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Advanced Telecommunications Equipment was a company founded by Stanley Reeves in 1972 to manufacture electronic controls. Graham Jater, Stanley's father-in-law, had just decided to take early retirement from Crater Controls
Ltd., a highly successful company that he had co-founded in 1947.
On reviewing the market it was decided that producing the electronic controls as designed would not be viable, so Graham contacted semiconductor manufacturers and discovered the emerging hand-held calculator, which was based on
the newly developed single integrated circuit ("calculator on a chip") and the LED (Light-emmitting Diode) display.
Graham and Stanley decided that producing hand-held calculators would be profitable and Graham decided to assist ATE on a part-time, non-salaried, advisory basis.
Stanley was in touch with Radofin, a London company involved in imports and exports in the plastics industry. Radofin had contacts in Singapore who could rapidly produce moulds for the
plastic casings of calculators, and informed ATE that if the mouldings were part of a product that Radofin could export then the moulds would be supplied free of charge.
Graham set about designing the circuitry and keyboard of a calculator. For the latter he used his experience at Crater Controls and chose a membrane keypad since it required far fewer components than a conventional keypad. A
local draughtsman designer produced drawings for the casing.
When shown the drawings Radofin reported that the moulds could be produced in Singapore and they thought that there were export opportunities for the proposed calculator.
While waiting for the moulds to arrive Graham found and financed the purchase of suitable premises for manufacture in Boundary Way, Woking. These were called "Jafam House", which denoted that they were a Jater family property.
They were very pleased with the resulting grey plastic mouldings that were delivered and how well the first completed calculators worked. They decided to use the trade name "Calate" for the calculators and this first model was
the "Supacal". Radofin thought that they would sell well and so a quantity of sample calculators were assembled for them.
Although the circuits boards were bought in drilled ready for the components to be soldered on, which save time, orders came in faster than expected. After several months ATE was producing 700 calculators a week, which covered
costs, but was not meeting demand. However, the hand-held calculator market was evolving rapidly and the Supacal was soon considered to be too bulky; its size being dictated by the large number of electronic components required
and the large batteries needed to power the electronics.
The semiconductor manufacturers could now provide calculator chips with more of the components integrated within, and with a lower power consumption so that a smaller battery could be used. Going through the design process a
second time resulted in a much slimmer, lighter, and ergonomic design. ATE gave these models the trade name "Taktile", derived from the tactile membrane keypad which was again employed, whereas the trade name "Triton" was
applied to the calculators marketed through Radofin. These models proved popular and with production increasing to 1500 calculators a week the resulting economies of scale allowed some of the cost reductions to lower the
selling price, and also allowed an increase in profit margin for ATE.
Graham Jater was of the opinion that the company had a couple of years lead, till about 1977, before Asian manufacturers with their skills and lower labour costs would start to satisfy the world market with lower prices. He did
not want to be in calculator manufacturing in the longer term, so did not cover the designs with patents or copyrights, and would leave to Stanley Reeves the direction and products of the company when he withdrew from it.
However, in 1976 Stanley informed Graham that the company had financial problems with a large amount of money owed to the bank. Having produced 86,000 calculators to date the order book was average. Graham consulted
Radofin who told him that the eastern manufacturers were catching up with technology rapidly and they were expecting the market to be flooded with very cheap products. Due to this situation, Graham decided that he should obtain
the best deal on the closing down of ATE. Following difficult negotiations with the bank over the repayment of the loan taken out to purchase Jafam House, during which further debts were revealed, an agreement was reached for a
financial settlement. Sadly, this settlement entailed the Jaters having to sell their large house and move to somewhere smaller.
Thus Advanced Telecommunications Equipment ceased to exist.
© Graham Jater, 2008.
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