You may be aware that a renaming of Mechanical Engineering has just taken place. The new 1960’s building, located on Exhibition Road, has just been renamed The City and Guilds Building. Pre 1960 Alumni will recall the original building, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1881. Previous blogs about City and Guilds recalls the history and includes a brief section of a 16mm colour film made in 1960. Here, I am showing for the first time the full unedited version. It’s silent and was intended to show the ‘old and new’ developments as the original building was slowly pulled down and the new building created behind it (hence the setback of the Mechanical Engineering Building from the roadway).
The film also shows the only record we have of Sir Owen Saunders (then Dean of City and Guilds 1955-1964 and also acting Rector 1966-1967). This is a unique piece of Imperial College history and the only film we have of the old buildings. The fact that it’s in colour is a added bonus.
Back in 2010 I brought you the two videos that were made to coincide with the City and Guilds centenary in 1985, they were Studying for the Future and Discovering the Future. I had promised to bring you a third video made later in that year called Mastering the Future. Obviously, this video was intended to showcase and promote the idea of taking a masters degree at Imperial College.
Key figures from Industry were featured to give a sense of what was required from University students taking such masters degrees. One person appearing was Sir George Porter, later Lord Porter who was then President of the Royal Institution. Later he moved to Imperial College to continue his research work. By the time the video was made Eric Ash had become Rector, superseding Brian Flowers. One of the few recordings that we have of Professor Bruce Sayers, then head of computing and also dean of City and Guilds is part of this video. Once more there are some great views of ‘Imperial past’ featured such as: the original front entrance on Exhibition Road; Sports Centre and Gym; Libraries and the 1960’s Walkway with Bookshop.
The oldest videotape recording of one of our rectors of Imperial College is that of Lord Penney (1909-1991). Rector of the college from 1967 to 1973 he took the post over from Sir Owen Saunders who was acting rector from 1966 to 1967 after the death of Sir Patrick Linstead in 1966. Recorded in 1971 for showing to students via the fledgling Student Television of Imperial College (STOIC). I can’t remember whether or not this was part of one of the trial news programmes called IC Newsreel, or perhaps designed as as stand-alone programme, I think maybe the latter is more likely.
Our studio, if you could have called it that, was rather basic and sparse. As you’ll see in the video we had no background of any type at that time. The rare colour photo shows a slight improvement in 1974 when we managed to get some grey curtains! As this was well before the advent of the ‘tie-clip’ microphone, we used what were called neck-mics. A microphone on a thin cord that went around the neck and were very common at that time for PA system use. They did however provided much better sound than trying to use mics on stands or similar.
A former student of Imperial College, Lord Penney initially worked on the Manhattan Project during WW2 and was a flight observer of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. Penney was asked in 1947 to head the team that ultimately produced Britain’s first nuclear test and in 1957 this was successfully carried out off of the Australian coast. He touches very briefly upon this during the interview, even though he was reluctant to discuss it in any great detail (he doesn’t actually mention the British nuclear test). You can watch the TV programme Equinox which includes an interview with Lady Penney. The interviewer for our video was Dave Willis, who I know very little about, other than he was a computer science postgrad student, but I don’t recall the years that he was at Imperial.
This is a newly restored version of the video that was shot originally on Ampex one-inch tape format. I’ve managed to clean, and brighten up, the image to a certain degree, but it is 42 years old. The original master tape now resides in the Imperial College Archives. On the link to the film of Operation Hurricane you’ll see Penney (on board a boat) turning around and using Binoculars to see the resulting explosion.
26 years ago, in 1987 I made a promotional video for the Department of Materials. It had a slightly grander title that usual, “Engineering with Atoms: Materials, Science and Engineering at Imperial College”. Once again this video is a treasure of scenes and images of life at Imperial College in the mid 1980’s. And, as with most promotional videos that we made, it contained a large amount of ‘stock footage’ from previous videos and some of this is now notable because of the vast changes that have taken place on the South Kensington campus.
As with all promotional videos an enormous input was required from the actual department in terms of what they needed to say and to show. Getting the words right is vital, so from the department I was aided by colleagues: Kilner, Rawlings, Flower and Walker. The latter two also provided the male and female voice-overs heard on the video. Harvey Flower is notable because of his tragic death in April 2005. He’s also seen in one sequence sitting at an electron microscope and later on he’s standing with his colleague at a departmental party.
