandee of sorts. I was elected the class monitor and I played my role fully as a representative of our class. We were the noisiest class by far and I fully represented my constituency in the cacophony we were so good at.

I graduated in the class of 1988 and soon we found we would not be able to return to Ilaro for the higher diploma until the school had fulfilled some additional accreditation criteria.

I drafted a letter to our Head of Department and Rector asking that they work harder that getting us back for the higher diploma. In my free time, I travelled round Lagos and environs collecting signatures of my classmates, I probably gathered about 30.

Technology back then

I had typed the letter on WordStar and printed it on our office Epson dot-matrix printer, saved to a 5.25” floppy disk, my friend Tope Agboba working for desktop publishing firm near the University of Lagos, took the letter and printed it out on their Hewlett Packard HP LaserJet 2 printer.

It was copies of these rather professionally looking letters that we took to Ilaro to present to our Rector and Head of Department (HoD). It was a matter of courtesy to first meet the HoD and he welcomed us heartily. We stated our purpose and presented our letter which he read intently.

Then he said, the quality of the print of the letter was so high, asked how it was produced? We told him, it was created with a laser printer.

A lesson I cannot forget

He then said, ‘Do you know what laser is?’ we said we did not.

He then told us that laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Simulation of Emissive Radiation, with that, the full implication of what a laser is and does became apparent. I never forgot that little conversation. We never really got what we wanted, but most of us were dispersed around polytechnics and universities continuing our education.

And life afterwards

I moved into desktop publishing consultancy where laser printers were in everyday use and eventually migrated to the United Kingdom fully ready for the market and then eventually embarking on a post-graduate programme, the wealth of my experience standing in for fulfilling all the prerequisites.

There are myriad applications of lasers, too many to mention because of work done by Charles H. Townes, the shoulders of the theorists which he stood and the applications that came from the pioneering work he did. Somewhere along the line, this impacted my life, in fact, I have owned a laser printer of sorts for almost 20 years.

There is no telling what a little funny idea in a head somewhere can do to change the world.

Inside China: Hatchlings of Democracy get nasty

Inside China

BBC’s Inside China season seems to be getting more interesting as they broadcast the topical issues that give us insight into this world of history and culture that has been seriously abraded by the sameness and inequalities of Communism.

A teacher stepped before a class of 8-year old children and introduced the concept of democracy then called an election for class monitor with the contestants being; a girl (Xu Xiaofei) and two boys (Cheng Cheng, Luo Lei), one of whom had been hand-picked as class monitor (Luo Lei) the previous two years.

Please Vote for Me was an eye-opener into a possible future of Chinese democracy that left me seriously winded by the manipulation, treachery, scheming and cut-throat competition – this was definitely no child’s play by any stretch of the imagination – this was war.

Moi, The Class Monitor

In two different higher institutions I was class representative, I do not think I had any political savvy, I just went in front of the class and gave an unscripted speech, then left people to decide.

Strangely, I never had to set up a political campaign committee though for greater office I might have had to do that, but I always got the popular vote and the responsibility that went with that office.

Once an observer accused me of not leading my constituency by example because I was a noisemaker – well, my class did have a reputation for making noise and one had to separate example from representation – I replied, “My class is a noisy class, if I cannot represent them in what we are know for I would not be doing my job.”

No child’s play

I had hoped the selection of class monitor would be a speech and a vote; but the campaign involved a musical presentation, a debate highlighting the opponent’s faults with rebuttals and a final speech before the vote. Each contestant was allowed to have two class assistants to help with their campaigns.

This would have all been benign but for when the parents got involved as “political advisors” when in fact, they were literally living out their aspirations through their kids.

The China one-child-policy has unintended social consequences that are beginning to unravel, one of which was highlighted in another Inside China programme – Looking for a China Girl about the shortage of spouses for Chinese men.

The lone child dynamic creates a rather more selfish personality prone to demanding and obtaining their requirements without question, they become demigods – this is quite different from the first child personality.

Xu Xiaofei

Before Xu Xiaofei had time to give her quite talented musical performance, Cheng Cheng got the whole class to shout her down, she never recovered her confidence, but also being from a one parent family, it appeared lone children seem to need both parents more for their development of character than if they had siblings – her mother did try hard to prop her up.

Cheng Cheng also put her seriously on the defensive and the fault pointing debate that her final speech was more a plea for understanding than a manifesto for change.

Cheng Cheng

Cheng Cheng was something of the larger than life figure, garrulous, scheming and with ambitions to become the President of China, he completely intimidated his opponents that Luo Lei wanted to pull out of the election.

His musical rendition was a song that got everyone singing along after which he hugged everyone flattering them and asked them all to vote for him – he had cornered the electorate.

He could silence the class with his booming voice at one command, his confidence was overbearing.

His parents were the most pushy and forceful, they primed him, got him to rehearse and memorise his speeches and gave him all sorts of ideas to wrong foot his opponents – pollsters would have called the election for him.

Luo Lei

Luo Lei’s performance was rubbished by Cheng Cheng apart from saying that Luo Lei sang completely out of tune. He in fact did not think his parents should help him, he had a quality of self-belief that his parents first had difficulty becoming his “political advisors”.

Luo Lei’s father suggested he invite his calls for a free ride on the new monorail in town – that was the election bought the first time; everyone was going to vote for Luo Lei.

The big fight

Cheng Cheng was not going down without a fight but made the mistake of promising to vote for Luo Lei such that whilst he successfully listed a litany of faults of Luo Lei and was able to brand him a dictator by getting everyone who had been ruffled and beaten by Luo Lei to raise their hands; Cheng Cheng was a branded dishonest and a liar because he changed his decision to vote for Luo Lei.

Cheng Cheng was still the frontrunner though he did not trust his classmates would vote for him that he asked the narrator to enquire again of a girl who said she would vote for him when he was out of earshot.

The election bought again

At the final speech, Cheng again gave the best performance but Luo Lei had presents for his classmates in commemoration of an oncoming holiday after his speech.

The election was bought a second time and this time, it worked – Luo Lei was elected despite being a strict class monitor bordering on a bully and being a “dictator”.

Xu Xiaofei burst into tears and Cheng Cheng walked out of the class before the inauguration to shed tears in the toilet as his assistants were completely inconsolable.

They were eventually brought together to reconcile but these hatchlings of democracy looked like they would grow into leviathans with untrammelled might.

Even I would not enter the bear pit with these Machiavellian political heavyweights, I do fear if this is the democracy China would acquire in the next generation.