100 years ago

“Arnato” wrote: “A reader complained of a lack of outdoor games in York, these being exhausted along with cycling, swimming, and boating.

The writer went on to say other towns provided public cricket pitches and lawn tennis courts, etc. Yes, but they do not provide such as the river, the Ouse, which belongs to the Corporation, whom he talks about inducing to promote outdoor games.

The Corporation do promote outdoor sport on the river, and, moreover, it would be patronising home industry, as all the boats on the Staith are built in the locality by experienced workmen. For a small charge you can hire a boat for as long as you like, without any personal expense, such as you would incur at hockey, tennis, or cycling.”

 

50 years ago

All the information in all the libraries in the world is capable of being stored, in three-dimensionally linked plates, in a computer casket no bigger than a cigar box.This was among the visionary ideas and information presented at St John’s College, York, by Professor Ritchie Calder (Montague Burton Professor of International Relations, Edinburgh).

He was giving the concluding address to the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education (Biological and Physi cal Sciences Sections) in their conference on science courses in training colleges. Speaking on Teaching Science in 2,000 AD, he envisaged the existence then of “teleofaction and telegustation” (tele-smelling and tele-tasting programmes) in which television patrons would be compulsively made to taste the snap, crackle and popping cereals, and scent advertisements would drench the air with samples.

However, the world was now rushing terrifyingly into the DNA Age. “Terrifying because we have seen the cataclysmic release of the secret of the atom and the apocalyptic possibilities of men vetoing the evolution of his own species in a nuclear war.” Now, he said, we were in reach of the secret of life itself.

 

25 years ago

Bridlington Beach lived up to its reputation of being one of the cleanest in the country when nearly 100 metal-detector enthusiasts from all over Yorkshire carried out a sweep of the South Side.

The annual clean-up by the Yorkshire Federation of Metal-detectorists yielded little except the competition dies deliberately hidden in the sand. Each year at its Bridlington meeting the Federation raised money for a local charity. The recent effort would help buy five touch-talk machines for the Frederick Holmes special school at Cottingham, near Hull.