Derek Simmons |
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Return to List of Reminiscences This email, written in 2019 to his friend and colleague Peter Randall, provides some interesting information about Derek's career and the early days of colour television: "Dear Peter, Have just spent an hour trawling through BBC Eng Inf and saw a posting saying that Brian Ammon had passed away in October last year. I guess we both remember him very well as Standards Engineer, you probably more so as I recall the investigations and recommendations you carried out into the choice of dual in-line sockets. I joined BBC Designs Dept in September 1962 – this was shortly after the ‘Pilkington Report’ which had granted the BBC its second monochrome television channel to be broadcast in 625 lines on the UHF channels (BBC 2) which went on-air in May 1964. I now realise, looking down the list of our colleagues who have passed away, that not many of us still remain from the 1960’s DD staff. On reflection, I think that we were both lucky to have worked in Section 8, not only the projects but also the staff. When I joined, Tom Worswick was head of Section, and the design engineers were Gordon Parker, Geoff Larkby, John Austin, Peter Denby, Bill Hawkins and Guy Williamson-Noble (do you remember him, very well spoken and a bit eccentric!). I initially worked for Guy as his technician, working on a system to Gen-lock tv signals incoming from Outside Broadcasts to synchronously mix with other signals in a studio production. This project had been in progress for a very long time – long before the introduction of having to cost and give a time frame for the completion of a design. Guy used to have several days off sick with migraine. Returning from one of his annual interviews with Neville Watson, he was asked by HDD why he was sick so often. Guy apparently replied that it was due to him hitting his head on the roof of his grade for such a long time!! So many memories. Being seconded to work for Receiver Section down in Weir Road, Balham, installing the first generation of domestic colour tv sets in the homes of very senior engineering and production staff so that they could view test colour transmissions in the evening. Aligning the sets in peoples homes was a challenge – I had to call upon Crystal Palace to transmit things like convergence grill, grey scale, Pluge and colour bars in order to align the receivers. As a result of that experience, I was ‘press-ganged’ at short notice to join the team led by Geoff Larkby presenting the I.E.E. annual lecture on Colour Television 1963 – 1964, which toured I think 13 major cities in the UK, and then went to Ireland and also Brussels. The lecture was presented by the BBC’s then Director of Engineering, but I can’t remember his name. The plan was to show colour tv pictures using a Marconi colour projection system, but with just a few weeks to go before the first lecture at the Colston Hall in Bristol, DE decided that he wanted to use the Bush colour picture monitors distributed among the audience. Do you remember these monitors, built around the RCA twenty one inch circular colour tube housed in huge hammer grey cabinets which took at least two people to lift and carry them about. The BBC managed to get 15 of these monitors together, and it was my responsibility to install, cable (RGB and syncs + mains power) and align these monitors distributed around the audience. In all of the lectures, I only had one failure. It was a bit like working in a circus. Because of the huge cost of hiring the venues, the BBC crew would arrive at midnight and set up everything for the first lecture, aimed at school children for about 10.am. There would be another lecture for school children at say 2pm and again for an adult audience at 7pm. Then everything was taken down and packed up to be away by midnight. Hard work but great fun, and a tribute to the meticulous planning carried out by Geoff Larkby. Perhaps I should try and write this all down for Eng Inf because this was the first opportunity for an audience to see colour tv, some years before the 1st colour transmissions in 1967. Somewhere in my attic, I have a set of photographs which I should try and find. Happy days. Apologies for going on for so long. Best wishes to you and Valerie. Take care, Derek The email was contributed to BBCeng by Peter Randall. The Director of Engineering referred to above was Sir Francis McLean. Return to List of Reminiscences
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