100 years ago

We had received the following caustic letter from Driver J Routledge, No. 1 section, 1st Division Ammunition Column, Royal Fields Artillery, currently on active service:

“I wish to publicly thank the York City Football Club for the ball I did not receive. The first kick we had it bursted. I am sorry we did not ask for one before all of them were given away to the military. I suppose Kitchener’s Army will have got them. That is all right as far as it goes; but what about the men at the front.

We have not had a ball; nothing at all to give us a bit of heart. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to send the writer of this letter a football.”

 

50 years ago

Within two years, students at York University would be using closed-circuit television to get information they needed quickly.

York would probably be the first university in the world to have a system as large as the one planned for its central library, due to be completed in July 1966. All the University’s science laboratories would have a direct television link with the library.

When a student working in a laboratory had an urgent problem, he would pick up a telephone and get through to the library. An assistant would find the book he needed, place it in front of a camera and turn the pages as required. With a television screen in front of him in the laboratory, the student would be able to read the book and take what notes he needed.

The University Librarian, Mr Harry Fairhurst, said small-scale experiments had been made with similar systems in the United States and at Manchester College of Science and Technology. But York would be the first university anywhere to introduce a system of this size.

 

25 years ago

Health chiefs, it was suggested, could use video cameras to help to cut dog fouling in Hambleton district.

Councillors were being urged to agree to the use of photographic or video evidence to secure convictions for breaches of bylaws. The move followed the failure of the district council’s only prosecution so far for dog fouling. Thirsk magistrates dismissed the case after hearing evidence of an alleged incident at Husthwaite from just one prosecution witness.

Now the chief environmental health officer, Mr Alan Burnett, said that in future the council should seek two independent witnesses to alleged bylaw breaches. “It is proposed that, in the first cases taken, two council officers observe the incident and that their evidence be supported by photographic or video film,” he said.