Misplaced Pages

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38-511: The BBC began broadcasting in 1922 but nothing was recorded until ten years later. At that time, only one recording machine, a Blattnerphone , was available, so few programmes were recorded. By 1936 a number of gramophone recordings had been made, and a temporary secretary, Marie Slocombe was given the task of sorting and disposing of them. However, noticing that some included speeches by George Bernard Shaw , H. G. Wells , Winston Churchill and others, she decided that they should be kept. With

76-485: A "promoter of genius with far-seeing ideas about technical developments in sound and colour" according to the film director Michael Powell , business problems with the studio, due to the advent of rival talking picture systems, led to heavy financial loss, and in 1934 Joe Rock leased Elstree Studios from Ludwig Blattner, and bought it outright in 1936, a year after Blattner's suicide. Of German origin, Blattner emigrated to Great Britain in 1897 aged 16 with Gustav Mellin,

114-460: A bus service that stops at Borehamwood (route 601) going to Welwyn Garden City via St Albans and back. The 644 service also runs from Hatfield to Queensbury via Borehamwood. Intalink operate a bus service to other parts of Hertfordshire . The A1 road passes just to the east of the town, and the M25 motorway passes about two miles (three kilometres) north of it. In the 2011 census, the population

152-591: A fellow German emigrant. He had two British-born children, Gerry Blattner (born 1913 in Liverpool ), and Betty Blattner (born in 1914 in Cheshire). They both followed their father into the film business, Gerry as a producer and Betty as a makeup artist. Ludwig Blattner never became a British citizen, and during the First World War he remained in an internment camp, which interrupted his management of

190-451: A lake. Meadow Park includes a large playing field, tennis courts and basketball courts. Borehamwood has a large shopping area called Borehamwood Shopping Park, featuring large retail stores. The hamlet of Well End has a notable pub, the Mops and Brooms , reputedly the site of a battle between travellers and village folk. Adjacent to the pub is a much older building: Nelson Cottage (c.1600)

228-439: A redundant wartime factory, firstly for the purpose of real-time gunnery control, and later for surface-to-air guided weapons and missiles, and for specialist cryptography and code-breaking computers for GCHQ . Borehamwood is currently undergoing a substantial housing transformation which has seen hundreds of new homes built over the last five years. Two further developments are being built and more are expected. In addition to

266-466: A title she held until her retirement in 1972. The archive includes material dating back to the 19th century, including about 200 wax cylinders , one of which is an 1890 recording of Florence Nightingale . The collection has continued to grow over the years, and from 1998 was regularly drawn on for the BBC Radio 4 series The Archive Hour . In 2007 a limited sample was made available online as part of

304-465: A waltz "The Ladies of Wallasey". In about 1920 he moved to Manchester where he managed a chain of cinemas. There, in 1923 he composed and published a piece of music about the film actress Pola Negri titled "Pola Negri Grand Souvenir March". Later in the 1920s, he bought the British film rights to Lion Feuchtwanger 's novel Jew Süss although the film was not made until 1934 after Blattner had sold

342-524: Is based in the town, the head office of the delivery portion having moved to nearby St Albans in 2015; and, until 2003, so were the headquarters of the United Kingdom subsidiary of T-Mobile , with both being based in the office blocks standing on part of what used to be the old Elstree Studios. Regent Inns has its head office on Elstree Way. George Wimpey also has offices within the town. The takeaway delivery company Just Eat also has an office in

380-716: Is now a private residence but was the original Mops and Brooms alehouse. It was renamed the Lord Nelson c.1840–50 and traded under that name until its closure in 1932 and replacement by the current pub, which eventually reverted to the older name. Borehamwood is within the BBC London and ITV London region. Television signals are received from the Crystal Palace TV transmitter and the local relay transmitter situated in Hemel Hempstead . The town

418-782: Is served by both BBC Radio London and BBC Three Counties Radio . Other radio stations including Heart Hertfordshire and Radio Verulam . The Borehamwood & Elstree Times is a privately owned, online-only local newspaper covering the local and adjacent area. The Town Crier is a quarterly, council-run community publication for Elstree & Borehamwood residents. Borehamwood has a number of primary schools, including Cowley Hill Primary School, Woodlands Primary School, Parkside Primary School, Yavneh Primary School and Meryfield Primary School. Secondary schools include Hertswood Academy , Elstree Screen Arts Academy and Yavneh College . Independent schools include Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' , Girls' and Aldenham schools. Oaklands College has

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456-469: The Indiana Jones films. The facility was partly demolished in the 1980s to make way for a Tesco Extra supermarket on one side and an office block complex on the other. The area between the supermarket and the office blocks is all that remains of the original studio, which has been much reduced in size and usefulness to production companies as a result. The Shenley Road Studios were later used for

