JLB!

When I was first married, my in laws were Beryl and Peter. Beryl worked in a local sports/school outfitters, and was a stalwart of the local community. Involved in local politics, the school, the church.

Peter was a nerd of the highest order. As a young man he had provided some technical assistance to the MoD in creating a nuclear weapon. In fact he had been transported by the Royal Navy to the South Seas to witness the device being used. I have a photo of the detonation.

Because he needed to be allowed access to the officers quarters on the ship, he was temporarily assigned as an officer on board. During the voyage the ship crossed the equator. If it is your first crossing of the equator (by sea?) then there is a traditional ceremony you have to undergo. I have documents showing the agenda, and also a large wooden cut throat razor that formed part of the ceremony.

There is also a lovely letter he sent back to his parents just as he was about to make his way back from Western Australia, in which he describes the journey, the hotel he's staying in, and a list of things, that may still have been rationed, that he was sending back in the post; tins of butter, jam, ham etc.

When he returned to the UK he worked for the BBC as an engineer before being tempted over to work for a new TV company in Manchester called Granada TV. He was number seven on the payroll. He stayed there until retirement.

Being a nerdy engineer he loved getting hold of new technology as soon as it was available so he could understand how it worked. Caroline told me how their family was the first in the area to have a colour TV set, which was a bit pointless as there were no colour TV programmes being broadcast at the time.

The first CD player I ever saw was in bits on the dining room table as Peter had dismantled it to have look at the innards.

While working for Granada, as a bit of a hobby, he developed a competitor sound reduction system to Dolby and installed it in independent cinemas in the north.

Over the years he collected all sorts of odds and ends of kits and what not. I have a box in the shed of film canisters. A reel of Xanadu (Olivia Newton John) which he used to test the sound systems he'd installed. A reel of Tommy, a newsreel of the moon landing, a short of Acker Bilk and his jazzmen. There is a sound tape which we don't have the technology to hear, which, family legend has it, is a recording of sputnik taken at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire as it flew across the sky.

I also have his Geiger counter, which I'm guessing may have travelled with him on his great voyage.

After he died we disposed of a great deal of stuff he'd acquired, but one piece was of historic interest. Vinten were an old company that made film cameras. Peter had one and always referred to it as the John Logie Baird Vinten. If you don't know, Mr Baird is generally credited with having invented television.

This is it. See the full page here.

We contacted the Bradford TV and Film museum and they confirmed that the camera we had was indeed one sold to Mr Baird - the serial number was the compelling evidence. We offered it to them and when they accepted they invited us to their mill in Black Dyke Mill in Yorkshire where their overspill area from Bradford was.

We were shown around and made to feel very important. It was a lovely day.

Beryl took the cheque, not very large, about £1000 if I remember correctly, and one of the first things she did was took us out for a meal. We filled our glasses and issued a cheer to "JLB!" (John Logie Baird) who had funded the meal. This was a habit we continued long after the money had been spent. Any meal was started with a toast to JLB.