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There is a rather lovely edition of BBC Archive covering the 80th anniversary on BBC Sounds. It features the composer Hannah Peel and Prof Tim O’Brien. I was lucky enough to be present last week at the premiere of Hannah’s latest composition, written for the anniversary and featuring the sounds of Jodrell Bank.
There is also a short piece about the composition on the BBC News website.
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Eighty years ago today, 2 June 1946, was the first meeting between researchers at the new radar station at Jodrell Bank and Manning Prentice, Director of the BAA Meteor Section. This would soon lead to a fruitful collaboration on meteor astronomy between Bernard Lovell and Manning Prentice.
More in my talk at the BAA meeting tomorrow.
During 1946, Lovell acquired an ex-military searchlight to use its strong altazimuth mount to direct Yagi aerials to any point in the sky. This formed the basis of the Searchlight Aerial that he used to study study the Giabcobinid meteor storm of October 1946.
Lovell needed timber to build the support for the Yagi array, but timber was on strict rationing post war. He described how he found the owner of a water powered saw mill in a neighbouring village who was only too happy to supply the timber. Forty years later, Lovell was still waiting for the bill – it never came, but by then his grandson was by then working as an electronics technician at Jodrell.
Today I have located that mill in Peover Superior, Cheshire. Long since disused, it is in an very beautiful spot on the Peover Eye stream.
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Just to note that Kevin McCloud visited the Lovell Telescope as part of his ‘Listed Britain’ series. It will be on channel More4 on Thursday 11th June at 9pm.
Mike.
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