When Bill Cooke, my predecessor as MD of Eddystone Radio Ltd retired in 1985, he showed me a 78rpm disc that supposedly had a recording done by Harold Cox, a previous Technical Director of Stratton & Laughton. We had no facilities at West Heath at the time to play this recording, so for many years it remained in a cupboard and disappeared when the company was sold in 2000.

Well, it turned up this week. Peter Carney, the son of one of Eddystone’s longest serving employees, Production Manager, Stan Carney, contacted me to say that his father had rescued to disc when the company closed in 2000 along with a framed portrait of the radio company’s founder Mr George Strattton Laughton which used to hang in the MD’s office.  He was interested enough to transcribe it into an MP3 electronic file, a copy of which, he has given to me, with his permission, to circulate it amongst Eddystone enthusiasts. The disc sounds like a BBC production and is about 6 minutes long. It doesn’t mention Eddystone or Stratton and Laughton as the company but they interview George Stratton Laughton himself, as well as the then Technical Director, Harold Cox ,and the Sales Director, Arthur Edwards G6XJ, about the companies War work and post-war work in the supply of short wave radio communications equipment to the police, various ministries and governments around the world. There was also a big market in  ex-pat British workers in the colonies wishing to listen to the BBC World Service throughout the world. There is no date as to when the recording was made, but it may have coincided with Laughton’s celebrations of their 100^th  year anniversary in the 1960s.

Read more about the history of Eddystone Radio Limited and its founders on the EUG Website HERE

You can listen to the 78rpm disc recording HERE