Hello, I'm Sam Hallas,
and I'm 59 years old, married for 31 years
to
Sheila and father of two boys,
Tim (26)
and
Matt (24).
I live in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, about 50 km North of London, where I used to work (in Clerkenwell Green until December 2007).
I've recently retired from being a telecomms engineer from part of Thales, which was the privatised former telecomms arm of British Rail (Previously Racal Translink), after a career of 34 years. I'm still working part-time for Thales. Over the years I have written specifications for product and helped evaluate new phone equipment for use on the railway. I've generally been involved in various aspects of safety-related telecomms used on the UK Railway.
At home I'm a member of our local Baptist Church, Tilehouse Street,
and active on the Fabric Committee, which helps to keep our 150+
year-old building going. Sheila and I have recently taken on the responsibility of being Health & Safety Officers for the Church. If you follow the link, you'll see that I'm also
involved in maintaining their
Web Site .
I'm a member of Hitchin Camera Club, but I didn't used to take many pictures. Now that I have a digital camera I take a lot more, but most of them end up on the Web and not in club competitions.
I've always been interested in audio recordings and have vast amounts of stuff recorded on reel-to-reel tape, cassettes and, more recently, DAT and minidisc. I'm now busy converting my old recordings to CD which is a long job.
I have had an abiding passion for telephones since I was small and this has resulted in me being a member of the Telecomms Heritage Group, which promotes interest in all aspects of Telecomms history, and especially preservation of artefacts and working equipment from the Golden Age of telecomms. I have a small collection of old telephones in my loft, which I intend to refurbish slowly now that I'm retired. Some chance!
A while ago I wrote, along with the late Alan Hobbs, a Short History of Telegraphy, which I've updated with new photographs. Linking my hobbies of photography and telecomms history, I have prepared some pages showing photographs I took at the BT Museum when it was open to the public. I'm gradually visiting the various museums which have inherited the collection as part of BT's Connected Earth Project. There's lots more material about telecomms history on the Web and I keep a page for Telecomms History Links, where there also a short review of each site.
As a spin-off from my professional work, I'm collating historical material relating to Railway Telecomms, on the Railway Telecomms Pages.
I'm also a fairly keen amateur pianist.
I took an interest in Ragtime
in my early teens and now pride myself on being able to play a good percentage
of the piano works of Scott Joplin (right), together with the best known compositions
of his colleagues, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Besides ragtime I enjoy
playing what you would call 'light music' such as Eric Coates and Leroy
Anderson. I also have a penchant for popular music from the 30s and 40s,
most especially George Gershwin. I've recently broadened my horizons into some stride piano pieces by James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, and have struggled with the novelty piano pieces of Zez Confrey and Billy Mayerl. On a more serious note, I play for the morning service once a month at the village chapel at Stondon.
My computer has a sound card
and a music keyboard for
inputting music in MIDI format. I've had a lot of fun with this and
have created a number of MIDI files, some of which you might like to
download from my
MIDI Files Page. These are getting fairly old now and I keep meaning to take the files down. Just as I decide to do that, someone will e-mail thanking me for having them on line!
I developed an interest in teleprinters when I was young and later joined
the British Amateur Radio Teleprinter (now Teledata) Group,
BARTG,
although I've never been active on the air. After a long spell on their
committee I managed to escape in the mid 80s, but was persuaded in 1995
to take over as Treasurer. After a year, I got away again.
However, I ended up helping the committee by keeping their Web site
updated. I managed to pass this job on early in 2006. However, I still have an interest in preserving documents and pictures relating to mechanical teleprinters. You'll find me chatting with other like-minded people on the Greenkeys mailing list at QTH.net
