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Wong Hon Yee
Wong Hon Yee
Former manager of Engineering Department, Ampex Ferrotec Limited
Sex: Male Birthyear: 1947 Age at Interview: 63 Education: Master Occupation: Engineer Theme: Industry In 1966 Wong Hon Yee studied in Faculty of Engineering in The University of Hong Kong. Students who majored in engineering had to take three engineering courses in the first year: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and civil engineering. In the late 1960s, with the impact of the USA’s landing on the moon, space technology was very popular. As Wong was young then, he became very enthusiastic about it and intended to specialize in mechanical engineering in his second year.
Title His dream of the space: “At that time space technology was very popular in our society.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m25s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-001 Wong Hon Yee exclaimed about his fate with electronics. In 1947 when he was born, transistor was invented. In 1969 when he graduated from university, synthesized circuit was launched. Therefore he was destined to be involved in electronics industry.
Title His fate in electronics: “That’s why I was destined to be involved in electronics.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 40s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-002 Wong Hon Yee talked about the unforgettable experience of his first year in Ampex. He and his boss stayed in Ampex overnight on Chinese New Year Eve’s to do system testing for the US headquarters. The test result was sent to USA on the first day of the New Year. Wong thought that it was his responsibility to work overtime. He advised the youths not to mind doing extra work but to follow the example set by people of the last generation.
Title Being enthusiastic in his job: “We’ve decided to work overnight.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m36s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-003 In the 1970s Rodime, a Scottish company, had already been able to manufacture Winchester Hard Drive, which had a capacity of 27MB. This was considered a most excellent achievement in the industry. The Ampex headquarters bought the technology license from Rodime and sent Wong to Scotland for learning the technologies of production and testing. When he returned to Ampex in Hong Kong, he set up a production line of hard drive, which was the first of its kind in the Far East. Wong was satisfied with the successful transfer of foreign technologies to Hong Kong.
Title Reaching the top: “In those years I had already been doing work on technology transfer.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m30s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-004 Wong recalled that in early years the computers in USA were still in preliminary level – the super computers used in the computer laboratories in University of California had a memory of only 64K or 132K. At that time Wong had to punch cards for writing programs. He did his homework by entering the contents into the IBM punch card which would then be connected to the computer laboratory. It took as long as half day to wait for the whole process to finish. Sometimes only a small mistake was judged by the computer as a fatal error, and he had to enter data and line up again so as to wait for the computer to reboot, wasting a lot of time. As a result, he realized that one should try his best to be scrupulous and perfect in doing his work.
Title Scientific spirit: “You should do everything in a perfect way.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m50s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-005 In reminiscence of his career during these few tens of years, Wong Hon Yee thought that engineer was an appropriate job position for him, and he was happy with his personal career path. He thought it was a pity for him not to be able to have much contact with people because of his job in the technical field dealing mainly with materials though he could more easily judge the right and wrong. However, he knew that in the real world things were not “either one or zero” like a binary system.
Title Recalling scientific research: “In reminiscence, this was the path I wanted to take.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m38s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-006 Wong Hon Yee had worked as chief of engineering department in Ampex for many years, so he knew very well the level of US technology and had been in contact with many European and American engineers. During his employment as chief, he had trained quite a number of talents. He believed that the experts in Hong Kong were capable of doing high-technology research which would be as good as those done in other countries. The only thing lacking was an environment for nurturing talents. Wong was happy about having had the chance of being trained by Ampex.
Title The capability of people in Hong Kong: “We are in fact capable of doing things of high-technology.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m45s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-007 Wong Hon Yee thought that it would be appropriate for Hong Kong’s electronics industry to be positioned at the mid-technology level as it would lack competitiveness if being positioned at the low-technology level. On the other hand, it was not good enough to be positioned at the high-technology level. After all, there was not enough infra-structure in Hong Kong. Wong stressed that development of electronic products should not depend solely on technology but should let creative ideas complement the existing technology in the process of manufacturing. These advantages in development and manufacturing should make it become more competitive.
Title Mid-level technology: “There is something which wins not only by techniques.” Date 17/11/2010 Subject Industry Duration 1m Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-WHY-HLT-008