494-566: The BBC Elstree Centre . The studios have, over the years, been home to Alfred Hitchcock 's film Blackmail , Jim Henson 's TV series The Muppet Show was also produced there, and now BBC's popular soap, EastEnders and their medical drama Holby City . An episode of Judge John Deed included scenes of the Tesco Extra , but with Borehamwood crossed out and Lewes written in its place. Several other studios including

532-634: The BBC Empire Service , and rented several Blattnerphones from 1930 onwards, one of which was used to record King George V's speech at the opening of the India Round Table Conference on 12 November 1930. The 1932 BBC Year Book (covering November 1930 to October 1931) said: In some ways the most important event of the year has been the adoption by the B.B.C. of the Blattnerphone recording apparatus described in

570-629: The Gate Studios and the Danziger Studios at nearby Elstree have been demolished. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios complex (demolished in the early 1970s) saw the production of many films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), as well as ITV television series such as The Prisoner (1967–68). The newer Millennium Studios were situated on Elstree Way, Borehamwood. The UK headquarters of Pizza Hut restaurants

608-525: The Second World War , the town's population greatly increased, with large areas of council housing set up for displaced Londoners, many of which are now in private ownership. Fast train connections to central London have resulted in the town becoming a primarily residential suburb. In 1946, the Admiralty started to build highly secret high-performance electronic digital computers at Borehamwood in

646-483: The civil parish of Elstree. The name of the civil parish was changed to Elstree and Borehamwood on 24 February 1982. The ecclesiastical parishes of Borehamwood and Elstree were reunited on 1 April 2005, also under the name "Elstree and Borehamwood". From the 1920s onwards, the town became known as one of the main centres of the UK film, and later television, industries due to the presence of production studios. Following

684-681: The BBC Archive Trial. Resource constraints mean that the BBC has been selective in maintaining items in the archive. About 66% of radio output is now archived, the collection's recordings are of around 350,000 hours in total duration. Automatically available are "live major news sequence programmes, live music sessions and concerts, drama, arts, features, events, light entertainment, science and education programmes", while "DJ shows with commercially recorded music, local radio and World Service output" are less likely to be retained. Access to part of

722-546: The Blattnerphone. Whilst on a promotional tour of his sound recording technology in 1928 he would choose ladies from the audience to dance with to music being played from a Blattnerphone. Prior to the First World War, Blattner was involved in the entertainment industry in the Liverpool City Region : he managed the "La Scala" cinema in Wallasey from 1912 to 1914, conducted the cinema's orchestra, and composed

760-662: The Gaiety cinema in Wallasey. He married Else (also known as Elisabeth), the widow of Edmund Meisel the composer of the score for Battleship Potemkin , some time after Meisel's death in 1930, therefore Else was not the mother of Ludwig's children born in 1913 and 1914. Ludwig hanged himself at the Elstree Country Club in October 1935, when his son was 22 and his daughter was 21. Ludwig and Gerry were honoured by

798-654: The TV series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Big Brother , as well as several major feature films. The Inspector Morse TV series' production offices were based in the studios and, although the series was set in Oxford , several exterior locations (banks, shops etc.) were filmed in the streets of Borehamwood. The former British National Studios off Clarendon Road, referred to locally as "The Douglas Fairbanks studios" (which were bought by Lew Grade 's ATV in May 1958), are now

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836-471: The Technical Section. For years the B.B.C 's programme officials have longed for a machine which would be useful on the one hand for recording outside events such as commentaries, speeches, etc., of which normally no record existed, and on the other for rehearsals, and in particular for enabling certain broadcasters to hear themselves as others hear them. In 1939, the BBC used a Blattnerphone (not

874-400: The United Kingdom, and developer of one of the earliest magnetic sound recording devices. Ludwig Blattner, also known as Louis Blattner , was a pioneer of early magnetic sound recording, licensing a steel wire-based design from German inventor Dr. Kurt Stille, and enhancing it to use steel tape instead of wire, thereby creating an early form of tape recorder . This device was marketed as

912-486: The archive is made available to researchers and the public through the British Library . Technological advances have increasingly improved the durability of early recordings, requiring their translation into digital formats, and enhancements such as noise reduction . Blattnerphone Ludwig Blattner (1881 – 30 October 1935) was a German-born inventor, film producer, director and studio owner in

950-540: The earliest mentions of Bosci de Boreham (Wood of Boreham), is in 1188: In 1776, the House of Lords granted: Borehamwood was historically part of the parish of Elstree . A separate ecclesiastical parish of "All Saints, Boreham Wood" was created on 26 February 1909, covering the part of Elstree parish east of the Midland Railway . Despite this change to the ecclesiastical boundaries, Borehamwood remained part of

988-498: The later Marconi-Stille recorder) to record Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 's announcement to Britain of the outbreak of World War II . In 1930, Blattner promoted a version of his Blattnerphone technology as one of the first telephone answering machines , and in 1931 Blatter promoted a version of the Blattnerphone as the Blattner Book Reader, an early Audiobook playback system for the blind. Despite being