Other worthy mentions are Princes Gardens with its old layout design and masses of colourful summer flowers, along with the original halls of residence. Also making an appearance are the 1960’s frontage of buildings facing onto Exhibition Road; the walkway and JCR. Making it into the video as well is the old swimming pool and tennis courts (located where the new Eastside Halls now stand). I’m fairly certain that the departmental library would have been merged into the central library, so shots of that in the video are also a record of daily life in the department. In fact the whole video is a snapshot of what Imperial College was like in 1987 and a true Video Archive post if ever there was one!
The usual tape problems occurred with the digitisation of this video, so any slight glitches or jumps are due to those problems. As always, if you are seen in this video please do let us know where you are now and what you are doing. Use the reply box below to make contact with me.
I have rediscovered a fascinating interview with Professor Bob (Robert) Spence, Professor Emeritus of Information Engineering & Senior Research Investigator in EEED. Today, Bob turned 80 and what better way to help him celebrate than bringing to your attention this interview from 1994. At the time, the TV Studio was still in operation and I was making a monthly video for a computer company called Lantec. A former TV Studio colleague of mine, Steve Bell, who worked for Lantec, asked me if we would make these videos for distribution to their company clients. The result was a programme we called Video Interface. This video is from Edition 13, from December 1994 and Steve is talking to Bob about his research work. I take no credit for the remaining text below, as it comes from Bob’s own personal web page at Imperial. I have added however a few links to videos I made with Bob on some of the subjects mentioned.
Bob’s research has ranged from engineering design to human-computer interaction and often with the manner in which the latter can enhance the former. Notable contributions, usually in collaboration with colleagues, include the powerful generalized form of Tellegen’s Theorem; algorithms for improving the manufacturing yield of mass-produced circuits; and, in the field of Human-computer Interaction, the invention of the first focus+context technique, the Bifocal Display (aka Fisheye lens). The novel Attribute and Influence Explorers provide examples of novel information visualization tools that have wide application, including engineering design. Interactive computer graphics allows the electronic circuit designer to sketch the familiar circuit diagram on a computer display. This potential was pioneered by Bob and his colleagues in the late 1960s and eventually, in 1985, led to the commercially available MINNIE system developed and marketed by a company of which Bob was chairman and a founding director. More recently, Bob’s research has focused on the topic of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation in which a collection of images is presented sequentially and rapidly to a user who may be searching for a particular image. This activity is similar to the riffling of a book’s pages.
And yet more news about Bob in April 2014 is that he has now achieved 51 years of service at Imperial College. See this article and scroll down to read about it. In the article Bob says “I’ve always said that if something is fun, it’s worth doing – and I’ve certainly had a lot of fun over the past 51 years. Imperial has always had a fantastic community, and it boasts some exceptional students. They are the reason I continued to teach after my retirement – I never tire of working with them….”
Professor Robert Spence, passed away on Friday 20th September 2024, at the age of 91.
In a previous entry you would have seen the video I made to celebrate the City and Guilds College Centenary in February 1985. As part of the week of events an exhibition was run entitled “Technology 2000”. It was opened by Margaret Thatcher -who was then Prime Minister- on 27 February 1985.
Professor Bruce Sayers was then Dean of City and Guilds and made the introduction. This version of the speech is the full version. The one already seen in the C&G centenary video is edited down to fit into a specific duration. Here then is the full, unedited version, from the original 1985 master tape.
Here is the link to the City and Guilds Celebration video on YouTube. Included in that video is the tour Mrs Thatcher took of the exhibition Technology 2000 and shows some of the people she met.
In the first part of this look at Live-Net I showed the lead-up to the opening of the system with a visit by Princess Anne to the Science for Industry exhibition the previous year. But now, we’ll see what followed on from that. Once the demonstrations were over and the Science for Industry Exhibition closed, it was time to start using the system for real. Many tests and trials took place and slowly teaching started to make use of the system. You’ll see some of that teaching in the video at the end of this particular blog entry. Even though Princess Anne had already seen Live-Net in action it was always planned that she would officially declare it open at some point. This took place from Senate House in central London and linked out to all those sites currently connected. The photo shows the Royal Party along with Richard Beckwith looking at the monitors that showed the Live-Net sites (Imperial is in the centre). On the 28 May 1987 the system was buzzing with images going backwards and forwards to Senate House. BT were standing by as part of the demonstration and to ensure 100% connectivity! The person given the overall responsibility for the connection and use of Live-Net at Imperial College was Professor Ernie Freeman (1937-2022) then in Electrical Engineering.
