THIS month has seen the celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of man’s only mission to the moon, but did you know that a man from Walthamstow helped to build the camera which shot footage of the famous event?
CARL BROWN found out more
THE Apollo 11 mission in 1969 was an unprecedented televisual event, watched by an estimated 600m people worldwide.
The film of the space capsule leaving the surface of the moon as it begun its return to earth is among the most watched in the history of the moving image.
The footage was shot on a camera activated by the heat from the capsule taking off, which remains on the moon today.
The mechanism that activated the automatic camera, which was built by US defence technologies firm Westinghouse Electric, was created by a team which included a young designer by the name of Ron McKenzie.
Ron was born in Walthamstow and was brought up in a house in Wellesley Road, where he lived with his parents Arthur and Edith and younger brothers John and Laurence.
Ron attended Gamuel Road School, in Walthamstow, before going on to become a design and stress engineer after qualifying at South West Essex Technical College.
Following National Service, he took the decision to move to Los Angeles in 1957 after beating 1,000 other applicants to land a job as a design engineer.
He went on to work for the team that designed a camera and auto-mechanism for the U2 spy plane, which played a vital role in the Cold War.
He then worked for the team that designed the Apollo 11 automatic camera.
Ron, a father-of-one, died in 1993, aged 61, but his brother John remembers his work.
He said: “His work was top secret, and we did not really know what he was doing until later.
“But when I see that famous footage of the capsule taking off, I feel proud.”
Ron went on to work for Ford Aerospace, and was given the task of developing an infrared system which could detect the Vietcong guerrilla forces in the forests of Vietnam during the US war in the country.
The device proved so successful more advanced versions are still used by military forces to this day.
John said: “I think it was brilliant what he achieved and the work he had taken on.
“For someone with an elementary education and who lost their father at an early age it was a great achievement.”
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