In the near future, vehicles will have rear cameras. A friend also just showed me his new full-size truck, and the first thing he showed me was the rear camera. Both of those things reminded me of one of my past lives. Back in 1986, I went to work for Ross Perots EDS, shortly before the merger with GM. EDS sent me to Lansing, MI. After only three weeks there, one of the GM computer-dept employees was fired for allegedly consulting with Ford. GM tapped EDS for a replacement. I was not qualified for the position only three weeks in, but they wanted someone who could handle the older engineers. I was told that they needed someone who was as diplomatic and knowledgeable, and they had already noted my retail background. So off I went into the deep end, way over my head, and enjoyed every minute of it. It turns out that they were working on a concept car, a sports car for the Buick division, and several of the engineers had come out of retirement, some of the original Corvette and Camaro engineers, to work on this car. This car eventually became the Buick Reatta. It was a flop, but an interesting read on Wikipedia, surprisingly accurate for Wikipedia. Suddenly I was running phone lines around offices, setting up terminals with the mainframe (how long ago was this?!), and helping them with something called a fascimile machine. During my tenure with this group, they were throwing everything they could into this car, and the testing was fascinating. One of the new concepts--a rear view camera, one of the first tests at GM. I was on fax and phone daily with an engineering team in Japan, and they sent a British engineering team to Lansing. I still remember one of the Brits, a tall man that really looked like he could have been John Cleeses brother, upon hearing my name who said, Ah, a proper British name. As I said, I enjoyed every minute of it. As I sat in my friends truck looking at the rear camera 30 years after my first hearing of such a thing, I smiled. My involvement does not even rise to the standard of insignificant, but it brings back fond memories.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 21:02:30 +0000
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