Ernie handed over all of the technical tasks to me and that involved the planning of any ‘studio’, purchase of equipment and so on. Initially we simply used the TV Studio as this had cameras, sound and monitors. Later we produced a separate studio solely for Live-Net. As I had been involved from the very start, I was asked to participate in the opening ceremony and can be seen on the right hand side (all dressed up for the occasion) with a camera control box hidden behind some flowers! The background board was a left-over from the Science for Industry exhibition the previous year. There was one final royal visit to see Live-Net, but this time it was not Princess Anne.
The IEEE were meeting at Imperial College along with their President the Duke of Kent. Ernie Freeman was asked to show off Live-Net as it was an interesting and new use of fibre optics for university teaching. Once more we used the TV Studio for the event and Ernie Freeman is seen with the Duke of Kent in this off screen photo of the actual transmission. Of course there was interest not only in how it would be used for teaching and the styles being adopted for this in teaching habits, but also in the technology. This was left to me to explain (the best I could) and to show the BT equipment being used.
There was also great interest in the central switching system and computer control. This was achieved with a terminal connected directly to the BT equipment rack and then via the fibre optic cable to Senate House. That’s me talking to the Duke and explaining our equipment rack and how the images were switched around the network.
In 1990 I made a promotional video for Live-Net. We shot at most of the connections to show how staff and students used the system. We also interviewed people to see what they thought of the technology and its usefulness. In the same year, BT attempted a sales campaign for the system, quoting its ‘ease of use and flexibility’. I’ve scanned in the only remaining brochure that featured the system and if you click on the picture it will go full screen to enable it to be read. The suggested ‘control’ box was a faked prototype and never existed for real. The room full of participants was in Senate House (shown in the picture top left of the page). Live-Net eventually fell foul of the technology which was moving forward very rapidly. The system was analogue and BT was already changing into digital for most applications. The cost to convert Live-Net was considered too high for most of the participants of the system and Imperial College was one of the first to drop out. A slow decline followed and the Internet simply took its place.
On the 19th June 2001 Sir Richard Sykes, then Rector of Imperial College, launched the first e-MasterClass with a broadcast to distinguished guests from government and other institutions in Britain, Australia and Thailand. The launch was preceded with the statement “Topical debate between masters at the cutting edge of scientific research and peer group scientists and industrialists around the world will be launched next month in what is believed to be the first e-MasterClass of its kind”. This first 40-minute presentation about healthcare policy was chaired by Chris Toumazou and was held in the video conferencing suite, which at the time was located next to the TV Studio on the level 2 walkway.
The technology used to link the various locations was Video Conferencing using ISDN2. The equipment allowed the ‘multipointing’ of the three sites into a split screen which meant that participants could all see and hear other with very little time delay. Images were viewed on 50 inch Plasma screens, something back then that was both new and expensive.
Press release information following the second e-MasterClass announced “Professor Ara Darzi impressed participants at the University of New South Wales, Australia, with a presentation entitled Look no hands — an exploration in cybersurgery which encapsulated his team’s dynamic new approach to micro-surgery and robotics and set out his vision for the future of surgery”.
Professor David Phillips presentation
Live Internet streaming came later
The e-MasterClass, as originally intended, carried on for just over a year when they turned in Schools e-MasterClass. These potentially had a wider audience and continued Imperial’s links with schools in general. On the 10 July 2002 David Phillips from Imperial and colleague Steven Bown from UCL gave “A little light relief”. Again a pre-event announcement said “A Little Light Relief”, will provide an interactive overview of the subject that will give Year 9, 10 and 11 students the opportunity to engage with scientific developments” In the recording of the event (below) you will notice that the chairman is Noel Edmonds. He owned the Video Meeting Company which supplied Imperial with the Video Conferencing equipment. As publicity, he was persuaded to take part.
These initial events were successful. But the schools were all connecting using ISDN2 which few other schools had available. It was obvious we needed to revert to using the Internet which all schools did have available. However, what no one had told us at the time was that almost none of the schools could Video Conference connect to IP addresses outside of their own grid (for security reasons). So, we started to stream events in parallel on the Web. Again, schools could not connect as they were limited to a strict list of URL’s. None of the schools were prepared to change this list and slowly over just a few years the whole e-MasterClass just stopped!
In 2001 we made a promotional video to show the potential of the original e-MasterClass. The video is largely based on Richard Sykes presentation in June of that year. It includes shots showing what the remote end of the links were seeing. These days the technology allows people to link from their computers and this gives the possibility to link at night, but to do so from your home not from a University room. There is the obvious fact that very long distance ‘live’ teaching, such as the original e-MasterClass idea, is totally governed by TIME. A time difference between London and Sydney of 11 hours makes it very difficult to bring together people who (at 10pm at night in Sydney) would rather be at home, than watching academics talking in London. Time-Difference was one of the reasons for the downfall of the original e-MasterClass. But, what we did worked and maybe just proved a point that Imperial can do such things. I had fun with these events and the tension of things going wrong was always there. The e-MasterClass was, perhaps, a little too early in terms of the technology available at its start in 2001 and could be superseded by things like Skype available on your computer at work or home.
