Events for October 5, 2026 › Talks 2025

It was called Orkney’s only nightclub, just by the Brig o Waithe, on the corner of the Orphir road, and it was a source of late-night nourishment to a generation of young Orcadians going home from Friday night dances. There were packets of Orkney crisps, bottles of Sunjoy, and hot pies on a biscuit tin lid. The light came from paraffin lamps, and water came from the well. Willie Farquhar in his cobbler’s leather apron welcomed everyone – and passed into Orkney legend. A fellow Stenness resident, local historian Patricia Long, tells the story, with reader Graham Garson.

On 2 October 1925 the Scots inventor John Logie Baird sent the first televised image – the face of a ventriloquist’s dummy called Stookie Bill. It was scanned by a whirling disc with a 30-hole spiral, with the signal sent down a wire to modulate a neon lamp in the receiver; and the moving image appeared on a screen. Prof. Tom Stevenson tells how the technology developed so rapidly that within 11 years the BBC was transmitting a 405-line picture from Alexandra Palace. And by the end of 1958 Orkney had its own service, from the wartime radar masts at Netherbutton.