I’ve only just realised that it’s 40 years ago this very month that I interviewed Professor Eric Laithwaite. I had suggested to the college archives that we should record this interview. Although, at present, I’m not able to get access to the mastertape, I have attempted to correct the colour and enhance the original version, the best that I can. There are potentially other unseen interviews with Eric Laithwaite that were made by STOIC, but until Imperial sees the advantage of these archive gems, they will forever remain in the archives. Sadly, money is needed to fund the transfer of these Ampex Type A videotapes into digital form. This is something that I can no longer do myself because all of our old videotape equipment was disposed of when the TV Studio was closed in 2007. So this interview is therefore the only one with Eric Laithwaite that’s recorded at Imperial College.
I was the interviewer and it was recorded in his office in the heavy electrical engineering laboratory at Imperial College. The slight background noise is from the various motors and machines running in the lab.
Colin Grimshaw September 2020
Hi Colin. I have very much enjoyed your posts, I’ve been following you for a while. I may have been in touch already; Wellcome rescued a considerable number of 1″ IVC (and U-Matic) tapes from the ULAVC in the 1990s. Wellcome had some JISC funding, some internal funding and more recently funding via the BFI (who also received a subset of tapes) in order to digitise and in some cases transcribe the videos. The BFI funding stemmed from Wellcome’s membership of the London’s Screen Archives. I wonder if you should reach out to LSA and become a member to take advantage of some of the benefits such as subsidised digitisation/access to funding?
Hi Angela,
Yes we have been in contact before, I think about ULAVC videos? Thanks for that suggestion I’ll pass it on, but suspect that, because most of Imperial is shut down, it might take a while.
Colin