The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  Because Mrs Peed had not the faintest idea who John Nightly was or indeed had ever been – she remembered the Beatles as ‘people from the North’ – the boss found her an easy companion. Endy had visited London only twice (not unusual for a Cornishwoman of her age) and had not been impressed by it. Indeed, it was difficult to find very much that would impress her. But what she did appreciate was general good manners and a stolid reserve, which was of course John Nightly’s stock-in-trade. As with many people who come from a background of family disagreement and frustration, though the housekeeper would laugh and joke with RCN and Robert the relationship between herself and her paymasters was strictly business, most conversations ending abruptly with the lively matriarch’s, ‘Well… I’ll have to get on, I suppose.’ And get on she would, buzzing through the house with dustpan, brush and her faithful bottle of Dettol while humming some long forgotten melody, a Methodist hymn or battle cry, which never seemed to resolve.

  ‘Isn’t it a coincidence you being called Daly and him Nightly?’

  ‘Suppose it is… Daly is an old Huntingdon name and there’s a lot of people in Cambridge called Nightly – fairly normal Cambridge name. Not from the university, but from the town. His father came from Boston, in Lincolnshire, which is still quite local.’ RCN sipped his tea. ‘We thought it was pretty ridiculous when we first met, though…’

  Endy continued to pick dog hairs off the carpet while RCN flicked through the Cornishman.

  ‘What about the name Peed?’

  ‘Don’t start on about that! All the trouble I’ve had with that over the years, all the terrible names and…’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve had a lot to put up with…’ RCN kept his head down.

  ‘Lot? I’ve had to put up with a right lot, I can tell you! I’ve had to bloody well put up with – oh, sorry…’

  Endy got up, washed her hands and filled the kettle with water from the hot tap. She often got confused about the positions of hot and cold so that RCN would habitually find some excuse as to why the kettle had to be refilled with fresh, cold water before getting up himself to make the final cup of tea of the day.

  ‘I don’t know where the name comes from; I just wish I’d never heard of it! That’s all I can tell you,’ Endy continued. ‘It might be Methodist – we were an old Methodist family, the Peeds – but it was difficult at school of course because “Endy Peed” sounds like some kind of… 100-legged creature. Didn’t take long for them to start calling me “insect”, which was actually what my husband used to call me as w… BUGGER ME!’

  Endy had turned on the hot tap thinking it was the cold and almost scalded herself. ‘Ooh, sorry…’ She immediately switched to the cold one and ran her hand underneath it to try to reverse the damage. ‘Then down at Quethiock House, where I was known as “Miss Peed”, of course, the children could never… They never knew if that was Miss Peed or Miss Speed, so that was where I picked up the nickname “Speedy” – I suppose partly because I used to move so fast in those days.’

  ‘You still do!’

  ‘Not as fast as I used to, though… I can tell you… I was a fast mover in those days, you know! Oh! Well… I mean… when I was working, I was…’

  1 John Cale Paris 1919 (Reprise K44239) 1973 Cale used a Leonard Bernstein scholarship to get him from the Amman Valley, South Wales firstly to Goldsmiths College in London then to Massachusetts where he studied with Copland and Xenakis at Tanglewood.

  2 Leonard Bernstein ‘The Norton Lectures’ (Columbia X1398) 1973.

  3 Referring to either the medley on A Wizard, A True Star (Bearsville BR2133) 1973 or side two of Todd (Bearsville 6954), 1974.

  4 By Ralph Metzner, Timothy Leary & Richard Alpert (Citadel), 1964.

  5 The Divided Self (Pelican reprint), 1965.

  6 The World Psychedelic Centre opened in Belgravia by Mike Hollingshead.

  Free School Lane, Cambridge, Michaelmas Term 1967

  Photo credit: Flora Johnson/Cambridge Evening News

  Free School Lane, Cambridge. Saturday, 20 May 1967. 10.30am.

  Back in Cambridge for the weekend to break the news to John and Frieda that Iona was pregnant, the couple stood in the vestibule of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, located in Free School Lane, a stone’s throw from KCEMS. John had spent many hours in these small rooms hidden away behind the city centre, learning all about the unsung heroes who had made so many important discoveries by studying tides, stars, wave patterns and in turn acoustics and sound. In particular, this was the scientific home of one of John Nightly’s forebears, the astronomer and inventor of both the telegraph and the microphone, Sir Charles Wheatstone.

  This morning, John Hilton, John’s friend and former drummer with the now defunct Everyman, would be delivering this week’s Saturday Lecture – Wave Machines: Adventures in Cybersound – a subject with which John Nightly was all too familiar.

  ‘Hallo everyone. It really is very nice to see so many of you here today, for the Whipple Museum’s sixth Saturday Lecture of the Easter term. Thank you all very much for coming, particularly with the weather as it is today.’

  The speaker smiled apologetically as the thirty or so members of the audience settled down.

