It was over sixteen years ago that we were introduced to a young John Walkinshaw and his company KLH Electronics by a fellow metal detecting enthusiast and I have to say that this find outweighed any treasure that we have ever dug up as John's brilliance in electronic design transformed Instanta's products from being advanced for the industry to being more than advanced for any industry. With John's help we developed features never before found on water boilers and had the rest of the catering trade scrambling to catch up. Not one to rest on his laurels, John has always been ahead of the game and when the competition caught up and brought out service warning codes and ECO modes we were ready to move ahead again and launch another more advanced generation of boilers incorporating liquid crystal displays, timers and built in filter monitors. The printed circuits designed and developed by John have not only been advanced but also extremely reliable. KLH have invested huge sums in automated production and these robotic production lines ensure that every board is identical and have made Instanta the market leader in advanced water boilers.
Every electronics company needs a brilliant designer like John but we must also thank his fellow director Carol Morris for the efficiency with which she has run the operation ensuring that supplies are delivered on time and dealing with any queries quickly and in a very friendly and efficient manner. We will miss John, Carol and her husband Tom and everyone else at KLH and must thank them for the major contribution that they have made to Instanta's success.
Before we used John's design skills, all our boilers incorporated bulky electro-mechanical thermostats like these. They are good and reliable stats but the bulbs are in contact with the water and can suffer from limescale deposits in hard water areas and they have fairly long differentials when switching.
These tiny thermistors introduced to us by KLH transformed temperature sensing by being extremely accurate and operating on a small differential ensuring constant temperatures and, being fitted externally, less sensitivity to limescale and much easier service.
It looks like Cher Lloyd, my X Factor tip for this year, may struggle to win. She came in the bottom two on Sunday night despite being much better than Wagner and Mary so she may not be as popular as I thought. Mind you, no X Factor winner to date has ever been in the bottom two so there has to be a first time and, in the same week in 2008, KLS were in the bottom two and finished as runners up. Much depends on how big the Wagner bandwagon has become. The anti Cowell brigade managed to knock Simon Cowell's act Joe off the number one spot last Christmas and they could do the same sort of thing again now by voting Wagner to win. But the laugh will be on Simon's face as he's the one who stands to gain the most from all those telephone votes and there's bound to be some sort of get out clause in that prize recording contract. I'm keeping faith in Cher for now and will be interested to see how she performs on Saturday night (if our friends who are coming round for a meal are fans of the show).
Here's another example of the hilarious jokers those great British telephone voters are. They've crucified poor Paige for the benefit of Wagner, kept a leaden lump in Strictly Come Dancing and now they're putting the knife into Gillian McKeith. OK so she's not the world's most popular woman but, after a week of being chosen for those gruesome insect torturing trials, isn't it time to give her a break?
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