Before becoming involved in electronics

and prior to developing a passion for audio (and later video) recording, there was a strong focus on chemistry and all the magic of the experiments which allow one to experience how different substances react – or not.
This video shows the home lab which helped in that process and provided an extra level of motivation to become quite good at it.

The chemistry is mostly forgotten but the original lab and the equipment that has survived provide an excuse to play around with using a large screen TV as historical back-drop for a still-life display of items from that time. — Large format video here.

The out-house building in which the lab was located still stands, and in fact has been integrated into the house as a utility room by recent owners of the house. The summer house has long since been demolished.

A first version of this video was made in 2008 using SD with 4:3 aspect ratio. Most of the colour images have been re-shot against a larger screen TV than was available in 2008.
Some of the 1960’s images have been improved by finding and re-scanning the original negatives (themselves an amazing tribute to such quality and longevity).

2013 version of the periodic table — compared to home-drawn 1960’s version which shows position of elements 102 & 103 which were not “discovered” until 1966 (Nobelium) and 1961 (Lawrencium). These, together with all later element “discoveries” are known as the Transfermium Elements.

Click images for larger versions. 150 years of the periodic table — 2019 is the “International Year of the Periodic Table” [of the elements] IYPT2019.

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From chemistry to electronics: crystal receivers followed by valve and transistor versions and “ham” radio kits from “Codar” led to electronic engineering studies and employment in the industry.

The signal generator and the radio are added to the b&w photo of the “shed”. As we no longer have the Codar we use a web image to remind us how it would have looked in 1964.

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