Barry Pyatt
Barry Pyatt was born in Bath 2nd November 1947 as the only child of Grace and Roger Pyatt. He was raised and accommodated in England by his paternal grandparents until leaving to work in Switzerland in 1972, and was educated at Bromley County Grammar School and at South East London Technical College. His life and times have been marked by some notable events, the most salient of which are presented here.
1964 – 1972, BBC London Designs Department. This, now defunct, department of the, then, great empire of the BBC undertook many interesting and novel projects. Being only a young and humble technician amongst highly academic engineers, Barry’s innovations were not taken seriously … infrared communications for example. A big break came in 1970 when he graduated to be exclusive technician to engineering genius Geoff Larkby in the Television Section of their Designs Department in Great Portland Street, London. Together, they developed the original Teletext, then knick-named “BeebFax”, using electro-mechanical facsimile transmissions intended to be broadcast during the TV nocturnal down-time. The directive was to produce hard-copy newsprint in the home or office by compressing each scan-line of the facsimile into one line of the then unused vertical interval of the television raster. The potential, at that time, was enormous; there were 50 such lines available every second, and the available nocturnal downtime was several hours! Printout was achieved using pressure sensitive “till-roll” type paper, against a rotating drum with a helically raised surface. The paper was struck by a blade driven by a planar-ceramic element, fed with normalised pulses derived from the incoming facsimile signal. The prototype system was unpopular amongst the other boffins in the Designs Department laboratory, due to its high mechanical noise output! The system was superseded by the entirely digital technology which is still in use today.
1972 – left the BBC to pursue an independent life as an inventor and musician, and co- incidentally invented what is believed to be the first real-time “parametric” equaliser equipments for use with guitar.
1973- returned to the UK to work as Project Leader for the, then global, Rediffusion electronics group, and, circa 1974 he re-defined and developed the principle of induction loop transmission for communication and safety applications in hazardous area and subterranean environments.
1975 -credited in Rediffusion aide-memoire issued for an international engineering conference as offering a new and credible explanation of the induction-loop phenomenon. Demonstrated that many of the measured results were at odds with the mathematically predicted parameters, and that these could be better explained by the localised distortion of the earth’s magnetic field, rather than the traditionally held belief of transformer induction, which had given the phenomenon its popular name.
During this research into electromagnetic phenomenon, proved that the conventionally accepted explanation of magnetic tape recording using “bias-shells” was not exclusive, and demonstrated a prototype a PPM audio recording system for magnetic tape as a method of recording stereo information on a single track, without using any sinusoidal bias waveforms.
1978 – left Rediffusion, removed to Yorkshire, and founded Pyatt Design in Bradford.
1981 - Obtained one of the UK's first CB Radio development licences from the Home Office, and subsequently invented the K9 and SuperKruncher analogue noise reduction system for CB radio, exclusively marketed by Skylab CB in Bingley, West Yorkshire.
1982 - coined and published the word Videobook to describe his video films which informed and educated, at a time when pre-recorded video was in its infancy, and largely in the hands of VHS/Beta video libraries rather than sell-thru channels. VideoBook films were marketed by Studio 21.
1984 – the first of the Videobook films “The Yorkshire Dales of England” was one of the first three adopted (under seven year contract) by the, then emergent, distribution company IVN, based in San Ramon, in the USA.
1985 - invented the “motivator” for Studio 21 (Yorkshire, England) which was an analogue electronic device to vary the capstan motor speed of a 24 track 2 inch tape recording machine in order to virtually eliminate wow and flutter without using several kilos of flywheel (this was reported in Studio Sound magazine, September 1985, page 74).
1986 – 1997 - produced many industrial films, many bespoke electronic designs, and worked as a commissioned designer and technology consultant for five Yorkshire companies. Became one of the pioneer authors of educational and technical publications to be listed by the ISBN as solely available on CD-ROM and, later, DVD.
1991 - Elected as Town Councillor for Denholme Town Council, Bradford, West Yorkshire.
1997 - Devised and published "Qualikit-Pro" ... software for aligning and calibrating audio-visual use of computers (ISBN 1-898402-02-7. This was marketed by Cliff Components, USA.
1998 – designed an add-on accessory for satellite TV systems to eliminate the 6 db increase in sound track level introduced by the broadcasters during commercial breaks. This was briefly marketed as the “K2000 SuperKruncher” in Spain.
1999 – “retired” to Altea in Alicante, Spain.
2000 - developed the “watts-it”: a power-reducer to allow British Ex-Pat appliances like electric kettles to be used on the restricted capacity electricity supplies found in old rural properties in Spain at that time. Unfortunately, this product never saw the light of day commercially due to problems with the English-run, but Spanish registered company, that had previously agreed to market it.
2003 – initiated a small-scale film business and invented the “Tarjeta-Cine”, a DVD movie-postcard, under the name “AngelFilms”. Unfortunately, in this same year, serious and chronic health problems forced a return to the UK.
AngelFilms removed to the UK in 2005.
Current ISBN References from Barry Pyatt via
Studio 21 Publications
ISBN 978-1-898402-08-4
ISBN 978-1-898402-09-1
ISBN 978-1-898402-10-7
ISBN 978-1-898402-11-4
ISBN 978-1-898402-12-1
ISBN 978-1-898402-03-8