The Labour government was then in power, and the Secretary of State for... who dealt with science, was a lady, I've forgotten her name, but it's well-known... and she came to Jodrell and we demonstrated this model to her and she was very encouraging. And, in fact, the... this government had arranged for us to have a... a press meeting to announce that we were going to build this telescope at Meifod at the... the cost of £4 million... £4 million in 1972 or 1973 prices.

Alas, one day before this press conference was to take place, Mr Wilson, who was Prime Minister, decided to go to the country for entirely political reasons and so the... the meeting was cancelled, the... he was defeated at the election and the Conservative government achieved office and from their point of view, quite rightly, because of the financial state of the country, they suspended all large expenditures, including the expenditure, which we were going to incur on this new radio telescope in Meifod. They... they had... this must have taken place in the... in the early autumn, and by Christmas, they... they lifted the ban and we were told to get a new price for the telescope. I'm afraid by that time the price had risen well above 4 million and then began a period which I really wish to forget because I... I regret having entered into the period that then followed, because we... we still in contact with the DSIR, they suggested we reduce the size to something more reasonable, like 350ft, but... And so we did, but the escalation, the cost of living went up, the cost of materials went up and we could not get the price down to something reasonable.

And eventually the... the Germans had built their... their steerable telescope at Effelsberg and the... then interest in joining with Europe, the arguments began, that we ought to join up with Europe and use their telescope as well as the one at Jodrell, so in that way, eventually, we closed the whole project, and only the beautiful model remains. It was at Jodrell for some time, but it has disappeared and I don't know where it is now, so the 400ft telescope was never built. Now, in some ways I'm sorry because it would have been a powerful instrument on... on a waveband, which has been... was... was being very largely neglected, as the interest in radio astronomical observation moved to higher and higher frequencies. And I think in fact now, it's realised that some of the lower frequency observations... I think the Dutch have built a new telescope, which they propose to hold to use in the region of less than 100 megahertz.