Most treasured possession

When I say that this is my most treasured possession, like saying yellow is my favourite colour, it is somewhat tongue in cheek. But some truth as well. Some might say it should be my wife but I am not at all sure that one "possesses" a wife. Semantics aside, for the purposes of this post I will maintain my ground.

Most treasured possession

What is it? It is a Rank-Strand Cinemoid swatch book, which I have kept all these years in a box that once contained a "2 MEG LIN L/S" potentiometer. Samples of what are known in the trade as "gels" and used to colour stage lights. The price "2/6" dates it before UK decimalisation in 1971. Back then my older sister had a friend who was involved in theatrical lighting and, besotted as I was with all things colour, I begged him to save me some Cinemoid off-cuts. He went beyond all I could have dreamed and acquired this book for me.  Cinemoid was introduced in 1960 - before that theatre lights were coloured by sheets of dyed gelatin hence "gels", but these could easily melt so had a very short lifetime. Cinemoid was made of acetate and was self extinguishing and came in a glorious range of colours. I saved pocket money to buy some sheets, and later was given a pile of off-cuts the remains of which I still have, closely guarded against the perils of community living. Of which, during one notable period, we could own only that which we could fit into our bedroom, and bedrooms back then were quite small and it was not unusual to return from a trip to find that the contents had been moved lock, stock and barrel to another location. And the movers were more interested in getting the job over and done with than with caring for one's possessions. 

with a colour wheel I made

In spite of this restriction I still have my Cinemoid swatch book and still, I am pleased to say, have my wife.

The Cinemoid brand now seems to have been superseded by Rosco and Lee and, I suppose, with RGB LED lamps there is less call for filters. In spite of this Cinemoid swatch books like mine are not so very uncommon and may be got on eBay for about 20 GBP.

I sacrificed parts of some of my swatches to made for example the colour wheel above. When spun this gave a reasonable approximation to "white".

I still love it.

Dated much earlier in Bailey history is the colour wheel in my next picture. My father made this, I suppose, when he was a boy - it is hand-painted with water colours on a card disk about 6" diameter made to fit a Meccano circular plate and the idea was to spin it to demonstrate that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours. From previous experience I know its "white" was not very, in fact more beige. But to prove the point I have mounted the wheel on a small d.c. motor and here you have the results.

My father's colour wheel attempt

Here it is spinning at speed

Slowing down

And finally stationary

For completeness I repeated this experiment using my own colour wheel with somewhat better results. This probably reflects on the better colour purity of Cinemoid filters compared with war time children's water colours!  You'll note also that my father has the traditional seven rainbow colours whereas I have the three primary and three secondary colours. Perhaps this says something about tradition.

My colour wheel attached to d.c. motor

Spinning slowly

Spinning fast the colours mix to a plausible white

Which brings me to my father's secret cupboard and another treasured possession. We children all knew about his cupboard in my parent's bedroom under the steps that led to the attic, attic of model railway fame on one side and my older sister's boudoir on the other. But to open the cupboard - this was strictly out of bounds. Although when suitably sure of not being discovered, I did occasionally peep in. I cannot of course divulge what was in that cupboard apart from to say that he kept his Meccano there. Which Pandora's box I am pleased to have inherited and is shown below.  It was at one time in its more distant past a canteen for cutlery, hence the blue lining inside.

My father's Pandora's box

Treasure inside the box

Smaller parts in the tray

I may have mentioned before the colours on a 56K-ohm resistor which was contributory to my choice of career, colour light signals confirming my love of railways, or the visible spectrum drawing me to loving optics, and so on. And yet if you ask people in the community here I think they would agree that I would be the last person to comment on or contribute to the choice of colour for walls, carpet or curtains. And this is not because I do not have opinions.

As a final reminder that this writer loves colour, I woke this morning to open the curtains (there's another potential blog post hidden in this action) and saw a blue dawn with the yellow moon setting behind the tree line. I did not think my camera would do it justice but the results are not too far from what I actually saw.

A study in blue and yellow