Directory of Previous Talks

  Peter Ivey is a member of Stumperlowe Probus Club.  He gained degrees in Physics at Bristol University before working in BT Labs for 15 years.  In 1989 he joined the University of Sheffield and left in2003 to run his own company in designing microchips. His previous talk was an introduction to microchip technology and … Read more

We take for granted a clean, safe water supply. Infected and polluted water can kill. This was the crux of the account of the typhoid epidemic in Croydon, the outbreak first recorded on 27th October 1937 resulting in 43 deaths and 341 contracting the bacteria. Symptoms include extreme lucidity, delusion, intense fever, loss of appetite, … Read more

Nancy has been the Editor of the Star and the Telegraph for two years.  Although they once were run by separate editorial teams they are now under the same team. The Telegraph started as the Sheffield Evening Telegraph 130 years ago.  It was the first daily paper.  We saw a slide of the front page.  … Read more

Our speaker this week, Professor Rab Scott of Sheffield University, is the Head of Digital and virtual reality at AMRC, located at Orgreave on the Rotherham/Sheffield boundary. Not so long ago this was the location of a major industrial dispute which looked to the coal-dependent past but now looks to the future and the beginnings … Read more

Comedy – Cinema’s first Genre?  By Martin Carter. Martin briefly covered: The first 30 years of cinema How comedy became a popular genre The early actors and stars In 1895 at the Grand Cafe, Paris, Auguste and Louis Lumiere were the first to set up and show films.  They were billed as “life as it … Read more

I suppose it all depends who you believe – Pam Ayres or Trevor Wragg. To quote my favourite female poet’s odd ode: “I am a dry stone waller, all day I dry stone wall. Of all appalling callings, dry stone walling’s worst of all.” I can’t for a minute imagine Trevor Wragg voicing those sentiments. … Read more