Today’s video was previously available back in 2007 via the old Imperial iMedia Server. However, that has now been decommissioned and videos are no longer accessible from it. So let’s go back to the day when Rector Sir Richard Sykes officially launched the start of demolition and ultimately rebuilding of what was called Linstead Hall, but then became Eastside Halls.
Sir Richard Sykes had already ended his term as Rector when, in 2008, Sir Roy Anderson who was then Rector, attended the Topping Out Ceremony.
Just before the end of 2009 we made a series of ‘student tours’ of the various halls of residence at Imperial College. 1st year Biochemistry Student Laura Bunting did the honours by showing us around the newly opened Eastside block.
2007 was the Centenary Year for Imperial College. One of the most important events during that year was the launch of the history of the college written by Dr Hannah Gay and published by Imperial College Press. The launch was held at 170 Queens Gate and we covered the event and spoke to various people including Dr Hannah Gay herself and also Sir Richard Sykes who was, at the time, the Rector of the college.
The book is a vast catalogue of Imperial’s past and I refer to it regularly when I am writing these blog posts. That’s not to say that the book contains everything and indeed sometimes, even I, resort to Google to find what I’m looking for.
When we made this video we were still called Media Services (ah, those were the days!) and producing videos for anyone in college, not just Communications who we were soon to come under the umbrella of. It was soon after this that we stopped being a service that was available to anyone else in college. A sad moment to be honest and a huge disadvantage to other members of Imperial who wanted to have a video made professionally.
Today we have something in colour, and that makes a change from mostly black and white videos. Way back in February 1986, a few months before STOIC broke away from the College TV Studio, they reported on Op Soc. I’ve looked through the videotape card index and there are three cards listing STOIC’s coverage of Op Soc’s productions. If you look at the first card that I scanned, you can get an impression of just how many were covered. Intriguingly, I also spot a February 1979 twenty minute documentary programme (D5). Sadly, if it still exists, it’s on the Ampex 7003 One Inch type A format, which we can no longer play.
Luckily, we do have from 1986 Op Soc with Princess Ida. This is a review with clips, not the entire production. I’m assuming that this was in the union building concert hall.
In this blog we are going to hear the 1969 opening ceremony of the new College Block, later renamed as the Sherfield Building (1975). Until now, only extracts have been heard, but here is the full recording with Lord Sherfield the Chairman of the Governing Body, HM Queen and Lord Penney Rector of the college. The full ceremony only exists as an audio recording, with a few segments filmed on 16mm film, but without synchronised sound. Strangely, we could have very easily set up video cameras and recorded the entire proceedings on videotape, but we were never asked. I guess we are just lucky that an audio recording was made.
The images are frame grabs from the 16mm film because I have never seen photos taken in the Great Hall during the ceremony. There is a front page about the event in the edition of Felix from 4 December 1969. Interestingly, there is a ‘typo’ in the Hannah Gay book on the history of Imperial College. In the index, under Sherfield Building it refers to it as formerly “Centre” Block, this typo only appears once!
In the Christmas edition of Felix from 1971 it was announced that on the 9 December the Taylor Memorial (Silly) Football Match would take place. It did, and STOIC were there to capture the event. You’ll notice that the picture is rather dim and very grainy. That’s because it was shot on 8mm film that STOIC developed ‘in house’ rather than use colour film that required external processing. With this method the film was available to be used within hours. It was in fact used in the Christmas Edition of TOPIC the weekly news programme. No sound of course, but there was a commentary added during the programme.
Were you in either of the teams back in December 1971? And does anyone know why it was the Taylor Memorial match? I can’t find any references to that name.
This post is a rare exception because the moving images, (in this case on 35mm film) are not held by Imperial College. The clips are from a British Pathé News item that would have been seen only in cinemas.
The Queen Mother visited St Mary’s Medical School for the 1954 Centenary Celebrations and I assume, is seen putting items into the second foundation stone (time capsule?) for the new buildings. Both of the reels do look as if they were never actually used and appear more like original rushes. An end result for Pathé would have had a commentary etc, on it. So don’t be concerned that the segments seem to stop and start a lot.
I have just stumbled across a copy of Felix for 4 December 1973. In it I found a promotion for STOIC’s weekly news-magazine programme TOPIC. The photo shows that is was promoting the “Golden Moments” of Rag Week in the Christmas edition of the programme on Friday 7 December. I’m sure that Rag Week would have been a few weeks earlier and suspect that this would have been shot on film, that possibly needed external developing, by Kodak perhaps?
I can also tell that this was just around the time when the co-axial cable had been run from the TV Studio all the way through the heating tunnels to the Beit Quad building. Sadly as usual, not a single edition of a TOPIC programme remains, they were all erased. What we do have are some of the 8mm films that were used within the programmes and I am now featuring those when I have scanned the film into digital. In two cases I have an audio tape of the actual soundtrack, as in Christmas and Easter editions.
One single item that does remain is an opening sequence, recorded in the original TV Studio on 30 January 1974. I really can’t say whether or not this was actually used in any of the programmes. Mark Caldwell, STOIC Chairman is seen, along with Paul Jarvis as Floor-manager. Dave Salmon is on camera 1 which is seen panning around. You can also see the original animated logo caption rotating around that was made by Selwyn Castleden. There’s an over the shoulder view of the control room with Steve Bell and Selwyn. There is also a brief glimpse of STOIC’s portable “rover’ videotape unit as Paul Jarvis walks in front of it. You will also see a great shot of the huge 2 inch Quadraplex videotape recorder that was donated by RCA. The very rare colour photo, taken on 1 May 1974 shows Selwyn and me in the control room looking very hard at a monitor.
In October 2008 the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid a visit to the Imperial College Business School. We were there to cover the event along with a crew from Number 10 and also ITV News. In a presentation that he made, he commented that he already had a connection with Imperial College because a relative had been a Professor here. Indeed he was more than just a Professor, he was a Head of Department. In fact his Uncle was Professor John Brown, Head of Electrical Engineering for 21 years and my head of department when the TV Studio was within Electrical Engineering. On the left hand side of this rare photo is John Brown seen during the retirement reception for Departmental Superintendent, John Ganley, in around 1976.
And there is even more of Gordon Brown’s relative on video. Cast your mind back to the blog about STOIC’s first news programme, IC Newsreel in 1970, where he made an appearance giving an obituary for Lord Willis Jackson.
Yet more discoveries from some recent digitisation. The 8mm film reel (shown at the bottom) was used in the 1971 Christmas edition of STOIC’s TOPIC news programme, for which I have the (videotape) audio. This 8mm reel was also a compilation of items already shown earlier in that term. I appear to have some original location audio for some of the filmed items on the audio tape (shown at the top). Once more, a large number of these filmed items were in colour, but only ever seen via black and white TV. It’s now just a case of trying to see it I can match things up. If I can succeed then we have film of: “Morphy Day Rowing”, “Silly Football”, “Imperial College’s Day of Action”, “Motor Trials” and more. Some screen shots from these items can be seen below. And if, nearly 50 years ago, you were taking part or involved in any of this, then please do let me know. Contact details at the end of this blog post.
There have been some changes recently to the design and layout of this blog. I’m finding that things can look a bit different at times and you might also been finding that? If you notice anything odd happening with the new layout and that images or videos are looking strange, then do please tell me via the contact page.
Also, I no longer have a list of those I’ve added myself to email notifications, so you might not even be seeing this post! But I hope you do, because I have some great posts coming up soon. There are more 8mm colour film discoveries and one blog is about how Imperial started something that ended up on international TV…
