This was Cumbria
Last century I emerged from teaching about computing to programming, database design and eventually multimedia creation in its very early days, before speedy Internet allowed today’s audio, video and images to be transmitted as if on TV.
My first major contract to combine these multi media was for the In Search of The Border Reivers project – see http://reivers.info and that success led to a request from Cumbria Archives to illustrate some oral history tapes as part of Cumbria’s Millennium commemoration celebrations.
I was given cassette tapes, permission and a licence to visit many centres in Cumbria and digitise appropriate images around the county and I had some enthusiastic degree student helpers. The result was one display on one computer that went around various libraries, village halls and other public places, one site at a time.
Remember that in 1999 – 2001 the Internet could not reliably send video or audio to your home, and your home would have a dial up modem that meant if the phone line was used for the Internet then you would not be able to use the phone for any other reason!
How things have changed! Now in retirement, I decided to use the permissions that I have to make these audio, images and videos available to the public for non commercial and education interest.
I hope that you enjoy them. Please leave a comment. My reward has been the positive comments and the number of people who have viewed and enjoyed some of this work. For instance, the recovery of the steam digger has had 780,000 views! And 260 encouraging comments. See https://thiswascumbria.uk/steam-digger-from-the-deep-video/
The Internet is a community source of goodwill and cooperation and I thank all who give their time and expertise in helping me to develop. I use WordPress and Elementor Pro as the page designer as well as various plugins, some freely given and others paid for.
If you have any old photos, or any memories that are in digitised audio or typed, then please email them to me and I will see if I can illustrate them in mini videos and include them on the site – only Cumbria related ones though please.
Please send comments and contributions to email@thiswascumbria.uk
Peter Nicholson