Henry Kobler
Henry Kobler
(1924 - 2002)
Providing an account, to the lay public, of a lifetime of engineering contributions raises a number of difficulties. The reader is unavoidably drawn to the results produced from an engineering project; the engineer's task, on the other hand, frequently finishes when the equipment or other object is handed over to the user and he loses contact with his work. It is hard to accept, but occurs frequently, that the equipment is not used as was intended in the design phase, and so under-performs. I find that my work satisfaction frequently depends on finding an elegant technical solution to a engineering problem. If the design is successful, this novelty is not readily noted when the equipment is put into operation. On the other hand, a clumsy engineering solution is readily apparent by a less than wholly satisfactory operation.
Born Heinz Kobler 29 May 1924 in Vienna, Austria, his father was a mechanical engineer and the family migrated to Australia in March 1939 due to Jewish descent. The family arrived in Australia from Vienna, Austria, in March 1939, with Henry 14 years old and he attended Cleveland Street Intermediate High School to obtain his Intermediate Certificate at the end of 1940. Thereafter he was apprenticed to tool making whilst attending evening classes for two years to receive his Leaving Certificate as a private study candidate.
Towards the end of 1942 Kobler obtained the required permission from the Apprenticeship Board to terminate the apprenticeship and at the start of 1943 enrolled at Sydney University in the Faculty of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. During World War II there was a demand for engineering graduates so that any interruption in the engineering course had to be approved by the appropriate Government authority. At the end of the second year in engineering, in 1944, some students obtained permission to interrupt the course for one year to take the final year of the Science Degree Course. From there Kobler graduated as B Sc in Physics and Mathematics. He returned to the Faculty of Engineering and graduated with Honours in Electrical Engineering (Electronics) at the end of 1947. He spent the required three months of practical work at the Division of Radio Physics of CSIRO. The group he joined there was concerned with Radar tracking of iodine seeded rain clouds. At one stage Kobler sight translated a chapter of an astronomy book from German to English. This started an interest in astronomy that stood him in good stead some years later. While an Engineering student he won the Flynn Trophy for novice boxing as well as two interfaculty titles in that sport.
In 1948 Kobler started working as a Junior Electronics Engineer at the Radio Transmission Division of Standard Telephones and Cables Pty. Ltd. at Alexandria in Sydney. There, among other projects, his work centred on the design and development of mobile radio transmitters for the VHF Band.
Henry Kobler married Louise Wolfus in 1951 and in 1953, five years after graduation, obtained leave of absence from STC to travel to England and find work there. To broaden his experience, he decided not to take up a position with the parent company, STC, in England. Instead, he was appointed as assistance section leader in the Radio Link Section of the Decca Radar Company in Surrey, England. Joining a new company in a different country gave him a broad picture of electronics design, which was his interest. It was also an education to live in London and become acquainted with co-workers and learn more of their attitudes and lifestyles.
The major project Kobler was engaged in was the design of the video section of a microwave link intended to transmit radar information for display at a remote location. The first links that were manufactured were shipped to Denmark. Before entering the contract, the customer had asked Decca to comment on a technical report, in Danish, which virtually amounted to a performance requirement for the equipment. At least the reply could be in English. The job of reading and replying to the Danish paper came to Kobler and he apparently responded satisfactorily as his reply was wholly accepted.
Probably one of the most memorable jobs he undertook at Decca was the setting up "type acceptance tests" of the whole microwave link equipment prior to entering a contract for links for the French Government to be manufactured by TSF in France. He set up the test procedures and arranged test sheets to quantify all performance properties that would characterise the equipment. It was particularly gratifying for him to see the French inspectors, who initially were suspicious and asked for detailed explanations for every test we performed, relax after a day or two. Then they virtually agreed to take his test sheets as proof of performance without detailed inquiries about the procedural steps. Kobler even got acknowledgement and praise for his preparation and conduction of the tests by the Decca's management. The tests also challenged his schoolboy French in use with Frenchmen whose English also was a little shaky.
