And... action!

An interview with Luke Skywalker, a recipe for jam sponge, a report on the Iranian Embassy siege and an investigation into the strange sounds emanating from underground tunnels on the South Ken campus. What’s the link? All these things – and much, much more – were caught on camera by the Student Television Society of Imperial (STOIC) which, for 50 years, compiled a unique record of life at Imperial.

The STOIC videotapes offer a history of Imperial that doesn’t exist elsewhere,” explains Colin Grimshaw, who worked as the TV Studio Manager until 2007 and now oversees the video archive and associated Imperial blog. “Students in STOIC could go out and shoot whatever they wanted to. Every time I go through the tapes, I’m finding all manner of things that I didn’t even realise had been recorded. Many things they captured on video no longer happen at Imperial.”

This includes long-forgotten RAG week activities, a raft race across the Serpentine and a summer concert tradition in which the 1812 Overture was performed on the Queen’s Tower lawn. “They used to ring the bells in the tower to coincide with the music. Then they went one better and set off cannon fire from the tower. It no longer happens – but we’ve got it on video.”

Grimshaw recently discovered a short clip of former Professor and Nobel Prize-winner Abdus Salam giving a lecture. He’s also unearthed the only known Imperial-made video of Lord Penney, Rector from 1967 to 1973, who led the development of Britain’s first atomic bomb. “There’s some pretty damn good stuff in the archives,” he says.