Alan Smith interviewed by Paul Merchant: full transcript of the interview

237 Pages·2013·1.47 MB·English

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES

AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE

Dr Alan Smith

Interviewed by Dr Paul Merchant

C1379/65
IMPORTANT

Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact
translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original
recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators.

Oral History
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB

020 7412 7404
[email protected]
The British Library National Life Stories

Interview Summary Sheet Title Page

Ref no: C1379/65

Collection title: An Oral History of British Science

Interviewee’s surname: Smith Title: Dr

Interviewee’s Alan Sex: Male
forename:

Occupation: geologist Date and place of birth: 24/02/37,
Watford,
Hertfordshir
e
Mother’s occupation: / Father’s occupation: Engineer

Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to):
16/11/11 (track 1-3), 5/1/12 (track 4-6), 26/1/12 (track 7-10), 1/3/12 (track 11).

Location of interview: St. John’s College, University of Cambridge

Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant

Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661

Recording format : 661: WAV 24 bit 48kHz
Total no. of tracks: 11 Mono or Stereo: Stereo

Total Duration: 11:38:16

Additional material:

Copyright/Clearance: © The British Library

Interviewer’s
comments:
Alan Smith Page 1
C1379/65 Track 1

[Track 1]

Could you tell me when and where you were born please?

I was born in Watford, Watford Maternity Hospital, twenty-fourth of February 1937.

And can you tell me anything you know of your father’s life, based on what he might have told
you and anything you’ve found out since?

Well he, I think people who met him thought he was a genius really. He left school at thirteen
and, I mean I can tell you a lot, but the most important point is he went to night school, taught
himself how to do things and eventually ended up as a precision electrical engineer, and taught
himself how to use these machines called Brown and Sharpe automatic tooling, or whatever, I
can’t remember the names of them. But they were big machines and you use cams to activate
the tools. I think the tool would come in and then another tool would come in. He more or less
retired at the time that electronic tapes and computers were beginning to take over that role. But
that was all self-taught and he was not allowed to join the forces during the war because the
work he was doing was considered too important for him to go on the front actually. He worked
for the Admiralty a lot of the time and various other people. He had a [laughs], he really was an
amazing man. He was an excellent photographer and took lots of, made lots of films, very
impulsive sort of person, stabilised by my mother. And I suppose my wife would have said that
he spoiled me perhaps, I don’t know.

In what way?

Well, perhaps by putting me on some sort of, you know, can’t do any wrong, kind of thing. But
he was, he would have been an excellent professor actually, but he never had a chance and came
from a family of five. They lived in London for a lot of the time and his father at one time was a
docker in the London docks when the unloading and loading of ships was all done by hand. He
carried the sacks off the ships, he put them back on again. He was a big man, he could do that,
but it must have been literally back breaking for some people. And I was the first member of the
immediate family to go to university. I’m a product of the Butler Education Act I think, which I
think was an immensely good thing for the country actually.
Alan Smith Page 2
C1379/65 Track 1

[03:06]
What did your father tell you about his childhood then? So, his life before leaving school at
thirteen and going on to teach himself?

He didn’t tell me a lot, except discipline was fairly tough, his father used to beat him. I mean my
headmaster used to beat me, so that’s nothing new. But he loved playing practical jokes and he
loved helping people as well. So he was, he was very good at school. Oh yes, I remember him
telling me about he had a rival in the school – I forget his name, somebody Goldberg – and they
always vied with one another in spelling competitions. He was very competitive, good
sportsman, loved to play tennis and so on, good cricketer.

Did you know his parents, your grandparents?

I met his father, he was rather ill when I met him I think. Well no, he became ill, that’s right.
That’s when my… his father having worked in the docks had enough money somehow to buy a
farm in Essex, they farmed in Essex after the war and during the war. And his wife was also a
very spirited woman, she used to look after the chickens and the animals and she ended, after her
husband died and the farm passed to one of the sons in the family, in my father’s family, she
retired to a gypsy caravan. [laughs] I had lots of relatives in Norfolk. I’m essentially, I think,
seven-eighths East Anglian. The other eighth is French, somehow. I never follow that up
actually.

