Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Signal research like a boss

Prodded in my direction by one of my learned colleagues comes this video from 1993, showing the old console area at BBC Monitoring where I was once employed in a techie capacity. Now completely digitised, it's nothing like that now. The carpet's a different set of shades altogether, for a start.

Slapping in the tapes is my old supervisor Dave (incidentally one of the finest chaps I have ever known), while my late pal Trevor Davies is in the background.We all look industrious because it was clearly for some sort of promotional film.

And hammering away at the typewriter and doing a bit of the old radio signal research is your author, The Boy Operator, cleanly shaven and sporting an early-90s crime against fashion.

And yes, I do remember this being shot. And yes, I was deliberately trying to look like I knew what I was doing.

And - man - there's nothing like the sound of a typewriter.
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6 comments:

  1. Mark10:10 am

    Great acting. I could only watch the video without sound because I'm at work but in my mind I could tell you had picked up the telltale sound of that newfangled caterpillar drive the ruskies had installed on their latest nuclear submarine.

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  2. Stephen Howie10:16 am

    "pshhhwashhbzzz...new single from Primal Scream".

    *grabs headphones with both hands*

    I'm sure those very C-90s were still in use when I started 10 years ago!

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  3. Polly C Advyse2:33 pm

    That you? I thought it was Ollie Reeder doing some Opposition bugging.

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  4. Anonymous3:15 pm

    ".......And - man - there's nothing like the sound of a typewriter......."

    Or a Teletype Printer.

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  5. Anonymous4:19 pm

    The sound of dot matrix printers is also memorable. Not only from 1980s office days, but also from the beginning of that movie, "Three Days of the Condor". (Splendid thriller film.)

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  6. Richard LicklePohm7:53 pm

    The sound of the date stamper and the hand-cranked Neopost. Horniman's Tea which was kept in the office safe.

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