There was one instance of which I was quietly proud, apart from graduating, that is. I say ‘quietly’ because I never told anyone and had forgotten all about it until now. We were in Second Year Structures and the lecturer was warbling along about testing bridges with strain gauges and how it was essential to set up the system , run a train over the bridge, record the whole business and then shift everything and start again so every structural member of the bridge was tested under a rolling load.. Having come from a recent background of electronics I could see that it was simple to set up a triggering circuit coupled to a wire recorder, (tapes were not in general use then,) and with that system you only had to send the train over twice, once to record, once to check. It seemed so simple.
I went along to the lecturer with the idea and he said it was already on the market, it had been invented the previous year. At the time I was rather pleased with myself. Later I came to two conclusions, and they are the reason for including this here, inventors are always finding someone has beaten them to it and secondly, it is the man with a foot in more than one camp who is most likely to produce the ideas.