Extract from "Uncle Al"

Uncle Al was passionate about photography. He viewed photography as another branch of science. He had taken numerous photographs when his nieces and nephews were growing up. He had a fully functional photographic studio at home complete with a dark room. He would spend hours developing pictures in his dark room. He loved the acrid smell of the chemicals. It was fascinating to expose a negative onto the photographic paper, transfer it to the developer and watch the picture appeared on the paper. Kevin loved it when he was allowed to watch Uncle Al develop a batch of photos. When he was little he couldn’t understand how the negative image appeared on the paper so he was convinced that Uncle Al was magic!

One day Uncle Al came rushing around to Kevin’s house. He was so excited he could hardly speak! When he had calmed down, he told them about the latest invention. Cameras without film! “Rubbish” said Kevin’s dad “You must be careful of the nonsense you always sprout. These kids have impressionable minds and will gobble up any drivel that you dish up. Go away kids! Uncle Al has spent too long in his dark room with all those chemicals!”

“Its true” said Uncle Al. “It was on a magazine program about an hour ago. And then I heard it on the news on the radio. Switch on your TV. It may come on the news at 6.”

Kevin sat in front of the TV waiting. He had great faith in his eccentric Uncle. Uncle Al always managed to spark up some fun. He also liked the way that his uncle looked at things. Take a ball for example. When Kevin saw a ball, he played with it. Uncle Al saw it as a sphere that could follow an orbit. He taught Kevin about angles of deflection when playing games like squash, golf or billiards. He illustrated how a squash ball would slightly change shape on impact. He also explained how a balls’ trajectory could change depending on where it impacted with the racquet, club or stick. Kevin wished that all adults could see things in the same way as Uncle Al. He had never lost his childlike wonder of things in the world. Kevin learned later that people like Uncle Al are often called visionaries. However at this particular point in time all Kevin could see was the exciting life that he experienced when he was with Uncle Al.

The big moment arrived. The 6 o’clock news came on and all the family were speechless. Uncle Al had been right! There was such a camera! Of course Uncle Al lived on tenterhooks until the camera was commercially available and he became the proud owner of the first digital camera in their town. He waited outside the electronics store from 5 am – determined to be first in line to get the new camera! He was so proud when his photo (complete with new camera!) appeared in the paper.