BritChips podcast: What Josh Silverstone learned from Babbage

There can be fewer galling experiences for a tech entrepreneur than when your customers tell you that your technology is so key to their products that they have decided to develop their own IP in house, so thank you very much and cheerio!This, as you can imagine, was a pivotal moment for self-styled photonics visionary and entrepreneur, Josh Silverstone.Josh had put heart and soul into his photonics controller startup, and this was turning into a nice little business.So he needed a Plan B.Rather than continuing to focus on the increasingly commoditising market for photonics controllers, Josh channelled his team’s skills and experience into developing special-purpose photonics-based systems on a chip.In this BritChips podcast, Josh explains how a chance meeting with some bankers at a wedding eventually led to the development of an electro-mechanical arcade machine-like device named Babbage to validate Hartley’s design for a photonic system on a chip.This is one for those of you who can tell your photons from your neurons. Oh - and even palaeontology gets a mention!PS You can see Babbage with all lights flashing in the preview video, ‘Meet Babbage’ here on Substack! PPS Sorry, no cuddly toy, though. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit anttheantidote.substack.com