Peter started his first real job, fresh out of grad school, in January 1965 as a management trainee for Tubewrights Ltd., a unit of Stewarts & Lloyds, the British steel giant, at a plant in Kirkby Industrial Estate outside Liverpool, England.
He was assigned to serve as engineer on the project to design and full scale test a geodetic transmission tower.
The structural design work used traditional principles but the structural analysis used computer methods and an IBM 7094 – real cutting edge technologies back in 1965!
The project was forgottten until 2023 when the great great grandson of a founder of Stewarts & Lloyd asked about it. Assembly of all available records, pictures, experiences anecdotes and information followed.
Then in 2024, Zentech Inc., a well established engineering company in Houston investigated whether the design would be workable in USA under current industry conditions. Zentech Inc. determined that the Geodetic Transmission Tower (GTT) was indeed viable for current use under typical industry standards. Steel weight was competitive, just as had been shown in 1966.
The big discovery came in 2025 when Zentech’s team modelled the non linear structural behavior and confirmed what had been claimed in 1965: the tower was very very resilient. In practical terms it meant that the GTT in effect is “hurricane proof” and able to keep delivering electric power under extreme storms without power outages.
