At the recent Oldboys Lunch at Guildford, Dennis Collett gave me a CD-Rom of photographs he took in Munich in 1972 (That’s 36 years ago!). Whilst the main section in Trips describes the area and machines, these other pictures bring back many memories to those who actually went there. Additionally I have just got to grips with Photoshop’s Web Gallery Automation, and so I have added a Munich Gallery and a Brisbane Gallery. I shall be going through the rest of the vast collection of photographs I have received and add more Galleries over the Winter.
The picture on the right was sent to me by Bernie (Newnham) who has it posted on the Tech Ops site.
He asked us if we could identify the VT person on the left of the picture.
After an exchange of emails, Ron Bowman confesses to being that man! I quote:-
I cannot tell a lie – it’s me with hair! The occasion was the review of an early episode of Your Life in Their Hands. It looks like we are having a matey chat but he barely spoke to me. At a guess I’d say it was VT7.
Direct Television from Alexandra Palace is now as complete as it can be at the moment. Navigation should now work properly and we have managed to recover some more pictures. Do visit the Internet Archive which is a fascinating project and has enabled us to recover these valuable memories.
The Direct Television from Alexandra Palace web site that I mentioned below has now been relocated to its own domain. I managed to get www.bbctv-ap.co.uk which mimics fairly well its original home with Freeserve. I have tidied up the formatting and navigation and found a few of the missing pictures from our own archives. I have already received offers of more information and, possibly, some of the pictures that are missing. The link from here is as before in Links, but I have renamed it to Direct Television from Alexandra Palace. There are a lot of familiar names (and experiences) that VT Oldboys will recall.
Ed Wooden has just reminded me that, for several of us, today marks the 45th Anniversary of joining the BBC at Wood Norton……
Also, I have just posted a new link in Links – doesn’t sound that exciting, but it marks the successful conclusion of a search that has taken Howard and I a couple of years or so! Visitors may remember that we had a link to a fascinating site by Arthur Dungate which chronicled his BBC career at AP and Lime Grove in TK and Film Dubbing. Some time ago I received emails reporting the link to his site as broken and, after emails and much searching, realised it had disappeared and all those memories with it.
A week ago John Dickenson passed onto Neil Pittaway the URL of an organisation who have been “archiving the internet”. A search there discovered the majority of Arthur’s website which I have downloaded and re-assembled as best I can.
Visit the link Memories of Alexandra Palace and have a look. Apologies for missing images, broken links and random formatting, but I felt the site was too valuable not to publish as it is. I shall return to tidying it up later on …… honest, Geoff….:-)
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!!!
Obituaries section added to The Credits. As well as the Bryan Cowgill obituaries below, I have placed Neil’s appreciation of Don Kershaw and two old obituaries of Ian Macnaughton and Dennis Main Wilson.
I have finally added the real TA19 photograph to ETD, thanks to Dave Baldwin who sent me a copy which had the original typed list of names on it. So, perhaps, our old TA19 really was C52 Part 1?
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”.
