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The Blood Donor
"The Blood Donor" is an episode from the television comedy series ''Hancock'', the final BBC series featuring British comedian Tony Hancock. First transmitted on 23 June 1961, the show was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and was produced by Duncan Wood. Supporting Hancock were Patrick Cargill, Hugh Lloyd, Frank Thornton, James Ottaway and June Whitfield. It remains one of the best known situation comedy episodes ever broadcast in the United Kingdom. Synopsis Hancock arrives at his local hospital to give blood. "It was either that or join the Young Conservatives", he tells the Blood Donor Department's reception nurse (Whitfield), before getting into an argument with her about whether British blood is superior to other types. After managing to offend two other waiting donors, Hancock amuses himself by reading the waiting room's wall posters out loud, finally singing " Coughs and sneezes spread diseases" to the tune of the Deutschlandlied before being shown in to see Dr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hancock's Half Hour
''Hancock's Half Hour'' was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Galton and Simpson, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sid James, Sidney James; the radio version also co-starred, at various times, Moira Lister, Andrée Melly, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. The final television series, renamed simply ''Hancock'', starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in Cheam, East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the Sitcom, situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development. The radio version was produced by Dennis Main Wilson for most of its run. After Main Wilson departed for his television career, his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wine Gum
Wine gums (or winegums) are chewy, firm pastille-type sweets similar to gumdrops without the sugar coating, originating from the United Kingdom. All brands have their own recipes containing various sweeteners, flavourings, and colourings. Wine gums are popular in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, South Africa and many Commonwealth nations, as well as several European countries. Common brands include Maynards, Bassett's and Lion. The gums usually come in five shapes: kidney, crown, rhombus, circle and oblong, and are usually labelled with the name of a wine: for example, ''Maynards'' use port, sherry, champagne, burgundy, and claret; other manufacturers may prefer different names such as rioja, merlot or rum. Despite the name, they usually contain no alcohol. Depending on local laws or manufacturer's practices, packages may bear a specific statement that the sweets "contain no wine." History Charles Riley Maynard started his business in 1880 by producing confections ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laser Disc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans . Unlike most optical disc standards, LaserDisc is not fully digital, and instead requires the use of analog video signals. Although the format was capable of offering higher-quality video and audio than its consumer rivals— VHS and Betamax videotape—LaserDisc never managed to gain widespread use in North America, largely due to high costs for the players and the inability to record TV programmes. It eventually did gain some traction in that region and became somewhat popular in the 1990s. It was not a popular format in Europe and Australia. By contrast, the format was much more popular in Japan and in the more affluent regions of Southeast Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and was the prevalent rental video med ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telerecording
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s for the preservation, re-broadcasting and sale of television programmes before the introduction of quadruplex videotape, which from 1956 eventually superseded the use of kinescopes for all of these purposes. Kinescopes were the only practical way to preserve live television broadcasts prior to videotape. Typically, the term Kinescope can refer to the process itself, the equipment used for the procedure (a movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, and synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate), or a film made using the process. The term originally referred to the cathode ray tube used in television receivers, as named by inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1929. Hence, the recordings were known in full as kinescope films or kinesc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16mm Film
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational, televisual) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335 (). RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935. History Eastman Kodak introduced 16 mm film in 1923, as a less expensive alternative to 35 mm film for amateurs. The same year the Victor Animatograph Corporation started producing their own 16 mm cameras and projectors. During the 1920s, the fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gramophone Record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. At first, the discs were commonly made from shellac, with earlier records having a fine abrasive filler mixed in. Starting in the 1940s polyvinyl chloride became common, hence the name vinyl. The phonograph record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century. It had co-existed with the phonograph cylinder from the late 1880s and had effectively superseded it by around 1912. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as the compact cassette were mass-marketed. By the 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the record left the mainstream in 1991. Since the 1990s, records con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to an antenna which radiates the waves, and received by another antenna connected to a radio receiver. Radio is very widely used in modern technology, in radio communication, radar, radio navigation, remote control, remote sensing, and other applications. In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking, and satellite communication, among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal (impressing an information signal on the radio wave by varying some aspect of the wave) in the transmitter. In radar, used to locate and track objects like aircraft, ships, spacecraf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Radio Ham
"The Radio Ham" is an episode from the comedy series ''Hancock'', the final BBC series featuring British comedian Tony Hancock. First transmitted on 9 June 1961, the show was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and was produced by Duncan Wood. The title is a retronym. Synopsis Anthony Hancock has taken up amateur radio as a hobby but is dissatisfied with his conversations with other users, which consist mainly of remote games of chess and Snakes and Ladders, as well as discussions about the weather with a fellow operator in Tokyo who speaks poor English. Just as he is expressing his wish for more excitement in his hobby he hears a distress signal from a yachtsman whose boat is sinking. Hancock tries to help but struggles to copy down the man's location details correctly, suffering numerous inconveniences and interruptions such as a broken pencil, having to put another shilling in the electricity meter, having his radio set forcibly disconnected by his burly neighbour, ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pye Records
Pye Records was a British record label. Its best known artists were Lonnie Donegan (1956–1969), Petula Clark (1957–1971), the Searchers (1963–1967), the Kinks (1964–1971), Sandie Shaw (1964–1971), Status Quo (1968–1971) and Brotherhood of Man (1975–1979). The label changed its name to PRT Records (distributing as Precision Records & Tapes) in 1980, before being briefly reactivated as Pye Records in 2006. History The Pye Company originally manufactured televisions and radios. Its main plant was situated off what used to be Haig Road, in Cambridge, and it entered the record business when it bought Nixa Records in 1953. In 1955, the company acquired Polygon Records, a label that had been established by Leslie Clark and Alan A. Freeman to control distribution of the recordings of the former's daughter, Petula Clark. Pye merged it with Nixa Records to form Pye Nixa Records. Pye International In 1958, Pye International Records was established. The company licensed record ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monkeys
Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomplete paraphyletic grouping; however, in the broader sense based on cladistics, apes (Hominoidea) are also included, making the terms ''monkeys'' and ''simians'' synonyms in regards to their scope. In 1812, Geoffroy grouped the apes and the Cercopithecidae group of monkeys together and established the name Catarrhini, "Old World monkeys", ("''singes de l'Ancien Monde''" in French). The extant sister of the Catarrhini in the monkey ("singes") group is the Platyrrhini (New World monkeys). Some nine million years before the divergence between the Cercopithecidae and the apes, the Platyrrhini emerged within "monkeys" by migration to South America likely by ocean. Apes are thus deep in the tree of extant and extinct monkeys, and any of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with po ... situations, or acting foolish (as in slapstick), or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedy, stand-up comedian. A popular saying often attributed to Ed Wynn attempts to differentiate the two terms: "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny." This draws a distinction between how much of the comedy (drama), comedy can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona. Since the 1980s, a new wave of comedy, called alternative comedy, has grown in popularity with its more offbeat and experimental style. This normally i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teleprompters
A teleprompter, also known as an autocue, is a display device that prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script. Using a teleprompter is similar to using cue cards. The screen is in front of, and usually below, the lens of a professional video camera, and the words on the screen are reflected to the eyes of the presenter using a sheet of clear glass or other beam splitter, so that they are read by looking directly at the lens position, but are not imaged by the lens. Light from the performer passes through the front side of the glass into the lens, while a shroud surrounding the lens and the back side of the glass prevents unwanted light from entering the lens. Mechanically this works in a very similar way to the Pepper's ghost illusion from classic theatre: an image viewable from one angle but not another. Because the speaker can look straight at the lens while reading the script, the teleprompter creates the illusion that the speaker has m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