[05:11]
And what work did your father do for the Admiralty?

He made highly, well, precision parts of bronze and brass and copper which were a lot to do with
electronic or electrical circuitry. There wasn’t much electronics in those days. They were mass
produced. I know some of them went into submarines and things like that. It was just a small
part which, you know, electrical pins for example, which had to go very precisely into sockets
and that sort of thing. I don’t know the details of what they were used for because it was I
suppose secret work or something, I don’t know.

[05:55]
And what can you tell me about your mother’s…
Alan Smith Page 3
C1379/65 Track 1

My mother?

Yeah.

My mother, I never knew, well, I think they were very poor. She was an only child. Her father
had a dreadful accident in the First World War and lost the use of one of his hands I think, and so
he was an invalid almost in terms of working, I don’t think he could work easily. I never met
him because he died long before then and I never met her mother. She died probably after I was
born, but I never knew her. She was a very… she was also fairly competitive in a quiet way, she
was really thoughtful and became an accountant somehow. I mean not a formal accountant, but
she used to run the books for the company she worked for at one time and she ran the books for
my father actually.

How had they met?

I think tennis actually.

[07:00]
What memories do you have of time spent with your father as a younger child? So if we go sort
of no higher than sort of primary school age – things done with him, places gone with him?

Well, he used to take me down to the – we had an allotment in the war – used to take me down to
the allotment and show me things growing and show me how to grow things. I think he was
pretty horrified by the war and he made sure that I knew at a very early age what it involved. I
mean although he didn’t go into the forces he did act as a volunteer fireman and was in the
London Blitz and fighting fires there and he was horrified by what happened, but he wasn’t a
pacifist or anything like that. But we had, I think it was a… I can’t remember if it was a
Wellington or a Whitley bomber crash on the allotments in the night and he went down to help.
Couldn’t do anything, but in the morning he took me round to show me the crash and also show
me what happens to a human being when it gets burnt.

Could you describe what you saw that day?
Alan Smith Page 4
C1379/65 Track 1

Well, it was just an outline mass of charred material really, you couldn’t tell it was human.
Well, except from its gross shape. But I mean he was very, in that sense, you know, that was one
of the more shocking things he used to do to me. And I remember when the first films came out
of the German concentration camps from Auschwitz and Belsen and so on and there was a
showing in London, he took me up there to see them.

Why do you think that he did?

I think he wanted to show me how awful it was actually. I mean as I say, he wasn’t a pacifist but
he just wanted to show, you know. And it did leave a bit of an impression on me, I must admit.
And I suppose he was very, you know, his experience himself, if you’re a farm person, if you’ve
been on a farm you are really in touch with living things and you see them born, you see them
grow and you see them die or sent off to the abattoir and so on, and it’s part of your life and I
think, you know, he possibly thought he wanted to show me that’s how life is, actually. Because
nowadays you go to a supermarket and something comes in a package, you don’t really think
how it got there.

[09:27]
So the farm that you talk about in relation to him, is this the farm that his parents took up when
they…

Yes.

What experience did you have of that farm?

Well, it was lovely actually. It was a little – it was near Great Easton in Essex and it was very
idyllic in a way, there was a little lane going down to it. We didn’t have electricity initially, or
the farm did not have electricity, he’d managed to get that in. The water was, you had to pump
the water. There weren’t any insecticides of any moment really, so everything was wild flowers
everywhere, the sort of thing you read about actually happened at times. And I remember, you
know, stooking sheaves of corn with pitchforks, putting them on to a cart and taking them off to
be threshed.

What does that involve for someone who wouldn’t know? What is the practice?
Alan Smith Page 5
C1379/65 Track 1

Well, the old binders, the old first mechanical corn cutters would bind a sheaf and it would be
about that width, that high.

Just under a metre.

