Month: June 2025

Student TV Alumni Network: 2025

 

There are no actual videos in this blog post, but rather a link to a lovely web article from the Student Television Alumni Network. Dom Kullander wrote this article with input from me, and with photos from my collection. Of course, because it’s the student TV network the piece is specifically about the archive of STOIC and the efforts to preserve and digitise it. That’s me (here at home) seen over on the right, doing just that! Dom had been in contact with me last July (so nearly a year ago) and to be honest, I’d forgotten all about this article.

For how much longer I’ll be able to continue the restoration and digitisation of these tapes all depends on the videotape machines (U-matic machine with its cover off for cleaning, over on the left). These were made in the 70-90’s, and genuine spares are now unavailable. In most cases, service engineers (if you can find one) obtain parts by using older machines as a source of spares. Video heads are another matter—once they’re gone, it would be almost impossible to source replacements. As I’ve mentioned before, the Ampex One Inch A format video recorders are no longer available, so tapes made on that format are simply stuck in boxes in the archives. Time (and especially money) are not on our side…

The link to Dom’s article and website is below:

https://www.studenttvalumni.co.uk/post/from-the-archive-stoic-memories

Colin Grimshaw June 2025

Magnetic Induction: 1980

Here’s yet another video that I had completely forgotten about. It was when we were recently packing up the TV Studio videotape archive (not STOIC’s) for relocation, that I came across this video again. Bryan Steele was in fact a member of STOIC and had presented many items on their weekly news programme, hence his on-camera confidence. I do wish I could remember all of the details as to why we made this video in February 1980, but that’s over 45 years ago now!

Irrespective of why it was made, I’m glad we did. It features many of the demonstrations that were famously linked to Professor Eric Laithwaite. In the TV Studio we had a large number of his demonstrations, like the ‘jumping ring’ and down in his Electrical Engineering lab Bryan runs the ‘Magnetic River’ with the model train on it. However, I have never seen it in this strange brown colour. It’s usually painted something like blue or even white which shows up well on TV or film. If you search this blog you’ll find a few examples of these different colours. Guess who appears from behind the camera to return the model train to Bryan after each run!

I’m assuming that Bryan was linked in some way to the “Pimlico Connection” that did undergrad outreach visits to schools and hence this video. I’d marked the videotape with “a video made for schools’, but that’s not in the actual title sequence. The video was made within the first 6 months or so of having moved into colour and we’d not even created a TV Studio logo in colour by that time.

Colin Grimshaw June 2025