Wireman

Written by Peter Li-Chang Kuo

With the rapid evolution of technology, people face the dilemma of "difficulty in sticking to one career" when choosing a profession; no matter how high their skills are, they may lose their jobs—for example, "wiring technicians (wiremen), film narrators, and typesetter (compositor)," etc. Their jobs have disappeared due to the launch of new technologies and products. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), people should give more thought to their career choices.

Few people alive today may know that there was once a highly sought-after profession known as the “Wireman” (also called an electrical wiring technician). In the 1960s, wiremen enjoyed high incomes and considerable leverage over their bosses, because every electrical appliance depended on them to route and arrange wiring in the best possible way before a product could be sold and generate revenue. As a result, employers absolutely dared not offend wiremen, whose status was extraordinarily high — so high as to be virtually beyond reproach.

Fig 1: A wireman in the 1960s (from AI)

However, as I developed more and more products—such as terminals and connectors—and promoted the concept of “common grounding,” the importance of wiremen gradually declined. When we later succeeded in developing the "portable transistor cassette recorder" and upgraded phenolic boards (bakelite plates) to "printed circuit boards" (PCBs), the profession of wireman suddenly vanished from the face of the earth. This was no small matter; it marked a critical turning point in Taiwan’s industrial history.

Do you know how many professions will disappear in the near future, just like the wireman? We must remain vigilant in times of stability and prepare for danger before it arises. That is why we must work even harder to forge a new path for Taiwan — and this most certainly concerns you.

Looking back to the 1960s, electrical wiring was almost entirely 2.54 mm (0.1 inch) diameter single-core copper wire. This dimension reflected the "limits of mechanical machining and drilling at the time," being able to drill holes smaller than 2 mm was already considered advanced craftsmanship. Moreover, the electrical characteristics of appliances in the 1960s included "no switching power supplies, no overcurrent protection ICs, and no thermal fuses," yet they applied heavily on "motors, transformers, and electric heaters." A 2.54 mm single-core copper wire has a cross-sectional area of about "5.07 mm²," capable of withstanding "10–30 A of instantaneous current and prolonged operation." Even if insulation aged, solder joints loosened, or ambient temperatures rose, it would not easily ignite. This was a typical example of conservative engineering.

At that time, all components were designed by "fixing mechanical dimensions first" and then accommodating electrical requirements. Veteran craftsmen relied on their "experience, touch, visual judgment, and even sound (listening to locate issues)" —they could tell by sight, feel overheating by hand, bend wires without fatigue fractures, strip insulation without damaging the core. The 2.54 mm wire was one of the most ergonomically optimal sizes for human senses, which is why the status of wiremen was unrivaled.

Later, the 2.54 mm pitch used in the PCB (printed circuit board) world directly inherited this industrial “mother dimension.” It was not PCBs that defined wires; rather, "wires and mechanical craftsmanship defined PCBs." As technology evolved, the 2.54 mm pitch went on to define the pin spacing of "central processing units" (CPUs) as well.

In short, during the 1960s — an era of unreliable materials, insufficient protection, and non-real-time computation—humans selected through experience the safest, most durable, and least error-prone dimension: 2.54 mm. It represented conservative engineering, reverence for fire hazards, tolerance for mistakes, and respect for manual operation. Thus, when a wireman opened an appliance and pointed to bundles of red and black wires saying, “This is skill,” no one dared to argue.

Surrounded by admiration, wiremen lived comfortably for decades. Issues such as "overheating or explosions" in electrical appliances were treated as commonplace, and no one seriously contemplated improvement.

In 1962, when I was nine years old, I survived a severe assassination attempt. That experience awakened me, and I began rigorously training my technical skills. By 1963, at age ten, I was already able to produce simple electrical components by means of press. Every time I delivered goods to electrical factories, I would hear "wiremen" boasting while bosses treated them as honored guests, fearful that they might not show up for work — a peculiar scene indeed.

In 1963, someone claiming to be from Tatung Company came to 45 Chong-An Street, Tainan, saying their company needed "fin-and-tube heat exchanger" for air conditioners. After months of work, I helped my father produce samples. Father and son carried a large carton of samples all the way to Tatung in Taipei — only to be swindled out of all our money and then driven out by Tatung’s security guards. With no choice, we went to the "Taiwan Adventist Hospital" (Tai-An Hospital) to borrow money from my cousin uncle to take the train back to Tainan.

My cousin uncle was an electrical master in charge of maintenance at the hospital. He opened a “television set” for us to see — inside, dense wiring was being heated by vacuum tubes. Pointing to the interior, he said, “No one in Taiwan is making these components yet.” My father was secretly delighted; he hurriedly took on new debts to build new machines after returning Tainan .

