Last week, myself and other members of the Leeds Film Photo community had an amazing opportunity to step into the archives at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum. Organised by Adam as part of a research project, we had a rare look into the Archives of the Daily Herald, one of the longest-running newspapers with a catalogue of millions of photographs, and saw their incredible collection of vintage broadcast equipment!
The last time I had been to Bradford was almost a decade ago; also to visit the Museum. I have vague memories of some exhibits, but I can only really recall seeing the Lego Batman Movie at the cinema within the Museum, so this would be a welcome return.
Upon arriving at the Museum, we were taken through the Kodak Gallery and split into two groups of six. We started in a conference space with a few small artefacts, including the work of "Paranormal Investigator" William Hope. I hadn't come across his work before, and it was so interesting to learn about how he pioneered Spirit Photography and got exposed by multiple people, unsurprisingly, for fraud. There was also some contemporary art on show here as well as a few other pieces which I didn't get pictures of (my bad!).
The first proper stop on the tour, however, was into the Daily Herald archive. Masses and masses of filing cabinets and storage boxes containing over three and a half million photographs, many with the original contact sheets or glass negatives still existing! One of our guides mentioned that it would take over 7 years to completely digitise all the images; less than 150,000 have been scanned to this day. It was fascinating to think that there was so much history in just one of these boxes, never mind the room itself. While the sheer scale of photographs in this room was something to behold (8+ large binders on Hitler alone), I was already excited to move on to the next (and best) section!
Moving through the corridors was a slightly surreal experience in that it did feel almost like you had entered the backrooms. Dimly lit, and all too easy to get lost in. Eventually we reached a room containing all manner of vintage goodies! There were Cameras, TVs, Radios, Broadcast Cameras, even some Radioactive bits! Oh, I was like a kid in a candy shop!
As a Film graduate, and one who specialised in Cinematography, anything and everything to do with image reproduction is of great interest. Not only that, as someone who hopped onto the "analogue revival" train long before it was cool, getting to see my love of broadcast kit and vintage tech meet was amazing! As you came into the room, there were masses of photographic cameras on display, next to those what I assume are huge videotape editing stations. Baffling most of us was a wooden machine filled with 35mm film. I later learned that it was a Kinetoscope, whereby you viewed the film from a small hole in the top. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the broadcast cameras and TVs. Something definitely worth noting was a contraption consisting of a prism lens filter attached to a large hand-operated wheel, which it turns out was believed to be used in the Bohemian Rhapsody music video as the kaleidoscopic effect. Getting to see a preserved Cathode-Ray-Tube (possibly used for X-Rays) was insanely cool, and I would have loved to have taken one home with me.
And that was the end of the tour! Anyone can access the archive for research purposes, and even request to view individual items within their collection up close.
Unfortunately, I didn't end up looking around the rest of the museum that day, as some others and I decided to make the most of the nice weather and have a wander around the city centre. I do plan on returning to the museum soon to see what's in the 'Sound and Vision' department.