Ignorance, knowledge and discovery

1960

     I don't know how much it had to do with Mr Ruddick's influence that stimulated my thoughts, but I became so much more aware of the world around me and how it worked. I was filled with that essential creative combination of ignorance, knowledge and discovery.

One major realisation was how things could work in reverse and that they were, in fact, exchangers.

     It started with my reel to reel tape recorder, that I had received for my thirteenth birthday, when I noticed a microphone and a loudspeaker were precisely the same thing and that they could work in reverse. You could speak into the microphone, amplify the vibrations of your voice, then broadcast it through the loudspeaker. Or, alternatively, you could swap them around and speak into the loudspeaker and broadcast it through the microphone! Why would you want to do this I thought but realised that is exactly what happens with headphones and hearing aids - tiny loudspeakers.

Vibrations in the air caused the cone in the loudspeaker or microphone to vibrate and the coil inside then generated a small electrical current. That signal then stimulated the coil in the other loudspeaker or microphone to vibrate the cone which in turn vibrated the air. It was a signal being captured then reproduced in a different place. It was an exchanger.

Fiddling around with small electrical motors I also discovered that whilst they worked well at converting electrical energy into physical mechanical energy, you could reverse the process by putting mechanical energy into them (spinning the armature by hand) and getting enough electricity out of the other end to light up a torch bulb. So, a motor was also a dynamo or generator.

A camera, I discovered was the same kind of thing as a projector – but in reverse. One took an image of the outside world, projecting it onto the focal plane and the other projected an image from the focal plane into the outside world. A humidifier could become a dehumidifier. With heat, water became steam and steam became water as it cooled down. It explained rain, dew and steam engines.

Heat exchangers and energy exchangers were a source of fascination to me. So many things related to exchanging one thing or another. Not just the exchange of practical, physical, things was a fascination but, applying the same principle, it also became obvious that if you looked at other aspects of life, it suggested other things

Societies, for instance, shape laws just as - putting it in reverse - laws shape societies.

And in art, the brain of the artist creates a work which encapsulates their thoughts, feelings or emotions. 

The work then becomes a depository waiting until the observer views it and re-forms those feelings which then find their way into a different brain. A thought exchanger!

     My early teens had shown a distinct interest in making things, predominantly, from scrap. Things that my dad would take into work to impress his workmates. When the transistor was invented in the late fifties, it enabled the manufacture of a miniature radio (about the size of a thick book) called a transistor radio and everybody wanted one. I wanted one, so, encouraged by ignorance, and a negative concept of failure, I set about seeing if I could make one.

     At that time, we used to swap things, toys and such, with our friends. And when I discovered that Walter Harrison from along the street had a crystal set, I made him an offer he couldn't refuse! I swapped all my marbles plus my bow and arrows for this wooden box about the size of a small suitcase that came complete with a pair of headphones (then called earphones). On the side it had a brass plate engraved with "Radios for the Blind", and a serial number.

Taking it apart, I discovered there wasn't much inside at all, so I took all the components to an electrical shop in Newcastle and asked a very helpful man what they all were, and what they did. Knowledge! Then, giving it some thought, I concluded, to make my own radio the only thing I needed to buy was something called a diode, which would capture radio signals much better than the cats whisker and crystal, and that I could make the other things from bits and pieces. I unwound a coil from the crystal set - counting the number of turns - and made a miniature one using a matchstick and copper wire from an old transformer.

The following day I completed my own version of the transistor radio. It had no loudspeaker or amplifier but produced a great sound through the earphone. And, being based on a crystal set, it worked completely without batteries.

I managed to miniaturise all the components so effectively that I was able to fit them all inside one of the earphones – making it about a tenth of the size of a transistor radio. Thinking about it today, it would have been an excellent product for third world countries – similar to The Wind-up Radio that came along about thirty years later.

     We didn't have a telephone in our house, not just because we were poor but because there wasn't much point – we didn't know anyone who had a telephone! However, my girlfriend lived in the next street, and I wanted to communicate with her.

So, once again, aided by being ignorant of all the reasons it wouldn’t work, I enlisted the help of my trusty tape recorder, and discovered I could adapt it and, utilising the gas and water connections into the house, (and my diode) we could communicate from her house to mine. Unfortunately, I was unable to figure out how it could also work from my house to hers without buying another tape recorder. So, it only worked one way. 

However, the partial success of this experiment felt especially good as my father had given me about three good reasons why it couldn't possibly work. Fortunately, I didn't understand the reasons why it wouldn't - just believed it would. That’s ignorance for you.

I remember deciding I would never tell my children “it won’t work” just in case it might!

     Around the same time there was a product called a "Teasmade" that came onto the market. It woke you up in the morning with a cup of tea. It was a great, and useful, item which, to me, didn't look too complicated to make. These days it would be what you might call “Low Tech”.  So, using an old wind-up alarm clock and bits of junk, I made one for my mam. It looked a bit 'Heath Robinson', and quite different to the shiny one in the shops, but it worked every bit as well as the one we couldn't afford.

Un-metered water was provided into every home, so, I designed a simple electricity generator powered by mains water. I worked out how much money it would save my mam and dad but when I showed them, they wouldn't let me do it, saying "we'd get locked up if we got caught doing that".

At 15, I developed an interest in photography, which was great. It combined art with invention. I made a pin-hole camera and, using my mother's plates and saucers, could develop films and photographs in the washhouse. A torch inside a red baby's potty was my safelight. I made studio lights from biscuit tins, and even building an enlarger from junk wasn't beyond me. All I ever had to buy was the film, paper, developer and fixer from the photography shop in Gateshead - 'Head Photo'. I loved that shop.