Simonsen about Ragnar Lian
Editors note: This is a translation of a speech held by Lars Simonsen at the funeral of Ragnar Lian. I think this speech describes Ragnar Lian so well in so many ways, the best I can do is to reproduce the speech in its entirety.
I wish you could hear my questions, although I know that I now have to find the answers myself.
1. Ragnar Lian - I'll miss you!
We first met around an assignment in EB Contec.
Our manager had received a potential job to redesign an ultrasound probe for cardiovascular examinations.
I, as a young engineer, eagerly took the opportunity and provided many suggestions, among them the possibility to make a new special motor which could be placed inside the unit.
In the first meeting with the customers is another eager guy who is somewhat older than me. He supports the idea to make a new motor, but not exactly the way I had in mind. It probably wouldn't work - he said. It then appears that this guy - Ragnar - doesn't just have a good understanding of loudspeaker motors, but actually the people who had made the ultrasound probe, which we were about to redesign, had used a motor from a turntable as a source of inspiration and model. Yes, but Ragnar knew that motor very well, because it had originally been his invention and construction and he also had the prototype of that B&O motor in a box.
You can put it this way, the customer trusted our competences and we got the job.
In this way our cooperation started with the job to improve a bad copy of Ragnar's original motor. We warmed each other up by talking about this job - not just talking about technical topics, but we found a common tune and it laid the foundation for our friendship and cooperation. Tom - sitting here - made all the parts for us, which we had designed. The result was very good and the customer earned millions on the resulting design.
2. To dare to play your way to good solutions.
Generally speaking, to dare to do something new. This was probably one of the reasons why we fit together so well. We dared to move into deep water technically speaking - and then we would have to find a way to swim ashore afterwards. I have learned a lot from Ragnar about the importance of meeting the world with optimism - also even though it may not always smile back at you.
3. Strength - Ragnar had the inner strength to create - to also handle the situations when things failed - to work his way through problems when they were piling up. We could keep on going for a long time - sometimes until dawn the next day.
This has also to do with responsibility for the common good. It was said that the manager has the responsibility, it was also this way at Contec in the 90s, but Ragnar knew that if we didn't find a solution to the problems in the project, then the manager would be without a chance in his meeting with the customers.
Ragnar was a merciless honest technologist (=engineer). He knew he had to be - otherwise there would be no fruits to harvest in the long run. If solutions we had sold into a project, and maybe already spent large sums of money on materializing, didn't meet the target - he would reject these and look for new ways to solve the assignment.
4. Ragnar was versatile like few people.
He hasn't just mastered his profession and the job he had learned. House and house building, gardening and farming, culture, music, photo, life in general (he did close his eyes for sports, I have to admit).
Many people have probably, first and foremost, associated Ragnar with his technological interest. I think the other way around. His large interest in everything in life gave him an enormous advantage as a technologist. Like few people, he would be able to draw parallels or crossways from other fields and hereby see opportunities that others were blind to.
It also shaped the way we worked. It was the long and somewhat jumpy conversations that gave results. We always solved a couple of global problems on the way, it could be the Middle East or other remote areas, or it could be something local.
Ragnar was earth bound - his philosophy almost always had a practical flair. An attitude I noticed from an early point. He didn't mind that other people would make good money - big money - but the responsibility has to follow the money, as he would say. He had very little respect for people who ran away from their responsibility. Through his work and his constructions he helped a number of people and companies to success, and at the same time he defended the weaker people.
5. To be good at what you had learned
We worked in an environment where we were surrounded by more Master's Degree Engineers - naturally. The younger generations have taken longer and more education.
Ragnar once said to me that we had found there's a need for us also although we were not Master's Degree Engineers: "Hey - Lars - I'm not that theoretical when it comes to technical topics - but I'm pretty good at what I have learned." He knew the ins and out of the physics book from Brun & Devik since his school days.
This I have often thought about since - a good alternative to taking more and deeper education - is to do like Ragnar: Remember what you have learned. Very few people could match Ragnar in the understanding of how many physical and technical phenomena were connected.
Ragnar had several apprentices. The young who understood what a source of knowledge they met in Ragnar.
6. Ragnar meant something in Norway
I didn't know Ragnar when he was in Denmark. I have heard much about the time and I understand that many of his largest accomplishments within acoustics were done there.
When he came back here, he was an engineer (like so many others) in an engineering company. BUT, like Geir Olav Gyland (former colleague and apprentice of Ragnar) once said - it has not been said enough which influence Ragnar has had in much of the technology in Norway.
I dare say that not many telephones or other acoustic apparatus has been made in Norway between 1985 and 2005, which Ragnar hasn't been part of in some way. All EBs telephones, Risørfabrikkens, FPIs, NERAs satellite phones, Internet phones from Stentofon, MagCom - a Norwegian attempt to make a cell phone.
Ultrasound equipment for medical use I have already mentioned. In the mid-90s, we made an electronic stethoscope. We had spent a lot of money and time on a lot of technology, which afterwards we had to conclude couldn't meet the target. Something had to be done. Ragnar took a new direction. It became uniquely good, thanks to the fact that we developed a completely new sensor for the purpose.
To do this we had to travel to the USA to a supplier of some very special materials. Ragnar had been in Philadelphia 20 years earlier with a loudspeaker construction. At the time he had packaged the loudspeaker prototypes into his suitcase and checked it in. That suitcase never arrived and he lost all his prototypes, which he was supposed to present.
Therefore, he said: "Lars - look at this. This time I have packaged the Stethoscope prototypes in my hand luggage, which we will take on-board into the airplane."
I smiled a bit, but when we came to Philadelphia, whose suitcase do you think SAS had managed to send on a long journey? Yes - Ragnar's, needless to say it came after two days, but without a doubt we could trace a sense of triumph in his face when he could pull up our prototypes from his handbag in the meeting with the customer. Ragnar was intelligent - even if it was not always this extreme.
Maybe the most extreme project we ran together was a motor for a new data storage device for Tandberg Data. They had already been running the project for some time when we became involved - typically through Ragnar and his friends in Moss (SEAS). TD had become stuck and the whole project was threatened if a solution wasn't found. I'll make the story short, we kept battling even if we'd break our necks in this project and we definitely had high ambitions. Many people at Contec were working on it and the project was responsible for a large income and therefore employment in the company.
In the end we solved the problems and Ragnar was a key in making it happen, many people earned their income on this and Tandberg Data made big money when the project was finished.
When I mention this it is not to measure Ragnar's accomplishments in money, but it actually meant something for us and for him that what we made actually become a success and to somebody's good / well-being.
This I will say to you, Aud, that when your husband withdrew to his basement, then he has had a lot of fun, but also made a difference in Norway. He has had a huge importance for a lot of people and companies, even if they maybe not always have credited him in public.
7. The man who has died and whom we are burying today has through 19 years been my inspiration and he will continue to be so. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to get to know this man.
Lars Simonsen