Jim Platts, while at Gifford and Partners, was asked to produce a computer simulation as part of the general design study undertaken in the design of the test track for the Tracked Hovercraft project in Cambridgeshire. Tracked Hovercraft systems, with high speed, lightweight vehicles tend to make the track vibrate briefly, considerably increasing the stresses induced in it. The Tracked Hovercraft had a set of masts that transmitted a narrow-beam UHV radio signal which enabled remote control of the train from the control room below. The radio link also enabled data to be sent from the train, and that was recorded on magnetic tape and later fed into an off-site main-frame computer at the Atlas Laboratory at Harwell, Berkshire. The animation via Atlas and the SC4020 showed a vehicle passing at 300 mph over one 75ft span in a continuous beam.
The paper Dynamics of Hovertrain Tracks gives more details of the project.
Later, Wavepower Limited used the wave tanks at British Hovercraft Corporation to test the efficiency of converting the energy of sea waves into electricity. By 1975, Jim Platts had moved to Wavepower to work on a simple system that could be built up from small and inexpensive modules to harness wave energy.
More recently, Jim Platts moved to Cambridge University Department's Institute for Manufacturing after working for twenty years on the design, development and manufacture of the large composite moulded blades for wind turbines, establishing the company Composite Technology (now part of Vestas) as a major contributor in that industry, currently producing high performance blades for wind turbines up to 120 metres diameter.
