Brantham Electronics
Brantham Electronics
was formed by Paul Oliver in 2005.
Paul started his career with a six year apprenticeship with
Marconi Radar Systems, which included gaining an honours degree in Electronic
Engineering at Bradford University. After working in
the Field Service Department commissioning Radar Systems, Paul was
employed by a
small electronics company called Mellordata Limited, initially as a design engineer, progressing to Technical
Manager. In the 10 years that Paul worked for Mellordata it grew from a small
company of nine
employees to an organisation, employing in excess of 150 people.
It was whilst working for Mellordata that Paul designed his first
infrared touchscreens which were installed in Nimrod Simulators. Other areas of
speciality included input and display systems for the banking and insurance
sectors.
In 1989, Paul left Mellordata to form Intasolve Ltd. where he continued specialising in
touchscreens as well as other electronic design and manufacture.
He realised that advancements in technology meant that it was possible to design a cheap infrared touchscreen solution consisting of a
single PCB and injection moulded plastic parts. First it was necessary to find a
customer to fund this development and Semerc, who were later bought by Granada
Learning, proceeded with this. This was major success and several thousands of
these touchscreen were sold to schools as clip-on accessories to standard 14 and
15 inch CRT monitors. Another success in 1994 was a project to design 60-inch touchscreens for use with rear projection.
Nine systems were installed at a naval training centre in Portsmouth. In 2004 it
was reported that these touchscreen were in use everyday and the spares had not
even
been unboxed.
Paul was looking for a
touchscreen technology that could be used outside, able to withstand rough
treatment and unaffected by rain and dirt. He came across a touchscreen used in
a pub game and realised the technology could offer what he was looking for.
Working with the patent holder the design was improved and then the
manufacturing rights were sold to Zytronic Displays Ltd.
who market the product as projected capacitive touch. Zytronic Displays bought
Intasolve Ltd. and Paul worked with them to develop and market the technology
before leaving in 2005 to form
Brantham Electronics.
Although, Paul is involved in designing electronics and writing software for
many markets he specialises in requirements
for the museum and exhibition industry.