Author: Colin Grimshaw

I’m Colin Grimshaw. Although I took early retirement at the start of 2011 I was asked to continue to run the Video Archive Blog and keep adding material on a regular basis. Now, working from home and occasionally from Imperial, I will have more time to recall the background details to the videos you will be seeing. Since the late 1960’s I’ve been recording all sorts of things related to Imperial College. This is in the form of magnetic tape, but more importantly videotape. Although the College Archives holds thousands of pieces of paper in the form of documents, books, journals, manuscripts, etc, its collection of sound and visual recordings (videotape and film) is surpassed by the videotape archive collection...

CERN – CMS Experiment: 2006

In November 2006, we flew to Geneva to film a report on the project and experiments being carried out at CERN by the team from Imperial College. Professor Tejinder Virdee and his colleagues explained the science of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Experiment. Professor Sir Peter Knight, who was then the Head of the Physics Department, also came along, and also appears in the video. You’ll also hear from Professor Virdee’s colleagues who were stationed there at the time of our visit.

Unfortunately, the video quality is poor, as it is another item I’ve managed to recover from the old video server. I’ve done my best to make it look as good as possible! In this first photo you might spot me in the bottom right talking to Professor Virdee. We’re both rather overshadowed by the size of the construction taking place at the time. We shot a lot more footage than you’ll see in the news report and in the photo on the left, you can see me filming some of those very shots.

 

Colin Grimshaw July 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

VP Overseas Student Committee: 1979

I chose this interview because it’s the earliest STOIC recording that discusses overseas students. David Ghani was the presenter of this particular item, and he was talking to Kumar Singarji, who was then the Vice-President of the Overseas Students Committee. This interview is from the Lunchbreak series and is also one of the first in colour, recorded on 6 June 1979. We had to be creative when recording this because we still only had one colour camera, so we shot it in a single-camera style, similar to how films are shot.

Colin Grimshaw May 2025

Freshers’ Fair: 1982

Two years before today’s video was made, STOIC was still operating in black and white. So, it’s a pleasure to release this 1982 video in colour. Lawrence Windley went around Freshers’ Fair and spoke to a few people taking part. And we once again meet Tim Bell from City and Guilds, who appeared in a previous video all about Pedal Cars. Some of the freshers do look a little dazed, I must say. Maybe the afternoon was a little too early for them, or perhaps the cheap beer was kicking in?

Colin Grimshaw April 2025

Ethos Opening: 2006

I’ve managed to save this video before it was lost forever. It is one of many videos that were hosted on the old video server previously used on the College’s website. I had just asked what had happened to the old server when I was informed that it was about to be fully decommissioned and scrapped within a few months.

Fortunately, common sense had already prevailed, and YouTube was accepted as the most obvious platform for uploading videos, leaving the old server unused. These early videos were in a variety of different formats, including RealPlayer and Windows Media. Transcoding this particular video from the RealPlayer format into a format compatible with YouTube was an almost impossible task. The image resolution is not great, but it’s the best I could achieve.

The video shows the opening of the Ethos Sports Centre in 2006. I haven’t been able to find any general photos that might have been taken, so only the video remains. A notable attendee was Sir Roger Bannister, whom I was pleased to meet after his speech.

Colin Grimshaw March 2025

Imperial Concert Band: 1986

A regular feature on the Imperial calendar was the appearance of the Imperial Wind Band, but as in this video, it had just been renamed as the Imperial Concert Band. Strangely though, back some 10 years (Felix advert above) in 1976 they were called the Imperial College Wind Ensemble. Maybe changing some instruments required a name change?

Andy Mitchell spoke with Don Monro about all of this just after a performance had been given in the original Mech Eng main entrance. Right at the end we get to see the 1985 performance of the 1812 overture on the steps of the Queens Tower recorded in colour.

