The Britons Who Played For The Moon
The title of this post, is the same as that of an article on page 15 of today’s copy of The Times.
This is two paragraphs – – .
The team was organised by John Hodge, who was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex and who had previously worked for Vickers Armstrong, which during the Second World War built the Supermarine Spitfire.
Mr. Hodge, now 90, would become a flight director at mission control – the one time that ‘Houston’ spoke with a British accent.
I’ve heard of John before.
Like me, John Hodge went to Minchenden Grammar School and one of our maths’ teachers; George Bullen,when I was doing Further Maths in the Sixth Form, told us the full story of one of his brightest students.
If John had a problem, it was that he couldn’t get a language O-level, which was needed to get to University in the late 1940s.
So he went to Northampton Engineering College, which is now the City University, where the qualification wasn’t needed.
I think George Bullen, with his John Arlott Hampshire accent, probably told us the story of John Hodge for motivation.
This is another paragraph in the article.
Peter Armitage, 90, who grew up in Hable-le-Rice, Hampshire, was also in the Avro group. In 1969 he oversaw the simulator that Neil Armstrong used to learn how to touch down on the moon.
As I remember it, the simulator was a hybrid digital-analogue computer using two PACE 231-R computers as the analogue half.
This picture shows the similar computer, that I worked on at ICI in Welwyn Garden City.
These machines could each solve up to a hundred simultaneous differential equations, in real time, so were ideal for calculating the dynamics of complex systems.
They were some beasts!
From what I read at the time, they were key in bringing the Apollo 13 astronauts home, as they could be quickly reprogrammed, if you were familiar with the dynamic model., as undoubtedly NASA’s engineers were.
My Son Gets In The Times Again!
I had a letter published in The Times today about the birth of our first son, as Neil Armstrong set off for the moon.
Sir, My late wife gave birth to our first son on July 16, 1969, in the Middlesex Hospital in London, as the astronauts left for the Moon.
From the time of his birth until the Eagle landed, no babies were born in the hospital. Perhaps mothers had something more important on their mind. But after the successful landing, all hell broke loose and there were babies everywhere.
The compositors in The Times may have been in a similar emotional state, as our son’s birth announcement was out of order.
I’ve never seen another birth announcement out of order. But then there were two editions of the paper that night; one said they’d landed and the other said they’d walked on the moon.
Decimalisation
On Drive on BBC Radio 5 Live, they got talking about decimalisation. I sent them my four pennies-worth
My eldest son was in the births in The Times for the 20th July 1969, the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Incidentally, that day the paper carried a report on decimalisation, which would happen on February 15th 1971 and metrication, which was to be completed by 1984. The first happened on time and I’m still waiting for the second.
I suspect I’ll be long dead before we do the sane and sensible thing and metricate.
Forty Years On
It was enlightening to get The Times out for Monday, the 21st July,1969.
The edition is historic because of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon and now that I have yesterday’s reprint of the 5 a.m. edition of parts of the paper, I now have three different copies with different headlines.
- Man lands on the moon with perfect touchdown
- Man walks on the moon after Eagle’s perfect landing
- Man takes first steps on the moon
But what of the other less well-known stories in the paper.
Before I start, I should say that The Times in 1969 cost just six old pence or 2.5 pence in today’s coinage. Well, not really today’s coinage as the halfpence was abolished in 1984. Today paper costs 90 pence, whereas adjusting for inflation the 1969 edition would cost just 32 pence.
So it now costs almost three times as much.
But perhaps it is bigger. Yesterday’s paper was 104 tabloid pages and the one forty years ago was 26 broadsheet pages, which equates to 52 tabloid. So the modern paper is twice the size, but not three times. I should say that I have ignored the extra supplement in the older paper, as this by chance happened to turn up on the 21st July, 1969.
I’ll start with that supplement. It is a very interesting document as it is a special report on Decimal Currency and Metrication. Some points from the document.
- Britain thought about going to decimal currency in the nineteenth century.
- The Board of Trade recommended going decimal in 1951.
- Patrick O’Leary made the prediction that the half penny will be unpopular. He was right there.
But it is in the field of metrication that the document is most interesting, with this paragraph.
The change to the metric system is more profound and complex than decimalizing the coinage. There is no simple way of saying that such-and-such will happen: it certainly cannot be done by diktat. The impact of the change will be spread widely through the economy and widely through time. Nevertheless, the Government has set a target date – the end of 1975.
So we’re still waiting for the abolition of Imperial units, thirty nine years later. I used to work for ICI and they went metric in 1955. It may be a hobby horse of mine, but in a few days I will return to this scandal.
Note too in the quote the ‘z’ in decimalizing and the colon. English has changed.
So what else can I find in the old newspaper.
The only other story on the front page concerns Senator Edward Kennedy and his involvement in the death of Mary-Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. He is still in the Senate.
There was the usual crop of stories about NHS problems, strikes, celebrities and politicians. John “Reggie Perrin” Stonehouse was the Postmaster General was arguing against more hours for ITV, as this might harm the BBC, Myra Hindley had just got an O level and the usual crop of dictators were featured. So little has changed.
But I did like the story about the “Tyres slashed on 40 cars”. There wasn’t any vandalism in the 1960s was there? In this case it was in Fowey in Cornwall.
And the one on the sports pages entitled “Racecourse managers need a new image”. Some still haven’t got the message. There was also an encouraging report on how, Britain’s Davis Cup team should get to the final! So we’ve got worse at tennis! What’s new? The great Ron Hill was running marathons, like I think he still runs regularly.
