Magnetic adventure

Founders Sir Martin and Lady Wood still have the shed, which they moved from North Oxford to the garden of their present home in Little Wittenham.

In fact, the business had been launched from a back bedroom and later expanded into a slaughterhouse in Middle Way, Summertown, then to a boathouse beside the Thames.

The boathouse site, incidentally, was the hub of what later became Osney Mead Industrial Estate, now home to dozens of companies, including T he Oxford Times and its sister newspapers and magazines.

It is an example of the way the history of Oxford Instruments is inextricably linked to the history of the Oxfordshire economy, with its former staff — and the Woods' enthusiasm, expertise and money — playing a role in the growth of dozens of other high-tech companies.

The Woods arrived in Oxford in 1955, when he took a job as an engineer at the Clarendon Laboratory, making high-field magnets for pioneering physics experiments.

He said: "Other universities were keen to have our magnets, and it began to clog up the works. We ended up spending so much time making things for other people that we were neglecting the Oxford people."

An ex-Bevan boy who had worked in coal mines for his National Service, he felt British industry was mired in inefficiency and working practices that alienated employees.

"I came to feel there were things we could do better in industry to look after people," he said.

Things really took off in 1961, when new materials were discovered which could conduct electricity efficiently at extremely low temperatures.

The so-called 'superconductors' allowed smaller, lighter magnets to be made, expanding the market from perhaps ten research labs worldwide to 10,000.

Oxford Instruments was the university's first spin-out company, and it was several decades before another one appeared. Did the university have a snooty attitude to business?

"Yes," they replied in unison. Sir Martin thinks he was helped by the fact that many physicists were talented Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, unhampered by traditional attitudes.

"When I told my professor, Nicholas Kurti, that I was thinking of starting a private company, he said: 'What can I do to help?'

"We got a lot of help from the university, using their test equipment."

Sir Martin provided the technical expertise and the vision of how superconducting materials could transform everything from medicine — they are now used in hospital scanners worldwide — to curbing climate change; while Lady Wood handled management and finance.

This was badly needed, since they put their home up as collateral for bank loans to expand the company.

She said: “We are both optimists, but I could see the risks.”

He said of the early days: "I didn't see quite how many technical things could go wrong. If the composition of the material was wrong, the magnets didn't work, for example."

Oxford Instruments was one of the first companies to encourage every employee to own shares, resulting in windfalls when it floated on the stockmarket in 1983.

While the Woods still take an active interest in the business, they were relieved to relinquish control.

Lady Wood said: "I remember the time when we lost financial control in terms of share ownership, and the relief that we could share responsibility for all those people's livelihood."

A consumate engineer, Sir Martin still admires ingenious devices, and installs them in his own home, from his garden gate latch to his bedside lamp.

He is now 82 and his wife 81, and it is some years since they retired from the board, but they have never been busier.

Shares in the company were used to set up the Northmoor Trust, a conservation charity which owns and manages Wittenham Clumps.

In 1985 they set up the Oxford Trust to promote science and technology. That, in turn, spawned Oxford Innovation, now a profit-making company which sets up and runs innovation centres for fledgling high-tech companies. They have also invested directly in about 40-50 small companies, most in the county.

Many former Oxford Instruments managers moved to play a major role in Oxfordshire's economy, notably Tim Cook, who as head of Oxford University's technology transfer company Isis Innovation, masterminded the spin-off of dozens of new businesses.

The Woods' latest enthusiasm is Sylva, a charity set up to make forestry economically and environmentally sustainable, which plans a high-profile launch next year.

Lynn Shepherd, of Oxford Instruments, says the company's focus has remained constant over the years, despite the huge fluctuations in demand for some of its products, and the move from Osney Mead to Eynsham and final consolidation on one site at Tubney Woods, near Abingdon.

"We aim to give our customers the tools and systems they need to make things. We don't produce the chip for the windows that self-clean, for example, but our instrument has been used to make it," she said.

As Lady Wood said: "Very few high-tech companies are still going after 20 years, never mind 50 years, and it is a tribute to the management that it has kept going."