Last time you mentioned something about your next phase of employment.
Right. But it happened gradually, After I designed and built the Target Simulators I talked about, management brought me out of the lab to the office for some analytical-type work. Figuring out stuff on paper that would be used by others.
Such as?
Such as how a radar would operate under certain conditions. And then — I don’t remember just how it came about — I started editing what other engineers wrote. Writing isn’t easy, so what they wrote needed help.
We did a certain amount of R&d — that’s research and development — on new ideas; new techniques. And the engineers wrote weekly progress reports. Some of it was pretty rough, so I would go over each of their manuscripts and clean them up. For spelling. Punctuation. Make sure it made sense. When I was sure it was readable, I’d give it to a secretary to type the final copy.
So that’s technical writing?
Of a sort. First of all, tech writing is not fiction. At least I hope not. I hope the guys aren’t making up stuff. Like in a novel.
Tech writing is describing how some equipment works. Or how something happens. Remember last time I described the Doppler shift? With the clanging of the train bell?
Oh, yes.
Well, that was a kind of tech writing. As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, I did write something like that in some document. It was supplemental information for any executive who might not be familiar with how these techniques work.
Executive? Not engineers?
Okay. Let’s back up a minute. What we wrote had to be understood by our customers. But our customers were not just engineers. We also had to convince upper management — the ones who held the purse-strings — who might not be as savvy as the engineers.
We did business with mainly the Air Force and Navy. Some NASA. Those agencies would send out to several contractors like us a Request for Proposal.
It would specify what they needed in the way of, say, an airborne radar. What the radar had to do. Under what conditions. Against what kind of target aircraft — read enemy aircraft — and by what date they needed our reply. Our reply was called a proposal. It would answer their questions technically, and our bean counters would quote a cost to do the job.
If we were awarded the contract — always a big IF — our engineers went to work developing the circuits to make the thing go. During that time we would be writing interim and then a final report.
And that’s where I came in. i would edit and help write those documents to explain what we would do — in the proposal — and what we were doing in the reports.
Any special way you would edit the material?
Yes. There are a set of standard ways to indicate to a typist what I wanted done.
They would indicate, for instance, where an engineer’s lower-case letter should be capitalized. Or where two words should be switched. Or changed to something else. Stuff like that.
By the time I had done my thing, the writing might be pretty well marked up.
But, I hope, it would read better. And the customer would understand better what the engineer was trying to say.
Some of the engineers would admit they didn’t write well and appreciated what I had done.
So you did your technical writing there?
No. You see, after our Engineering typists had typed my revised version, I would hand-deliver the clean copy to a separate department called Technical Publications. They would put it in final form and deliver it to our printing department for final reproduction in multiple copies.
That’s when I began thinking. I had been an average engineer, but this later experience told me that I was a better tech writer. The way I saw it, as a tech writer, I was as good as any and better than most. So why not make the complete switch?
During my many trips to Tech Pubs I had become friends with the people there, including the boss. So one day I sat down with Wade M. and asked him about transferring over to his group. He was okay with that, and I made the switch.
That way I was working for, not only my previous airborne-radar group, but also the electro-optical group and the microwave people and software developers and such.
I think I’ll leave it there for now. I’ll pick it up again next time. Okay?
Okay.