SMD Workshop, Philips, Eindhoven Available to Purchase

Intensive, informative, interesting and also highly enjoyable—such were the adjectives that immediately sprang to mind during the short homeward flight from Eindhoven's modern international airport after the busy and varied two‐day SMD Technology Workshop. Time during the brief visit did not permit any exploration of the area, but journeys between airport, De Brug Congress Centre at Mierlo, and Philips SMD Centre provided a few impressions of the enviably clean and pollution‐free, and generously spacious centre and suburbs of this modern city in Southern Holland. Encompassing an agglomeration of what were originally small villages, Eindhoven currently has a population of 200,000. The presence of Philips is inescapable, as, apart from the sheer size of its production and research facilities employing some 35,000 people, many other buildings in the city have been constructed by the company. In 1891, when Anton and Gerard Philips established the Gloeilampenfabriek (the original building now housing a museum of lighting), the town had virtually no infrastructure. Schools and shops were built at Philips' instigation over the ensuing years, followed more recently by the huge Philips Stadium, a theatre and entertainment centre, and now the airport. The company at present engages 75,000 personnel in The Netherlands, and employees worldwide total 350,000, with a turnover of more than 60 billion guilders in 1985.