{"id":1978,"date":"2010-07-16T14:23:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T13:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.imperial.ac.uk\/videoarchive\/?p=1978"},"modified":"2023-09-22T15:18:51","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T14:18:51","slug":"seen-gone-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/videoarchive\/seen-gone-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Seen and Gone: One"},"content":{"rendered":"

The one big disadvantage<\/em> with videotape is that it can be erased. All too often a recording is considered of no further use and the tape is either thrown away or erased and re-used. But back in the early 1960’s and 1970’s it was cost that was the concerning factor. I recall that the first open reels of Ampex one-inch tape that we used cost around \u00a330 each at that time, something more like \u00a3300 in today’s money. So, there was a desire to save money and therefore reuse old tapes again. Recently, I remembered that I had some audio tapes that I’d made from the sound tracks of various programmes and that these programmes had long since been erased. \"tapeSo, I collected them all together and took out one of my faithful old reel-to-reel tape recorders sitting at home. What did I have and was there anything of interest? Well yes, very much so, it turns out. I had a few sound tracks of videos made with the student TV service STOIC for example. Always a good source of college history I listened to what the content was and to whether there might be a gem or two. On a live Christmas 1971 edition of their first news magazine programme TOPIC, I found interviews with Lord Penney (then Rector) about the recent 1971 NUS “Day of action”. This now takes the number of recordings we have of him from 4 to 5 and will be placed into the college archives. We’ll be seeing that programme, in ‘recreated’ form, in the next Seen and Gone number 2.<\/p>\n

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Sinclair Goodlad in 1967<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also found a soundtrack to a series of programmes I made with Sinclair Goodlad<\/a>. One of these programmes, which is a May 1972 interview with the very first student counsellor, still exists on the original one-inch videotape, although it has never been transferred to any modern format so at present we’re unable see it. The photo of Sinclair is from 1967 and was taken during one of his “20 minute talk” sessions he ran on Wednesday afternoons in Electrical Engineering. Behind him can be seen our very first videotape recorder, an enormous machine made by Philips and full of very hot valves.<\/p>\n