Kobler and his wife lived in a southern suburb of London, near Wimbledon, and gradually came to know this very interesting city and some of the special facilities it provided. While living in London he attended evening courses at two of the many Technical Institutions accessible there. But life in London was not all serious. With his wife, who was born in London and had family there, he participated in a bit of the social life of England's capital city and frequently attended theatres and films. As well they took advantage the proximity to Europe and had a few trips, including one when they went skiing in Austria. They bought a new car in England and were able to bring it back home to Australia without having to pay sales tax or import duty (those were the days). At the end of two years in England they shipped their car to Bergen, Norway, and over the following two and a half months drove to Naples, from where they shipped the car with them home to Sydney. On Kobler’s return to Sydney, he rejoined STC and took part in the design of the receiver end of a point to point, microwave link using PPM (pulse position modulation) to transmit about 20 telephone channels. One of the first of these links was installed between Sydney and Wollongong. As an aside it is interesting to recall that at one stage some extra noise was purposely introduced on this link so as not make the old wire circuit sound too bad in comparison.
The Australian Navy had a high power, low frequency, amplitude keyed transmitter, situated near Canberra, which was built and installed by STC during the Second World War. At that time of Kobler’s involvement, the Navy wanted to convert this transmitter to frequency-shift modulation as well as improving the efficiency of its aerial system. Because of the low frequency of operation of the transmitter, it was thought necessary to investigate the adequacy of the aerial and transmitter coupling circuits to provide sufficient bandwidth to transmit the desired frequency shift modulation. Kobler carried out a theoretical and model investigation into the behaviour of equivalent circuits to those used for coupling the transmitter stages, and designed additional testing circuits to ensure their proper tuning. For this project he also tested the then existing old aerial as a reference and carried out model experiments on a proposed new aerial configuration. He prepared the report that STC submitted to the Department of the Navy, and which formed a section of the specification for the modification of the transmitter.
Another project Kobler led was the design of some low power radio transmitters to be supplied to Indonesia under the Colombo Plan. There were two memorable aspects to this project. To Kobler the less important one concerned the budgeting of that project. The more interesting one was a consequence of meeting the Indonesian Government representative who came to Australia to test the transmitting equipment for the acceptance by the Indonesian Government. In dealings with him the difference in cultural background was an interesting lesson in attitudes. It seemed that further advancement at STC would require Kobler to accept a greater share of management duties, for which he didn't feel particularly qualified, and to delegate the technical aspects of engineering design to junior members of the staff. As his interests were more concerned with technical aspects of engineering design, he left STC in 1960 and accepted a position as Experimental Officer in the Physics Division of CSIRO, then located in the grounds of Sydney University. He joined the Solar Physics Section that was operating a solar observatory and a solar flare patrol at Fleurs, on the outskirts of Sydney. Kobler’s earlier interest in astronomy turned out to be of use as it gave him some background information for the work he was to undertake. Solar physics was of personal interest to the chief of the Division, Dr R Giovanelli, and in Kobler’s work he became directly responsible to him. Kobler’s responsibilities were the development and maintenance of electronic and some other equipment used for the section's solar research programs. One exciting project was the design of an electronic servo system to control an optical, multiple-element Fabry-Perot interferometer to be used as a narrow-band optical filter for observing the sun's photosphere. Its bandwidth was only 1/20 of an Angstrom at a wavelength of approximately 6000 Angstroms. The central wavelength of the pass band could be adjusted over many Angstroms. Kobler obtained his ME degree from the University of Sydney in 1968 for a thesis on the " Servo-Control of a Fabry-Perot Interferometer". Sometime after he joined CSIRO, it was decided to move the solar observatory to a site within the Solar Radio Observatory at Narrabri, in central NSW. Kobler was given the task of representing CSIRO interests with the State Government Authority that carried out the design and construction of the site facilities and buildings. All that can be said here is that the final installation proved to be satisfactory and practical. The two optical solar telescopes installed at the observatory site contained a number of elements, including the optical guidance systems that Kobler designed and had built in the CSIRO workshop. For about two years in that period, he was appointed Technical Editor of the, then called, Journal of the Institution of Radio and Electronic Engineers. In 1967 Kobler was presented with the Oswald Mingay Award of the Institute of Radio and Electronics Engineers for his paper on the "design of a servo-system for guiding a solar telescope".
