dad's gadgets

My family always used to poke fun at my dad's collection of "junk" that he would add to almost daily, collecting odd bits and pieces found in all sorts of strange places... walking to the bus stop, the caravan of an old film buff who lived at the back of a drive-in, dusty junk shops...

It's only now that I look back on his bower bird behaviour and see it as a worthwhile pursuit. One of his many hobbies was 16mm film. He made some really cool films, that he's transferred now to dvd. Some are of family holidays, and some are funny little stories he'd thought up and shot with some mates in the 1950s...

This is his 16mm film projector... Dad would set it up sometimes after dinner, and we would sit on the steps and watch ourselves prance and dash around the screen, the sound echoing around, laughing at ourselves and each other...

Some other choice pieces in his collection:

Mechano, c.1940,

WW2 aircraft cameras,

and some strange hybrid gadget made from a gramophone turntable and two gramdeck reel to reel tapedecks... I'm not exactly sure what it does, but it worked!