Colin Grimshaw February 2025

 

Sailing Club: 1986

Another gem from the archives of STOIC’s News-Break programme. This time we go back to Spring 1986 when they went on location to report on the Imperial College Sailing Club. This is the only time that the Sailing Club was featured in the archive. I am pleased to see that the club is still going strong (unlike STOIC) and can be found on the Union website and also on their own Facebook page.

I’ve done my usual troll through the archive issues of Felix and the earliest item about the club can be found in issue number 62 from May 1954. The report tells us that the Sailing Club won the University of London Championship for the fourth year in a run! It also tells us an intriguing story about having to buy a lorry to transport the boats when they went to Ireland. You can read that Felix report in full if you go to the issue which is linked up above.

Colin Grimshaw January 2025

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: 1974


50 years ago on this very day I was with Professor Eric Laithwaite at the Royal Institution in London. We were recording a section of the 1974 Christmas Lectures Programme Number 3 “Jam Yesterday, Jam Tomorrow”. I’ve covered what we did in a previous 2017 post, but this time I’ve dug deep into my own archive for an extra gem that has never been heard before. I’ve also found the original tape that is on the Revox tape-recorder seen over on the left hand side so that we can hear it a little better. I say better, in fact that tape is actually falling apart, with the back-coating peeling off the plastic tape, it was a nightmare to transfer.

I won’t go back over what I’ve already written in that previous post but will fill a few more details into what happened these 50 years ago. The tape that was commissioned from the BBC Radiophonics Workshop contained a huge amount of stuff that we never did use. I think the Producer of the Christmas Lectures simply gave them a brief to come up with a load of stuff featuring sounds that were backwards. They seemed to go overboard with speech at various speeds forwards and backwards and it was not what we really needed, so was not used. The one track from them that we did use was a Palindromic music sequence where, in the live lecture, I pointed out where the backwards and forwards started and stopped. Interestingly, although the sections you can hear below are technically forwards and backwards in truth they are not. The Radiophonics Workshop simply created the music and ran the notes forward, but when in “reverse” it’s the musical notes played in a reverse order not actually the sound backwards.

When it came to my “Happy Christmas” recording, that was truly me speaking the sounds that I heard backwards. I had to mimic my original sound recording when I heard the words coming out backwards. This is the difference with the Radiophonics music recording.

Both Professor Laithwaite and I had some extra fun with the whole speaking backwards experiment. In the week leading up to the actual lectures we had a visit from BBC Radio 2 host John Dunn (1934-2004). He had a daily show called Late Night Extra and he wanted to feature what was about to happen during lecture 3. I stayed up very late on the night of the broadcast and captured it for posterity. I doubt many will have already heard it.

The lecture was broadcast on BBC 2 on New Year’s Eve, December 31st 1974. College was actually open and running that day, so I stayed late for the transmission which I recorded onto videotape. I subsequently got my own DVD copy from the BBC’s original master videotape which is still held in their archives. Incidentally, I was also involved with the original 1966 series that Eric Laithwaite presented called “The Engineer in Wonderland”. Those tapes were sadly wiped by the BBC but in this photo you’ll see me indicated over on the right hand side.

Here I am with Professor Eric Laithwaite about to play my backwards recording.

 

From the original master audio tape here I am with that recording, but this time I’m letting you hear what it sounded like when it was recorded and before then being played backwards to come out forwards (are you still with me?) Keep an eye on the caption at the top where you can see when it changes direction.

 

This is the original Radiophonics recording of  their “Palindromic” music.

 

John Dunn from BBC Radio 2 Late Night Extra on 19 December 1974.

Colin Grimshaw 28 December 2024

Silwood Park unseen footage: 1981

Back in 2010 I posted a blog about Silwood Park and I included the small joint documentary that we made between STOIC and the TV Studio. In a recent batch of tapes being digitised I found a short promotional clip for the documentary that Tracy Dudley (Poole) had made; the clip was in an edition of News-Break on 29 April 1981 . The interesting thing about this clip is that there are shots that were not used in the final edited version that’s linked up above.

So, let’s go back some 43 years to see that short footage, unseen until now.

 

Colin Grimshaw December 2024