An elaborate photographic technique was used for some time to obtain the difference between solar pictures at two separate wavelengths. After the installation at Narrabri was completed there was an interest to attempt such a process electronically by the use of TV (similar to surveillance installations say in a car park). Some such projects were under development particularly in the USA, and Kobler was sent on a round-the-world trip with introductions to a number of observatories. He was fascinated, not only by the equipment that was generously displayed and explained to him, but also by meeting the people who had been just names in the literature he had perused. Unfortunately, it turned out that there was not the money available to employ some of the promising but elaborate techniques he had seen. In 1970 Kobler was offered a secondment to the project office of the 4-metre optical Anglo-Australian Telescope ( AAT ) to be built on Sidings Springs Mountain, near Coonabarabran, NSW. He took up the offer and joined the Project Office in Canberra. His responsibilities on the AAT were the guider and acquisition systems. He was told that, although there were a number of large telescopes that had servo-guidance added to them later, this was the first large telescope to be commissioned with a guider as an integral part of the initial installation. Until the telescope was actually installed at the observatory, other project members were concerned primarily with the preparation of tender specification for the separate items, such as dome design, motor drive and telescope mounting, that made up the telescope. By contrast he did actual experimental work on one of Mt. Stromlo's (near Canberra) smaller telescopes to design and verify the design of the telescope's guidance system.
The operation of the telescope's guider was implemented through a special optical sensor that used the computer that also controlled the telescope drive. The sensor used was a scanning photomultiplier tube mounted on a computer-controlled carriage at the focal plane of the main telescope. On the side of the big telescope, a separate acquisition telescope was mounted. The latter supplied the acquisition monitor, a high sensitivity TV camera system, showing an area of the star field around the pointing direction of the main telescope. As with other elements of the AAT, the guiding and acquisition system was tendered out for manufacture. Kobler had a number of trips, mainly to the USA, initially to learn more about extant guiding and acquisition system and later to interact with the suppliers about the respective items.
As a part of the AAT Project Office, he met a number of prominent people who worked in astronomy (e.g. Sir Fred Hoyle and senior astronomers at Mt. Stromlo Observatory). The official inauguration of the AAT took place at the Observatory Site on 16th October 1974 and was performed by HRH Prince Charles whom Kobler and his wife were interested to meet at the ceremony.
In 1975 Kobler returned to CSIRO, joining the Microwave Measurement Section, led by Dr. David Hollway. There he took part in the development of a variable microwave attenuator together with Tom Cousins, and they published its performance in the technical literature. He also had the opportunity to develop some computer programs concerned with the behaviour of electrical circuitry. On his return to Sydney, he successfully applied for Fellowships of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, and the Institution of Radio and Electronics Engineers, Australia, on the basis of the engineering design associated with his contributions to the AAT.
Kobler worked at CSIRO until 1984 when he retired from there on the grounds of ill health caused by coronary insufficiency. His medical condition improved considerably following a coronary by-pass operation and, for a while afterwards he undertook some part time work in electronics, helping a former colleague who had also retired and had formed a company engaged in producing equipment for measuring humidity and producing humidity test chambers.
In 1988 Kobler took up a voluntary position as part-time electronics and instrumentation consultant in the Cardiology Department of the Royal North Shore Hospital. Together with a young medical graduate, a Cardiology Registrar there, he undertook the design of a " Continuous Non-Invasive Blood Pressure Monitor". The instrument used a pressure cuff around a finger to maintain blood volume there and it measured this volume by the infra-red transmission across the finger. A servo system adjusted the pressure to preserve constant infra-red transmission though the finger and therefore blood volume there. Seven instruments were constructed and served the hospital for a number of years.
Following the completion of the blood pressure monitor project, Kobler transferred to the CRC on Cardiac Technology, also at Royal North Shore Hospital, where considerable use was made of the monitor. There he undertook a project of computer modelling of arterial blood flow. The basis of the model was the similarity between the transmission of arterial blood pressure and flow with the behaviour of electrical transmission lines. In the model, pressure substitutes for voltage and flow for current. Kobler had the opportunity to present this work at an overseas international conference on "Computers in Cardiology". He retired from this work in Cardiology towards the middle of 1997 and after that time did no regular work.
In the course of Kobler’s professional career, he presented and/or published 26 technical papers, 12 of these during his work in cardiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital.
Henry Kobler died in 2002.
Prepared by Linda Windley, July 2002 from oral history interview conducted on 4 February 2000
To access an oral history interview with Henry Kobler please use this link:'
https://heritage.engineersaustralia.org.au/wiki/Oral_Histories_Sydney