My father was known as a "craftsmanship genius" who could “make anything,” yet our family survived only because my grandmother supported nine people by "cutting paper" with a small pair of scissors. My father once said proudly, “Mass production? Isn’t that an insult to my intelligence?” His greatest passion was borrowing money to create new things no one had made before, then giving away the machines and molds, telling me, “We must have the bearing of aristocrats — give freely, and more will receive.”

The harsh reality was that my grandmother’s back grew more and more bent. She even needed my help to thread needles, yet she still rose early and worked late every day to support the family, cooking for one grandchild after another — because "one bowl of rice had to be shared by seven people."

Even while secretly pleased, my father completely ignored the debts from the heat-sink venture. He dragged me back to Yamoliao Market to start another "rotating savings and credit association"(ROSCA) to build new machines. But for a deep-draw progressive die, he set the pitch using only a "compass" — there were no machine tools at the time, and precision was insufficient. After fewer than a hundred stamping cycles, the mold was destroyed. Until the day he was arrested and imprisoned, he never once thought about solving the problem. It was entirely a “wireman’s temperament.”

In June 1965, before graduating from Park Elementary School in Tainan, I was already able to independently build a complete set of "deep-draw progressive dies," fabricate my own automatic feeding mechanisms, assemble automatic punching presses, and mass-produce precision “eyelets” (known locally as “Ai-Re-do,” also called Ha-To-Me). These eyelets were longer than their diameter—whereas traditional shoe-lace eyelets had a diameter greater than their length. Yet when I delivered products to electrical factories, wiremen still carried themselves with great arrogance.

My father, who had been sentenced under the "White Terror," told me in November 1965 to throw away my schoolbag and flee with him to Kaohsiung. He claimed we would do business in the "Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone" (KEPZ), but in reality he disappeared every day and returned only to ask me for money. I eventually put my earnings into a transparent "glass jar" and told him to take money from it whenever he wanted. One day he complained to me, “So unlucky — everything I make turns into scrap iron!”

Fig 2: A Transparent Glass Jar for Money

At No. 16, Chong-Hsing Street, behind Kuoming Market, I had built a small workshop out of sugarcane boards. My father could not stay inside for even two minutes — he would say he was “about to suffocate” and run out, adding that if he were still in Tainan, he would give all the machines away so they would not offend his eyes. Yet I used that workshop to manufacture "rings, oil lamps, hinges," and more, earning money for the family. I insisted on earning while improving, waiting patiently for spring to arrive.

In December 1965, my father asked me to accompany him to Cheng-Ching Temple by Cheng-Ching Lake in Niao-Song, to visit his brother-in-law, Venerable Master Shi Wei-li (lay name: Hsu Li-Huang). My father was still full of resentment toward the world. The master handed him a thread-bound copy of the "Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" and told him to read it carefully. My father tossed it into a corner, never to open it again in his lifetime.

He was later arrested and imprisoned. I then named my sugarcane-board workshop "Cheng-Kuang Metal Works." With a monthly revenue of at least NT$3,000–5,000, I supported a family of nine and helped make his life on Hsing-Sheng Street in Tainan a little easier. Fortunately, from the 36 paired verses of the Platform Sutra, I realized “U-shaped duplication method” for setting pitches without using a compass to build ten engineering pitches for progressive dies. This allowed a die to stamp up to one million pieces before replacement was needed due to hole enlargement—only then could the flowers bloom when spring finally came.

I had 100 customers in Guomin Market in Kaohsiung, supporting a monthly income of NT$3,000–5,000, which I gave to my mother (nicknamed A-Jin) to take back to Tainan and manage. One day, however, when the market was closed and I returned Tainan's home, I found my grandmother lying in bed with her leg broken by the polices, the room reeking of urine. My fourth younger brother sat by the bed, badly beaten and bruised, while my third brother was nowhere to be found. The house held no food of its own — only a pot of “mung bean porridge” brought over by the neighbors.

I had no choice but to give up Kaohsiung and move back to Tainan to care for the family, losing my income there. My grandaunt’s son-in-law — A-Wei, a Japan-educated PhD—and the same cousin uncle from Tai-An Hospital returned to Tainan and jointly opened "Wan-Long Electric Toy Factory" on Li-Ren Road. They asked whether I wanted a job. Hearing that the pay was NT$500 per month, I joined — and once again encountered the "wireman phenomenon."

Wan-Long’s electric shooting toy games could be seen at Disneyland: consumers aimed guns at moving targets — chain-driven caravans or Indians hinged targets. When the trigger was pulled, the circuit connected to a relay, causing a small rod to pop out; if the Indian target was hit, the player scored points and won a prize. My cousin uncle, skilled in wiring, continued boasting about "wiring techniques." He and my father had been elementary-school classmates, both calling themselves “high skillful technicians.”Yet Wan-Long lasted only three months before closing down, while my "Cheng Kuang Metal Works" kept going to become "Cheng Kuang Precision Industrial Co., Ltd." to benefit the world.

