Just the ticket: Sunderland bus story which hit the headlines in 1984
Sunderland went all hi-tech on the buses 40 years ago.
In 1984, the PTE bus fleet was fitted with the most advanced ticket machines in the country.
Micro electronics at its best in Sunderland
The machines, with a keyboard, display screen, and electronic memory, cost £2,000 each and the first four were expected to be on the road in November 1984.
Officials expected the rest of their 120 buses to have the new technology by the end of 1985.
PTE official John Baggaley said: “The machines use the latest in micro-electronics and the memory automatically records all the details that drivers have had to log at the end of their shifts.
The first town to receive the machines
“It’s a very fast system and passengers will appreciate that.”
Sunderland was the first town to receive the machines, manufactured in Uxbridge, near London.
Wearsiders were given a vision of the future. Robots were expected to be used in Nissan’s projected plant on the old Sunderland airport site.
Robots using suction pads
The point was made by Takuro Endo, managing director of Nissan’s Murayama plant on the outskirts of Tokyo, one of the most advanced in Japan.
On a tour of the production line making Nissan’s March model, he showed how robots were moving into the final assembly stage for tasks until recently considered too delicate for anything other than human hands.
One machine picks up a rear window glass with suction pads from the top of a stack, waits with it for a second as though in thought, then slaps it unerringly into the waiting frame.
Great news for Nissan on Wearside
Adhesive already poured on the rubber mounting by another robot secures the window firmly in place.
Other robots install dashboards, position seats and fit in batteries, jobs previously considered too fussy for machines.
“The next stage is for machines to fit tyres and install axles, a job which now requires a human to work uncomfortably on his back, ” Endo told reporters.
Much of the new equipment was being considered for Nissan’s Wearside plant, which was expected to start limited operations in 1986 and full production in 1990, according to an Echo story in 1984.