John Nottage

I have a memory of my days at TVC back in the late 1960s when someone (I’m sure it was Squire Hill) brought in a beautiful sealed wooden cube he had made, about 3 or 4 inches each side with 5 or 6 lights on one face. It must have been pre LED days. The lights flashed completely at random. We strapped it on the Mole monitor to entertain us as we worked…

Nick Ware

I loved the things that John Howell made out of Perspex  while I was still at the Beeb, and that’s 34 years ago! Best one I remember was one that had spirals of lights flashing in sequence, that served no purpose at all. Now that I call brilliant.

John Howell

That was made using 12Volt 100mA ‘pea’ bulbs, 130 of them. Audio split into four frequency bands plus extreme low and extreme high essentially 6 ‘wah-wah’ pedal circuits driving 6 power amps.  It appeared on TOTP behind Julie Felix (TC8 29th April 1970).

The whole Perspex thing started when I found a piece of clear tube after a “Dr Who” derig. I thought ‘I could put a radio in that’ and the light powered radio was born and still going strong, picture below.

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