December club evening.
We all turned up early only to find we had been 'locked out'!
Another small group were already installed in the main hall, apparently there was confusion over the room the other party had booked for their meeting. When I arrived, Rob was on the phone to sort the problem out and we eventually had Debbie, the church administrator, come in and resolve it all.
Only a few minutes adrift the kitchen was loaded up and Irene and her team busy doing preparation with Jack and Neil assisting? In my experience ladies look on us men as a necessary appendage and tell us what we are doing and how much better it could be done, if only.....
Terry Summers had been picked up by Mike Joseph so our speaker for the evening was present, always a good thing I find! Chairs and tables were put out and our normal semblance of a club evening was in place. I later met Debbie in person, for the first time, as we are mainly on email terms. I reckoned we had only been coming to the venue for the last 50 years, that is over 600 club evenings and felt we were 'The Regulars'.
We always allow for members to greet and meet and we started up around 7:30 with Mike Collins wishing all a Merry Christmas and welcome to our guests.
Terry then had the centre stage.
At 10 years short of 100 Terry was very able, although the lapel microphone had gone walkies, it was all rather a lot to handle, I helped for a short time with the slides but eventually the lapel mike was tracked down and I returned to my seat.
Terry started before the war (war number 2 that is). He had been due to be sent to Canada but on the previous trip the ship was torpedoed so he stayed where he was in Shoreham.
Growing up found him taking to model making and he built a model of the Houses of Parliament which went on show there for 3 months. There was also a model of Broadcasting House made back in the days of children’s hour radio and Uncle Mac. When John Snagg retired the BBC asked if they could buy the model of B.H. to present to him, which they did. When Mr. Snagge died Terry was asked if he would like the model back, which he accepted. Not in Terry's talk but this same model was a small feature on the Antiques Roadshow with Fiona Bruce, who is seen talking to Terry, that was a few years ago now.
Life found Terry apprenticed to de-Haviland and the early Goblin jet engine for which Terry was involved with the test equipment and recording data. This later moved on to using magnetic tape for data recording. Terry had made his own reel to reel tape recorder but needed playback / erase heads and found a suitable advert for them and went to see the company. On talking with the owner of the company he was offered a job to develop them further, and said farewell to de Haviland.
Terry had ideas for better high quality heads and met an engineer with similar ideas and they founded a company but to do this it needed cash! Terry then fell back to his long-time interest in folk and country dancing and decided to make amplifiers to sell to the many dance clubs and eventually into churches. This funded the company and then they got a contract with Dunlop to design a test rig for their new Maxaret brakes for aircraft. This was the first ABS braking system, now in use on all cars.
This led on to further test rigs and so Terry and his engineering colleague could now set up on their own with a company called Magnasound. Their breakthrough came when they were approached by Shepperton film studios to make better recording heads as the American ones were troublesome.
When the digital age arrived Terry sold out his share in Magnasound and formed his own company called Summertone, which he is still running today.
He was involved with the first public showing in the Royal Albert Hall of 101 Dalmations by Disney. The equipment from America arrived, 70mm film to project onto a 60 feet wide screen. Later the projectors arrived with 6 track heads but there were no pre-amplifiers. Terry was able to build and supply these from his own stock and all went ahead on time. This was Dolby soundtrack.
Later Terry was involved with a very ambitious production of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' in the Potsdammer Platz in Berlin, the detail is complex and can be read in detail in a later article. But the live audience went into millions.
Later Terry was approached by Disney to make the Magic Lantern used in the third Harry Potter film. His visit to the new Leavesdon studios was in the same building he had worked in many years previously when it was the old de-Haviland engine factory. All very secret in those days, his Lantern had to be drawn in the Drawing office using the old de-H. drawing boards!
There is currently a swing back to analogue recordings which still keeps Terry busy. Terry recalls that he joined our club 60 years ago when the track at St. Georges school was being built. He joined the society when he met John Ridout who was next door but one to Terry's factory in Harrow on the Hill. He was casting concrete blocks for the support of the raised level track and was invited to a build day and promptly joined the club. He served on the committee for many years.
Terry showed us pictures of his locos and his varied collection of commercial toys, now being disposed of by auction.
As many of you will know Terry has shown his models at many of our exhibitions. Personally, I do not think Terry will ever retire as his work is still of interest and it flows in regularly.
I am hoping we shall see him more often at our club evenings as soon as current medical problems are resolved.
As I have said the technical parts will be the subject of future articles and a chance remark from myself has a standby emergency club evening available for us.
Terry concluded with a Tom & Jerry cartoon and he received a very warm round of applause.
Mike Grossmith prepared a quiz for us of 25 questions the winner got 13 right, I thought I did well with just 3 right!
The ladies assisted by Jack and Neil gave us some hot offerings and I got keenly attached to the sausage rolls much to my surprise! Guy sold 100's of raffle tickets and Clive supervised the drawing of the winning tickets. You have to take the prizes in order, the unforseen was that the first item was a bottle of wine and the first number drawn was to our youngest member! As you can guess underage and commented if I go home with this bottle I will not be allowed back!
A good laugh for us and a substitute prize was given. As usual the seller of the raffle tickets did well, we are still trying to work out how he does this?
The timing for the evening was just right and we finished at 22:00 hours. Another Christmas evening that went well and my thanks go to all those that made it happen.
January 2025 is our regular film night and back to the technical side with our Chairman in February, this will be filmed and I shall watch it later probably while I am in Australia......well someone has to fill the seats of all those aeroplanes!
Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year.
Roy