1026-536: The naming of Blattner Close in Elstree in the mid-1990s. Borehamwood Borehamwood ( / ˌ b ɔːr əm ˈ w ʊ d / , historically also Boreham Wood ) is a town in southern Hertfordshire , England, 12 miles (19 km) from Charing Cross . Borehamwood has a population of 36,322, and is within the London commuter belt . The town's film and TV studios are commonly known as Elstree Studios . One of

1064-414: The nickname of the "British Hollywood ". Whilst most of these studios, collectively known as "Elstree Studios", have now closed, two still remain. Many films were shot at the studios on Shenley Road including The Dam Busters (1955), Star Wars (1977, and subsequent films in the franchise), Moby Dick (1956), Summer Holiday (1963), and The Shining (1980) starring Jack Nicholson , some of

1102-554: The rights to Gaumont British . In early 1928, press reports appeared saying that Blattner was planning a 400-acre "Hollywood, England" complex with a hospital, 150 room hotel, aeroplane club and the largest collection of studios in the world, for which he was planning to spend between 2 million and 5 million pounds. Blattner later formed the Ludwig Blattner Picture Corporation in Borehamwood in

1140-610: The rights for the use outside the USA of a lenticular colour process called Keller-Dorian cinematography . This process was then known as the Blattner Keller-Dorian process, which lost out to rival colour systems. Ludwig Blattner originally intended the Blattnerphone to be used as a system of recording and playback for talking pictures, but the BBC saw its potential to record and "timeshift" BBC radio programmes for use with

1178-595: The studio complex that is now known as BBC Elstree Centre , buying the Ideal Film Company studio (formerly known as Neptune Studios) in 1928, renaming it as Blattner Studios. In 1928 his company produced a series of short films of musical performances such as "Albert Sandler and His Violin [Serenade – Schubert]" and "Teddy Brown and His Xylophone". The best known films produced by his film company were A Knight in London (1929) and My Lucky Star (1933), which

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1216-540: The studios, the town is home to many retail shops, hotels, restaurants, offices and light industry. The hotels cater mainly to tourists visiting the Elstree Studios, attendees of the television shows being recorded in the Elstree Studios, and London visitors due to the proximity to London and the considerable lower accommodation rates. There is one weekly newspaper, the Borehamwood & Elstree Times . On

1254-445: The then Head of Recorded Programmes, Lynton Fletcher, she continued maintaining the BBC's collection, as well as making recordings herself in the field, encouraging others to do so, and acquired Ludwig Koch 's collection of birdsong recordings. By 1939 the collection had grown to 2,000 discs, including the voices of Hitler and Goebbels . This had increased to 7,000 by 1944 and in 1941 Slocombe had become Recorded Programmes Librarian,

1292-616: The town in the same complex as Pizza Hut. Since 2015, Borehamwood has also been home to the UK subsidiary of the olive oil brand, Filippo Berio . The first third of the Watling Chase Timberland Trail stretches from Elstree & Borehamwood railway station up to Shenley . South of the town is a large area of grassland and trees called Woodcock Hill Village Green . Section 16 of the London Outer Orbital Path (London Loop) runs adjacent to

1330-497: The town, starting in Elstree and through Scratchwood towards the London Borough of Barnet . Borehamwood is home to Boreham Wood FC and Watford FC Reserves who play their home games at Meadow Park . Arsenal previously played at Meadow Park before moving to Emirates Stadium in 2024. There are several parks in the area. Aberford Park is featured with the source of the brook which has been artificially made to look like

1368-479: The west side of Borehamwood is Elstree & Borehamwood railway station (TfL Zone 6) served by trains operated by Govia Thameslink Railway on the Thameslink route . Metroline for London buses runs its number 107 service through the town from New Barnet to Edgware and back. Metroline for London buses also operate Number 292 which goes to Colindale and Rossington Avenue. Uno (Bus Company) run

1406-521: Was 31,955; this rose to 36,322 in 2021, an increase of 13.67%. Borehamwood is the most populated town in Hertsmere, ahead of Bushey. The Jewish community numbers in excess of 6,100, up from just 3,900 in 2011; combined with neighbouring Elstree, the community counts around 8,000 individuals. Since the 1914, the town has been home to several film studios and many shots of its streets are included in final cuts of 20th century British films. This earned it

1444-482: Was co-directed by Blattner. Films produced by other companies at the Blattner Studios included Dorothy Gish and Charles Laughton 's first drama talkie Wolves (1930), the 1934 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe 's short story " The Tell-Tale Heart ", Rookery Nook (1930) and A Lucky Sweep (1932). Ludwig Blattner was also involved in an early colour motion picture process: in about 1929 he bought

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