Amongst my Grandfather’s photos are a pack of 4”X5” film negatives simply labelled “from our American trip”.

I don’t know much at all about this time other than in the first half of 1932 together with Grandma he spent 4 or 5 months zig-zagging across the United States in a car. Staying with distant and not-so distant relatives and sometimes camping or staying with others in the same scientific field as my Grandfather.

For in Grandpa’s CV of 1947 (though I doubt that is what it was called then) a paragraph states “1932. Six months special leave visiting research laboratories and works with special reference to metallurgical development and plant, laboratory layout, methods, etc.”. And I’m sure that somewhere in the bowels of the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington there is a report with a similar title. Hands up all those who believe that this was the primary purpose of the trip.

These are the only 4X5 inch negatives I have seen of Grandpa’s and I don’t recall seeing any of the images as prints or slides either. I have wondered why he wasn’t using his Leica or one of the other cameras he had, and can only think he didn’t want to take it with him so bought or borrowed another camera when he got to the US. What ever it was it had a good quality lens and a film-pack back.

But, many, nearly all in fact, of the negatives are well overexposed and very difficult to get much out of. I can only assume he was unfamiliar with the camera and so disappointed with the results that he did nothing with them, not even labelling or putting them in some sort of order. So I have no means of knowing where or when they were taken or what they show.

This group seem to go together however. They show a logging camp in mountains somewhere and the images are fairly self-explanatory, though why they went and who took them there I can’t say. Grandpa liked to photograph mountain landscapes, and when photographing engines and machinery the engineering would be the focus, but these are neither. Make of them what you will, I havn’t cleaned any of them up but I have tried to make them as clear as I can. The last photo may be from somewhere else as it seems to show a natural area of wind-blow and stages of regrowth with different aged young trees.


Remember when looking at the environmental destruction taking place that exactly the same is going on today in Canada and elsewhere. Though now virgin forest is considered waste wood and is made into wood pellets so it can be burned in power stations and boilers producing green, sustainable electricity and heating. My arse.