Category Archives: Documents
Some month’s ago, following Bob Oakley’s “Story of Film Recording”, I threw down the challenge to some of the ex Telecine Oldboys to produce a similar thing.
Bill Tucker has now come up with two excellent pieces, “Bill Tucker at the BBC”, and “Life as a TK Operator“, both of which you will find in The 1960s.
(Additional detail supplied by John Crane, Lawford Thomas and Jim Tucker)
Bill, pictured right driving TK1 at Lime Grove, covers the years from 1951 to 1988, and the story overlaps nicely with Arthur Dungate’s Direct Television from Alexandra Palace, which you can find in The 1950s.
Bob Oakley has dug out this job advertisement from 1970, some 8½ years prior to Ian Williams’ editor’s advert on October 5th.
First of all, to all those of you of a ‘certain’ age…… MERRY CHRISTMAS VT! and, to everyone who doesn’t know the phrase, Happy Christmas and the very best for 2009! The picture opposite is from the “Blue Peter Book of Television”. It is part of a photograph of the Blue Peter presenters queuing for a cuppa in the Tea Bar outside TC3 (Red?). However, the face in the back of the queue is also very familiar – it’s Doug (Parsons). Quite a surprise and rather nice to have a shot of him – even if it is a bit grainy. The only other picture of him is a blurred frame in Alan Edgington’s 8mm filmof the area.
Neil & I have spent the last couple of weeks sorting through Don Kershaw’s collection of books, manuals, memos, brochures and machine records. Don was always planning to write the definitive history of the department, but, sadly, never managed it. Mark you, seeing the vast amount of raw material he kept, it would have been a herculean task! Brochures marks the start of publishing this material and, today, while going through another box, we found this at the head of a list of machine acquisitions.
An innocuous document which recalls the fact that BBC week numbers did not match normal week numbers!!!
Dave Rixon has found the missing page of his cartoon “Computer Catastrophes”. Afficianodos of Dave’s work can now see JV339 (John Vigar) utter the immortal phrase “Christ I’m screwed” (I have that in Russian somewhere!) and visit Chad’s Caravan Sales (sorry Chad). For those who haven’t looked at the cartoons, do so for they are not only funny but an inspired piece of social history (honest!).
A wonderful turnout of Oldboys attended Don’s funeral today at Hemel Hempstead. Although the circumstances were very sad it was good to see so many ‘old’ faces.
I have now moved Neil’s appreciation of Don to a permanent place in Thoughts attached to his “History of Tel Rec”.
I mentioned documents of interest a few days ago on this page and, today, I have added what is probably the definitive document on the art of videotape editing. It was written in May 1966 by Alan Watkins and marked the beginning of the departments editing service and the appointment of Engineers (Editing). It’s in Downloads and is entitled Principles & Practice of Video Tape Editing.
