THE talkies: The revolution happened on Broadway, on October 6, 1927.

One sentence uttered on screen that night changed the movie industry as it had never been changed before – and perhaps would never be altered quite so excitingly again.

  • In The Jazz Singer, Al Jolson saying “Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet” not only marked the arrival of what from that moment on became known as the talkies, it instantly killed off the silent cinema.

It was St Helens lad George Groves who was at the other end of the microphone, ensuring those words were captured for the soundtrack. By then he was working for Warner Brothers and helped them earn 32 Academy Award nominations for sound. Probably his greatest work was cleaning up the sound tapes for Woodstock. A career that spans The Jazz Singer to Woodstock ain’t half bad.

In 1996 I organised a plaque for the house on Hamer Street where he was born. It’s still there.

  • The sky at night: Television is keen to show us photos taken from space telescopes and space probes and observatories, but they are all descended from the first ever photograph of an object in the night sky.

This was taken 175 years ago back in 1840, by John William Draper.

By then he was in America, but he was born May 5, 1811 in St Helens to John Christopher Draper, a Wesleyan clergyman.

His father often needed to move the family due to serving various congregations throughout England.

Following his father’s death in 1831, the family moved to the U.S.A. and he worked at New York’s University.

In 1839–1840, Draper produced clear photographs, which at that time were regarded as the first life photographs of a human face.

One of those, of his sister, Dorothy, survives. In 1850 he was making photo-micrographs (microfilming).

He developed the proposition in 1842 that only light rays that are absorbed can produce chemical change.

In 1847 he published the observation that all solids glow red at about the same temperature, about 977 °F (798 K), which has come to be known as the Draper point.

  • Canals: Yes, I know it wasn’t even Britain’s first canal, for the Romans had done that before, but it was the first canal of England’s Canal Age. The Mersey flats using the canal had 60’ masts to carry the sails, which is why George Stephenson opted for 70’ arches for his viaduct to cross the canal. A significant location in transport history.
  •  Rugby: Liverpool St Helens Rugby Union Football Club is the World’s oldest open rugby club.

It was founded in 1857. It was in 1895 that another St. Helens club joined others to break away and help found the first rugby league league.