Note that the web/email links on the video will no longer work!
Back in early 1982 a tenuous link with the History of Science and Technology division brought forth an idea to make a series of videos designed for schools. Colleague Dr Kathy (Kathleen) Burk had links with a publishing company based in Wiltshire. They produced mainly audiotapes on history and some on music. They had started to venture into videos but with limited success from both the technical and production viewpoint (they had no production facilities of their own).
Simon Schaffer filming in Bath
It was therefore suggested that because of the Imperial College connection with the company there might be some merits in linking together our combined skills: History; Publications & Marketing and Video Production. So a compromise was reached over the production of 8 videos between 1982 to 1990.
In this entry I’ll be showing you two videos made between 1982 and 1984. Simon Schaffer has become a well known presenter on broadcast television with series such as the 2004 “Light Fantastic” shown on BBC TV. But back in 1982 he had only recently joined Imperial College in the History of Science and Technology division. Kathy Burk asked him to consider making one of the videos for schools and so we produced the 1982 video called Science and the English Enlightenment.
It was shot in various locations, including Greenwich Park, the Science Museum and Bath at the Royal Crescent, the Assembly Rooms and at the home (and now museum) of William Herschel. This all sounds amazing but our budget was a maximum of £1000 and this had to pay for transport, accommodation and fees to places like the royal parks commission for permission to shoot at Greenwich.
Science and the English Enlightenment being filmed in Bath
So, we didn’t have a great deal of change at the end of the production. We did however get a small amount of money from a share in profits from the sales of the videos to schools and colleges both in the UK and overseas. All this was early days for us in video production terms. We had limited resources and shooting outside and running on battery power was still new to us. Editing too was limited enabling only cuts or ‘split’ edits between pre-recorded segments. Voice-overs were also not that simple when faced with only two audio tracks on the master tape. But we managed and the tapes have survived these 30 years to be watched yet again.
One final video was made and completed with Simon Schaffer in 1984. It was on his main subject area of Sir Isaac Newton. Again, the video was shot on location at key places in the life of Newton: Woolsthorpe Manor where he was born in 1642 and Trinity College Cambridge where Simon now works. Once again the budget was the same, so production values were not as great as would have been desired. Here then is Isaac Newton: His life and work, shot during August and November 1983.
A clapperboard moment during a very early morning recording in Bath
Since completing this entry I have discovered that I still have all of the original rushes (original footage shot on the day) of the sequences at Woolsthorpe Manor. Simon shot the opening sequence about 6 times, not all his fault I must say as we had more than a few technical problems with sound. No radiomics were available, so he was connected via a very long cable to the videorecorder! Look carefully at the section recorded in Newton’s study to see what I mean about microphone cables. Maybe one day I’ll show a few out-takes from that last sequence in a special blog entry…
The Centenary of the foundation of the College was celebrated on 9 July 2007 with a ceremony in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen and Duke also opened the College’s new Institute of Biomedical Engineering before taking part in an honorary graduation ceremony that saw the first ever Imperial degrees awarded to five distinguished figures, including His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh.
The ceremony followed the bestowal of a Royal Charter by Her Majesty The Queen that declares the College an independent university in its own right after its withdrawal from the University of London.
The visit cemented a long-standing relationship between the UK’s Royal Family and Imperial. The College stands on land purchased with the profits of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 in fulfilment of his vision for a centre of science and culture in South Kensington.
The event was recorded for posterity and at the same time relayed live via web links to all parts of Imperial College, whether on the South Kensington Campus or not. Three cameras covered the ceremony from different angles and I mixed the event live at the time. What you see here is the full unedited live coverage version and please note that unlike BBC broadcasts of such events, there is no added commentary. The ceremony took place in the College’s main entrance hall with special staging having been built for the occasion. Rector at the time was Sir Richard Sykes. The recording runs for just over 30 minutes.
Pre 1960 Alumni will recall the original building, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1881. Previous blogs about City and Guilds recalls the history and includes a brief section of a 16mm colour film made in 1960. Here, I am showing for the first time the full unedited version. It’s silent and was intended to show the ‘old and new’ developments as the original building was slowly pulled down and the new building created behind it (hence the setback of the Mechanical Engineering Building from the roadway).
