The first year of operation has been exciting but also quite frustrating waiting for the year to pass in order that Richard and Paul could return to the Broadcast Industry that has been so much part of their lives for so long.

It will be no surprise to those who have worked with Richard over the years that he has been busy as a highly technical expert witness. His combination of transparent integrity and a complete recall of thirty years of broadcast engineering history seen in the context of modern technical developments are, when presented in his uniquely clear style, a great help to the court. Richard worked for the top US law firm Wilmer Hale as an expert witness for the defence in a major patent case in Delaware concerning Kodak consumer digital cameras. This case absorbed a significant amount of his time over the last twelve months. In the court of first instance the case was concluded when the Judge awarded summary judgment in favour of the defendant, Kodak.

Richard has also been keeping his commercial skills honed with a couple of property transactions. During the year he has sold a 1750 acre forest in Vermont for what is acknowledged as the highest price per acre of any forest land in New England. Richard commented, 'growing timber is a far cry from the fast moving world of broadcast electronics although some would say that the fact that time scales are measured in years bears some similarity to R&D projects!'

Another major completed project was the building of a new house on the site in Barnes, London that was originally the family home which he had been brought up in. He successfully sold this new house last month to an M&A lawyer. Richard observed, with a rueful grin, 'in view of the circumstances of the last year the fact that an M&A lawyer bought something that I had put a fair amount of my life into developing does have a certain irony.'

Paul has put his considerable talents in both the mechanical and the electronic fields to work by playing a major role in the reconstruction of the Second World War Bombe at the Bletchley Park Museum in Buckinghamshire. The Bombe was a large electro-mechanical machine constructed by the UK to find the keys to the German Enigma encrypted messages. The success of the machine contributed to the allied victory in Europe but after the war Churchill was concerned that the technology could fall into the wrong hands and so ordered that all of the machines and the drawings be destroyed. Needless to say, since those involved were engineers, they didn’t quite do what they were told and some drawings were kept. However, the process of reconstructing this brilliant electro-mechanical engine was particularly challenging as it had to be done partly from the scraps of drawings that had been saved, partly from US archive material and partly from the memory of those working at Bletchley Park 60 years ago.

Working out the missing bits from various clues and thinking his way through the debugging process was of course grist to Paul’s mill and a perfect foil for his unique talents during this year away from the Broadcast Industry. A new dimension is added to de-bugging when, instead of just looking at a logic analyzer or a blank screen, all those around are diving for cover as a bug in the Bombe causes a 200 volt DC motor to run amok.

The successful reconstruction of the Bombe is a tribute to the dedicated team, led by John Harper, that has spent many years in a mixture of archaeology, forensics and, of course, engineering. Paul has been proud to have been at the forefront of bringing this dream to reality.

On a lighter note, the Taylor Kellar Partnership also sponsors a successful race horse. Winning trainer Kim Bailey said, 'On his first appearance with his new sponsor’s logo, it was the first win for Lucky Luk; this was also the first winner - by 22 lengths - from my new yard at Cheltenham. A good day at the office.' Paul replied, 'It is good to see that the partnership has not lost its winning form.'

As the second year of the partnership begins the world looks very different for Richard and Paul. They look forward to renewing so many of the friendships that they built up with customers over the last thirty years. Richard said, 'I am sure that our friends will understand why we have been unable to be in contact for the last year but it is really good that that this frustrating period is behind us now and we can get back to interacting with past customers and hopefully being of some help in the challenges that face them.' Paul added, 'it's great to be back.'

© 2007 The TaylorKellar Partnership• Heath Barn • Peasemore • Newbury • Berkshire • RG20 7JT
www.taylorkellar.com