small ritual

yesterday's tomorrow's world

more nostalgia - the bbc has created the tomorrow's world archive.

to publicise it here's a compilation of tomorrow's world clips from the 60s and 70s. the first home computer terminal, a mobile phone with a dial, moog synthesiser, and some failures.

love the groovy credits of this 1965 episode. as for the content, it's fascinating to see things being thought about for the first time, but the pace is glacial by today's standards. elsewhere, paying by debit card and pin number make their debut in 1969, and a 1979 prototype of the mobile phone has a dial and curly cord like recent novelty handsets. notice how weird it seemed at the time to be able to roam freely while talking on the phone.

in praise of the sci-fi corridor

wonderful article about an essential aspect of nearly all tv/movie scifi, bringing it into full view. you won't look at these things in the same way again. my personal 'first scifi corridors' are the ones in the dalek city on skaro in the original 1963 'doctor who and the daleks'.
 
the crosswalls contain metal doors that rotate downwards to cut off sections, and on the wall in each section is a dalek eye stalk.

one small post for a blog

i wasn't allowed to stay up in the small hours to watch it live, but i remember coming downstairs as early as possible in my pyjamas to watch the fuzzy grey shapes bounce around on the screen. [the step onto the surface happened at 3.56am british summer time, hence the date of this blog post.] and then they went to bed in the lunar module, and we had breakfast.

concorde 002 maiden flight 40 years on

i saw this broadcast at the time - we watched the takeoff on tv and then ran outside as it flew over our house three minutes or so into the flight. in the broadcast at 4:30 there is a map of the flight path - we were under the first arrow after chepstow. we could certainly hear it coming - if i remember correctly we actually heard the takeoff five miles away through the open front door at the same time as watching it on tv. the broadcast doesn't convey the full noise. in the previous year or two we could often hear the roar of the engines in the testbed at filton - heaven knows what it was like for the houses bordering the airfield. but the truth is that people were proud of it - the american protests against the noise were incomprehensible to us. we liked to hear it. the engines on the final production planes were somewhat quieter and less smoky.

the commentator is the late raymond baxter, presenter of tomorrow's world and the voice of all things aerospace on british tv in the 60s and 70s.

celebs

had my [highly favourable] annual review over lunch in the jerwood space cafe which is just round the corner from the office. ross kemp and ewan mcgregor were there [though not together]. i always thought of the jerwood as a gallery, but i see it's got rehearsal spaces.

ace of wands and other cult tv

for some reason i was thinking about early 70s tv series ace of wands on the way home. i could only remember a couple of bits but the theme tune's been stuck in my head since forever. on googling it i find i remember more of ace of wands than i thought. and it's spooky to hear that title theme again for the first time in 33 years. who needs memory when you have google?

said googling led me to tv ark the television museum's cult tv section which is great for people like me who saw this stuff first time around and love its dated futurism. many of these programmes were profoundly imaginative and weird - was it the times or the drugs of the times?