My dad read Japanese

Datsun stand at industrial fair in Penang

Well, actually just katakana, not the full Japanese syllabary, which includes kanji, hiragana and some rōmaji. It came back to me today that my dad was able to translate electronics terms from repair manuals that I had and electronics trade magazines that my brother was subscribed to after returning from studies in Japan. I particularly remember トランジスタ (toranjisuta, transistor) and ラジオ (rajio, radio). Then there were components like コンデンサ (kondensa, condenser, an old synonym for capacitor). However they have contracted television to テレビ (terebi) something they have also done to animation.

Where did he learn katakana? It wasn't for work. In the late 60s Japanese companies had only begun to export their cars to Malaysia, and they had set up some manufacturing in Malaysia, but my dad had no dealings with those enterprises. Rather, it was because as a young man he had lived through the Japanese occupation of Malaya during WWII. Katakana is phonetic and used for foreign and loan words so relatively easy to learn. I suppose it was a survival skill, but he was also good at picking up knowledge. He even showed me the katakana scheme but I have let that knowledge lapse. He didn't tell me any war stories. Our family suffered the privations of wartime occupation, but emerged relatively unscathed, compared to far more unfortunate civilians.

Positive ground car

Both vehicles are grounded that's for sure

My dad once had a car with positive ground. If I recall correctly it was a British car, the Mayflower. Like most British cars of that era, it had positive ground, meaning that the positive terminal of the battery was connected to the chassis. New cars, in particular the Japanese cars popular in Malaysia, had by then negative ground. The first time this caused an issue was when my dad decided to have a radio/cassette player installed. The preponderance of negative ground meant that radios were designed for that. The man who fitted the radio had to improvise a wooden panel to mount the radio on so that its case could be insulated from the car chassis. As you can imagine, I thought this a little unsatisfactory as it meant that the radio case was "live" and could cause shorts of the car battery to the chassis.

Later, at my behest, my dad got a car mechanic to reverse the polarity of the car's electrics. I think even the generator connection didn't need to be reversed as the excitation coil was reversed too, but I'm not certain (that era of cars did not have an alternator). Remember, the radio was probably the only electronic device in a car in those days.

All cars nowadays have negative ground, and the dual standards are a footnote in history. I read arguments for one or the other based on galvanic corrosion or something like that but I'm not convinced. The car is a floating electrical system anyway.

PS: There was another divide, the 6V and 12V battery cars. The only 6V car I knew of at the time was the Volkswagen. Again most cars standardised on 12V after that.