If you ever get a chance to read papers like these do. It’s the nuggets that amuse and educate.
Apollo 11 Lands
Exactly forty years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
My wife was still in the Middlesex Hospital with our first son, who had been born on the 16th. There was no reason for them to stay that long, except that partly that was the way it was done in those days and also the hospital was rather short of clients. They were actually phoning round other hospitals and it appeared that everybody was holding back giving birth, as they were waiting for the landing.
My wife and everybody else in the maternity unit actually crowded round the television to watch the landing. I think that some of them actually watched the moonwalk later.
Immediately, the landing was over, the phones started ringing and all hell broke out in the unit and by the morning they had beds in corridors.
We’d also put his birth in The Times and I still have two copies of the paper for that day.
The Times - July 20th, 1969
He is still the only birth I have seen in The Times, out of alphabetical order.
The paper on the left is actually a 4 a.m. edition. Does The Times still have one now?
One little incident that a friend remembered was that they interviewed a mother, whose baby was born on the 21st and they asked her if she was calling her son, Apollo. She said she was going to call him Paul.
Waiting for Apollo 11 – Part 3
The Tuesday was a day of waiting. They broke the waters in mid-morning and nothing happened. And then in mid-afternoon, contractions started.
Now my late wife wasn’t a lady with a large frame. Although she was nearly 5ft 5in, she was really only a size 8, so getting the baby out, when he finally arrived after midnight, was a bit of a messy business. Our first son was also about 8lb 5oz, so he was not small and she had quite a few stitches. Luckily, the student doctor , who was nicknamed Smooth Hugh, was very very good.
So that night I got back to Barnet about three in the morning, with mother and son doing well.
In other words exactly forty years ago.
But the time in the hospital was not without tragedy. The lady in the next bed with the unusual ring, lost her baby. Her son was born with a hole in the diaphragm, which meant he was unable to breathe.
But in those days of no ultrasound, it was impossible to diagnose the condition. Six years ago, my granddaughter had the same condition. It was diagnosed before birth and she was operated on at two days old. She is now a bouncing ad very normal girl, with no after effects from her ordeal.
So medical science can solve our problems.
But just as my wife was helped through a difficult birth by Smooth Hugh, good surgery helped in a much worse case to enable my granddaughter to survive.
We must train our surgeons to be the best.
Later that day, Apollo 11 blasted off to the moon. My wife told me later that evening, that everyone was gripped as they watched the huge Saturn rocket take off from Florida.
And there was still a shortage of babies in the hospital. They’d even resorted to ringing round hospitals and the message was the same. Everybody must be waiting for the moon landing.
Waiting for Apollo 11 – Part 2
To return to the story of my late wife’s first pregnancy. This tale was started under Waiting for Apollo 11.
I stayed all night at the Middlesex Hospital and about midnight, the contractions stopped and I think I fell asleep with my head on her bed.
She was sharing the room with another lady, who was perhaps a ten years older than my wife’s then 21 years. I can’t remember much about her except that she was dark-haired and she had a wedding ring with a buckle in it. But at least my wife had some pleasant company whilst I was not there.
In fact, I remember going to work on that Monday in Welwyn Garden City. You had to do that in those days, as there was no such thing as paternity leave. But at least my bosses were fairly sympathetic.
I returned to the hospital on that Monday evening and nothing had happened.
I seem to think that the hospital had decided that if nothing happened on the Monday, they were going to induce the baby on the Tuesday morning. I probably got a good night’s sleep at my mother-in-law’s in Barnet.
There are other things that I can’t remember. Did I drive up to the hospital in our elderly Morris Minor? Did my mother-in-law visit before the birth? Oh! How you wished you had wrote it all down.
Waiting for Apollo 11
Not many people know where they were on the 13th of July, 1969. I do because my late wife and I spent an enjoyable but apprehensive day in St. James’s Park in London in the sun.
I say apprehensive. Why apprehensive? Because she was just expecting our first child and we did not have a hospital to go to.
So how did we get into this predicament?
We had been living in Liverpool and I was working for ICI, whilst she completed her studies at the University. But soon after we got married in September 1968, her father died and we decided that we needed to be near her mother in London. It was probably not a good idea, but you do things like that when you are young. She had also got recently pregnant, which again was probably not a good idea, but looking back having our three children young was for the best. For the last twenty or more years of our marriage, we were unencumbered by family and were free to do what we enjoyed most; travel!
So, I transferred to ICI Plastics at Welwyn Garden City and we bought a house at Melbourn near Royston. But horror of horrors the house wasn’t ready and we had to move in with her mother in Barnet.
My late wife was adopted and was actually born in the Victoria Maternity Hospital in Barnet. So there was no way she was going to have our first child there, as it had too many bad connotations for her.
So we found ourselves without a hospital to deliver the baby.
I should also say, that on that Sunday, the baby was about three weeks overdue, so even if she didn’t think things were serious, I did.
Late that afternoon, she said that she was having slight contractions and that we perhaps ought to go to A & E somewhere. She preferred the old Middlesex Hospital, as it had a good reputation.
So we presented ourselves at the hospital and after about twenty minutes, she was seen by a doctor and because of her imminent state, they decided to admit her as an emergency.
It didn’t really matter, as they weren’t very full, because everybody was excited about the first moon landing with Apollo 11, scheduled to take place in a few days. And having babies and other important things was far from peoples’ minds.
The Anonymous Widower 