Something like that. I could just about lift it at that age, at ten or so. It wasn’t that heavy unless
it had been raining and the stuff was really wet. But what you did was to go behind the tractor
and a cutter and a binder – I don’t know if they were all in one machine, quite small compared to
what it is today - and you’d put them into stooks, which is about six or more, standing up leaning
against one another so that they would dry out if it was wet, and also so they could be picked up
by, or put into a threshing machine which would take the tops off and separate the grain from the
chaff, from the straw. And then you used to burn the whole lot. Not the grain of course, but it
wasn’t, nobody worried about smoke or fires in those days particularly. I have a vivid memory
again involving animals and they always cut the field from the outside in and left an ever
decreasing island in the middle in which all the rabbits and hares and everything else were stuck
and there would be a lot of people, well not a lot, I’d say twenty or thirty people round the edge
of this thing with sticks and so on waiting for them to come out and catch them for a nice piece
of rabbit pie I suppose.

Who were you with when you were involved in farm work, who were you doing that with?

Well, with my cousin who’s a few years older than I am, who lived near us. He used to go down
to the farm with me and my sister I think was down at the farm as well and well, the family
essentially.

Your mother and your father?

Yes.

[12:37]
What else did you do with your father? We’ve got the allotment, him showing you sort of
graphic scenes, the farm.
Alan Smith Page 6
C1379/65 Track 1

Well, I know… yes, I can’t remember much else actually at that young age. Come in!

[person arriving - break in recording]

[12:57]
I think I’d have to think hard about that actually. I mean he used to take me around – oh I know
what he used to do sometimes, yes – whenever he had finished an order for parts he would take
me with him to the places where these were to be delivered. I think it was in London, Camden
Town I think I recollect as a place where things were delivered at times. And then he would take
me, even in the war we went out to a restaurant, I mean it was very simple. And there’s a smell I
still can, a smell - I’ve never come across it since, a spicy smell – which sticks with me. So
that’s the sort of thing he used to do.

[13:45]
And time spent with your mother at this younger age?

Well, I used to help her I suppose with things like washing up and occasionally going for walks
and so on. Can’t remember a lot about her, being with her, basically, up to ten that is.

And where did you live?

In Bushey near Watford, and then we moved to Bushey Heath.

When did you move?

I think it was 1947. Yes, it must have been.

So the first house that you lived in, do you remember it clearly enough to take us on a sort of
tour of it?

More or less. It was quite small and it was semi-detached. You went in through the front door
and on the left it had a small sort of dining room/lounge and then the next room in the passage on
the left was a bedroom, had been a bedroom or was a bedroom with an air raid shelter in it. It
had one of these Anderson shelters, I think they’re called, with the great big steel plate from the
Alan Smith Page 7
C1379/65 Track 1

roof and steel or iron supports, the idea being I suppose if the house was bombed and badly
damaged but not destroyed completely, the shelter would hold up the rubble on top of you and
you wouldn’t be seriously injured, hopefully. So those were the two rooms on the left of the
passage way, on the right there was a little stairway going up to the first floor and then there was
a kitchen, a small kitchen. And then upstairs there was a bathroom with a toilet in it and two
bedrooms, basically. I was born actually as a twin, identical twin, but during the war we both
got gastroenteritis and he died and I survived.

How old were you both?

At least three. And the reason, well, he died, I think was that there were no, the drugs that were
available were mostly going to the front line rather than for domestic use. And probably some,
well I know my mother had acute appendicitis, peritonitis, at that time and she was able to
survive because I think there was, I think penicillin had just been invented and there was a little
bit for civilian use.

And how long until your sister came along?

My sister was two years younger than me. So we were initially a family of three and I think he
died or we had this disease probably the early 1940s I would think.

And I should imagine you can’t remember the experience of having that at three?

No. Can remember having measles. I don’t know when that was, but it would have been before
I was ten. It was quite a severe attack. My mother was worried because I kept on seeing these
things going up and down the wall, images. I mean they were abstract shapes going up and
down the wall and she was worried about that.

[17:32]
Was there anything at home that as a child you regarded as modern, any objects that you
thought of as being…

Well, we had a radiogram I suppose, a big sort of wooden typical 1930s model with a record
player on the top, or gramophone on the top. I suppose that was fairly modern. I never really