After Wan-Long shut down in November 1966, I was sweeping the floor at No. 45, Chong-An Street when I heard a knock on the wooden door. Opening it, I saw a towering figure—at the time, I was not even 140 cm tall. Through an interpreter, the visitors said they were from “Transworld Electronics,” a U.S. company (Avnet Inc.), setting up a plant in KEPZ, and they were looking for "eyelets." After much discussion, I asked for the exact specifications and told them to return the day after next for samples. Sure enough, they came back, took the samples, and left happily.

After dozens of rounds of revisions, the samples were approved, and they requested an "Approval Sheet." This document—one that would later influence the history of "Taiwan’s precision industry" — I somehow managed to prepare for them. In December 1966, I finally received the order. My "U-shaped Deplication Method" proved its worth: in just one week, I completed an order worth NT$100,000, netting NT$90,000. At the time, land at the intersection of Park Road and Cheng-Kong Road cost about NT$300 per ping. I went to Yamoliao Market and paid off my parents’ debts.

The greatest difficulty in doing business between Cheng Kuang and Transworld Electronics came from my own parents. Every day they pressured me, repeatedly shouting, “Delusions of doing business with Americans — you’ll have your eyes covered and your ‘precious parts’ cut off!” Yet the most practical reality was this: with NT$90,000, they could get dentures, buy new clothes, and even enjoy Fuji apples, which cost NT$200 each at the time.

To obtain the English version of the "Approval Sheet," I went to see Professor Yao Jing-Bo of the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University. When he reviewed the "mechanical characteristics," he immediately sought out Professor Ma Cheng-Jiu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering so that they could study how to complete the Approval Sheet together. During those brief few days, I came to deeply appreciate the importance of academic theory. I read and reread the books the two scholars generously gave me, which enabled me to overcome one challenge after another in the trials that followed.

The electronic components I developed free of charge for Transworld Electronics became a powerful tool that helped them rise to the status of “Channel Master.” After reviewing their original designs, I began discussing with them the concept of "common grounding." In the end, they accepted it, and the entire appliance design became remarkably clean and streamlined.

Fig 3: The components developed by author for Avnet Inc.

Next came my successful development of the “Lucky” portable transistor cassette recorder for Yong-Fu Electric Company. Almost overnight, large numbers of wiremen lost their jobs. After that, when I upgraded phenolic boards to printed circuit boards (PCBs), wiremen were completely wiped out. From the moment I identified the problem to the point at which they were eliminated, only about "ten years" had passed.

In 1969, when the world announced the phase-out of "vacuum tubes," most of my clients in the electrical industry collapsed—businesses fell like corpses across the ground. Only "Mr. Chen Yong-Tian" of Yong-Fu Electric managed to hold on. After I helped him develop several products, the portable transistor cassette recorder successfully secured orders from Jewish buyers in the United States, and soon thereafter he built a factory of over ten thousand pings in Yong-Kang.

At the celebration banquet, buoyed by a few drinks, Mr. Chen asked my father (nicknamed A-Kun), “Old Kuo, how did you end up with such a talented son — and why didn’t I?” To my surprise, A-Kun came home and scolded me harshly. Left with no choice, I went on to build one factory after another, appointing him as chairman — thus sparing him the fate of the wiremen.

In the past, when you stepped out of Chong-An Street, you faced Cheng-Kong Road; cross the street and you reached Chong-Yi Road; walk past a few shops and you would see the Chong-Hua Cinema. In the 1950s, films shown in cinemas all required a “live narrator” to provide explanations.

The film narrator was a vital profession in 1950s Taiwan. Every cinema employed at least one “film narrator” to control emotions, translate the world, and improvise dialogue, bringing silent black-and-white films to life and persuading audiences to pay for tickets. In this sense, narrators were the very lifeblood of the theaters. Sadly, before 1960, sound films arrived. Sound was embedded directly into the film reels, and overnight the live narrators were rendered unemployed — not because they could no longer speak, but because they were eliminated by new technology. The subsequent disappearance of the film narrators further proved that technology can be a flood and a beast.

Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), subtitle writers, translators, and voice actors face the same kind of rupture. Some even warn, “Where AI arrives, teachers and xxtors are eliminated.” These professionals are not lacking in skill or effort; rather, the system has become self-contained. Language can now be generated in real time, algorithms can replicate emotion, and humans are reduced to backups. The tragic songs of the film narrator and the wireman deliver a stark warning: what gets eliminated is never the skill, but the “role” itself. If humans only repeat tasks and cannot define systems, create direction, or generate value, then in every technological upgrade, what is ultimately extinguished is the role played by humans.

Peter Li-Chang Kuo, the author created Taiwan's Precision Industry in his early years. Peter was a representative of the APEC CEO Summit and an expert in the third sector. He advocated "anti-corruption (AC)/cashless/e-commerce (E-Com)/ICT/IPR/IIA-TES / Micro-Business (MB)…and etc." to win the international bills and regulations.