  ‘We’re here to talk about, and also take a look at, wave machines – whatever they might be! Particularly the work of Sir Charles Wheatstone, who, through his study of waves, and his interest in acoustics, almost by accident ended up inventing… the microphone. You may want to sit on the seats provided or find a place to get comfortable as we’re going to be based in this one room for the next fifty minutes or so.’ The speaker referred to his notes: ‘Right then, ladies and gentleman… Today’s Saturday Lecture is entitled Adventures in Cybersound, the Work of Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875). Let me tell you something about this extraordinary man…’

  The speaker moved towards one of the peculiar-looking contraptions by the window. He cleared his throat to begin as he threw a welcoming smile in the direction of John and Iona.

  ‘Charles Wheatstone was born into a musical family in Gloucester, and it was sound that first captured Wheatstone’s imagination. In 1821 he began to try to classify vibrations – the basis of sound. He investigated vibrations in strings, columns of air and metal rods and, in the search for a simple method of demonstrating how these vibrations worked, invented the kaleidophone.’ Hilton pointed to a diagram. ‘Three metal rods were inserted into a wooden base, with reflective beads on the end of each rod. The rods had different cross-sections, with one bent to 90 degrees at its middle. When the rods vibrated in the different modes, they produced different sounds and the beads displayed different patterns. The end of the bent rod was free to vibrate in both the horizontal and vertical plane, producing a three-dimensional pattern. The instrument was first displayed at the Royal Institution on 4 May 1827, though its inventor was apparently so shy that he asked Michael Faraday to deliver his lectures for him.

  By the time Wheatstone wrote his last paper on sound he had entirely categorised pitched harmonics as they applied to wind instruments, at the same time establishing himself as a major scientific figure. He applied all this knowledge to an invention that used air to make musical notes but by using a human breathing mechanism. Initially he found this difficult. Wheatstone’s Symphonium of 1829’ [indicates to another diagram] ‘required lung power to supply the air to its metal reeds, with the player using keys to select the desired note. However, he then began using bellows to supply that air and, in the process, invented an instrument we are all too familiar with today: the concertina! The important innovation was the reeds being arranged radially around the end hand plates of the machine and laid flat. With twenty-four buttons for each hand, the instrument had a range of over four octaves. He also made sure his concertina was “double-acting”, meaning that the same note could be played and sustained with the bellows going in or going out.

  ‘Following on from this success, Wheatstone turned his attention to electricity. He was appoin
ted Professor of Experimental Philosophy at King’s College London in 1834, and invented a machine that used rotating mirrors and eight miles of wire to measure the speed of electricity. However, at some point an error in his calculations led him to believe that electricity was faster than light. Undaunted, three years later, in 1837, he patented the electric telegraph and with Sir William Fothergill Cooke made it available to the public. Now… let me tell you a little about Sir Charles Wheatstone’s amazing life and achievements…’

  item: Biographical papers: Sir Charles Wheatstone (source the Wilkins Library, Massachusetts) private papers, book 6, John Hoe bequest. David Googenbroom Collection.

  Sir Charles Wheatstone (b. Feb. 6 1802, d. Oct. 19 1875), was an English physicist and inventor whose work was instrumental in the development of the telegraph in Great Britain. Around 1821 Wheatstone is said* to have devised the so-called ‘enchanted lyre’. Musicians played on a piano or harp in the room above the lyre, and the vibrations, passed down a brass wire, made the lyre appear to play itself. Wheatstone served (1823–34) an apprenticeship as a musical-instrument maker. His work in acoustics won him (1834) a professorship of experimental physics at King’s College London where his pioneering experiments in electricity included measuring the speed of electricity, devising an improved dynamo and inventing two new devices to measure and regulate electrical resistance and current: the rheostat and the Wheatstone bridge, an electrical circuit in truth actually invented by S. H. Christie to measure the value of a resistance. It is named after Wheatstone, however, as he was the first to put it to extensive and significant use. He worked on magneto-electricity and submarine telegraphy, and he suggested the stereoscope still used today in X-rays and aerial photographs, later perfected by the inventor of the kaleidoscope, David Brewster. In 1837 he designed, with William Fothergill Cooke, an electric telegraph system that became standard in Britain in 1840. On 10 July 1837 Charles Wheatstone and William F. Cooke patented the electric telegraph.

  source: Various incl. The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Cable and Wireless and the Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review:

  item: ‘A New and Beautiful Invention’, Poughkeepsie Journal. 13 September 1837.

  An English newspaper contains the following description of a new and highly ingenious mode of applying the principles of electricity, or ‘galvanism’, to the communication of intelligence – in other words, to the construction of an electric telegraph. The theory is probably correct, but we fear that serious obstacles will prevent its application to an extensive scale, as appears to be contemplated by the writer: I begin…

  When in London, a few days ago, we learned that an eminent scientific gentleman -1- is, at present engaged in maturing an invention which promises to lead to the most astonishing results, and to exert a vast influence on the future progress of society. It is an electric Telegraph, the powers of which as much surpass those of the common instrument bearing that name, as the art of printing surpasses the picture-writing of the Mexicans. The telegraph consists of five wires, enclosed in a sheath of Indian rubber, which isolates them from each other and protects them from the external air.

  A galvanic trough or ‘pile’ is placed at the one end of the wires, which act upon needles at the other; and, when any of the wires is put in communication with the trough, a motion is instantly produced in the needle at the other extremity, which motion ceases the moment the connection between the wire and the trough is suspended. The five wires may thus denote as many letters, and by binary and trinary combinations the six and twenty letters of the alphabet may easily be represented. By a simple mechanical contrivance, the communication between the wires and the trough may be established and stopped, as the keys of a piano forte are touched by the hands of a practised musician, and the indications will be exhibited at the other end of the chain of wires, as quickly as they can be read off.

  In the experiments already made, the chain of wires has been extended to a length of five miles (by forming numerous coils within a limited surface) and the two ends being placed near each other, it is found that the transmission of the electric action is, so far as the human sense can discern, perfectly instantaneous. Little doubt is entertained that it may be conveyed over a hundred or a thousand miles, with the same velocity; and the powers of the instrument promise to be as great as the action is rapid. It will not be confined, like the common telegraph, to the transmission of a few sentences, or a short message, and this only in the day time, in clear weather, and by repeated operations, each consuming a portion of time; for, while it works by night or by day, it will convey intelligence with the speed of thought, and with such copiousness and ease that a speech slowly spoken in London might be written down in Edinburgh, each sentence appearing on paper within a few minutes after it was uttered four hundred miles off ! There may be practical difficulties attending its operation, as yet unknown; but we speak here of what intelligent men, acquainted with the experiments now in progress, look forward to as their probable result. If the promises their experiments hold out be realised, the discovery will perhaps be the grandest in the annals of the world; and its effects will be such as no efforts of imagination can anticipate.

  item: Cooke and Wheatstone Five-Needle Telegraph System

  Wheatstone’s Five-Needle Telegraph System employed five magnetic needles and a lattice grid of 20 letters (omitting C, J, Q, U, X and Z). Five wires are needed to send the signals, which deflect two of the five needles at the other end that point to the letter in question. One needle is used to point to a numeral. Cooke and Wheatstone refined their invention until it used only one needle and a signal code. However, ill feeling developed between them as to who actually invented the telegraph.

  The telegraph employed five iron needles which when not in use rested in a vertical position. Each needle could be moved either to the left or the right by electromagnets. To transmit a letter of the alphabet two switches were pressed which caused two needles to move and point to the appropriate letter. By pressing different combinations of switches any one of 20 letters could be transmitted.

  *Unfortunately the omission of the letters J, C, Q, U, X and Z made it difficult to send some words. Alternative methods were adopted to spell words such as Queen, Quiz or Axe. Despite its shortcomings, their equipment had the advantage of being usable by unskilled operators. Although the five-needle telegraph was easy to operate it required six wires. It was soon replaced by a single needle instrument. Each letter of the alphabet was given a code of right and left needle movements, and in this way messages could be transmitted. However, this required skilled operators. Wheatstone also initiated the use of electromagnets in electric generators and invented the Playfair cipher, which is based on substituting different pairs of letters for paired letters in the message. He was knighted in 1868.

  (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1966.)

  John Hilton walked over to a Formica-topped table in the corner of the room, lifted the lid of a small portable record-player within and dropped a 7-inch single onto the deck.

  We skipped the light fandango…

  ‘You probably heard on the news this morning that it’s National Flower Power Day in New York today. Well, without Charles Wheatstone and all of his hard work, it’s likely that we wouldn’t have anything like this at all. In fact, we wouldn’t have records… because we wouldn’t be able to record them!’

  As the Miller told his tale…

  The lecturer turned back to the audience, continuing his round-up.

  ‘Later, Wheatstone designed a sophisticated wave-machine model to demonstrate the action of transverse waveforms. His final machine, which could demonstrate the addition of two wave-forms with variable phase difference, as well as resolving a waveform into perpendicularly polarised components, received a special mention in the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was knighted in 1868 and died in Paris on 19 October 1875, after contracting a common cold.’

  Her face, at first just ghostly…13

  ‘Well… the
re we are!’ The speaker adjusted the volume on the Dansette. ‘Thank you for coming here today. I’m sorry the weather has been so bad; it always is in Cambridge, I’m afraid! But I hope that won’t deter you from coming next Saturday… when we’ll be looking at and discussing the work of the eminent astronomer and… Cambridge man, John Pond.

  * * *

  * ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ (Brooker/Reid/Fisher) © Bucks Music Ltd.

  ‘God in a pill’

  Pete Townshend, speaking about Meher Baba, Rolling Stone magazine, 26 November 1970

  Johanna picked up her coffee cup and indicated for the waitress to bring the check. Fleetwood Mac had been programmed four times in a row on the counter jukebox. She turned to the Horoscope page in People magazine.

  ‘Here’s something that might be of interest…’

  No response.

  ‘The Reagans use astrologers.’

  ‘Well!’ He lifted his head. ‘Nothing surprises me about what those two ponies get up to.’

  ‘But it’s a… “trained” practitioner,’ Johanna explained to her fellow breakfaster. ‘Wasn’t that the more “academic” astrology you were interested in? Birth charts and so on?’

  ‘As-Tron-O-Me… not the other one…’ John made a face and folded down a corner of his napkin. ‘I was never really interested in any kind of charts.’