Norman Taylor
Norman Taylor (21 February 1928-13 January 2011[1]) was the BBC technician who discovered the "howl-round effect" used, to one degree or another, in the original Doctor Who title sequence.
Career
He claimed to have had spare time in his work days at Lime Grove Studios in the early 1960s to "experiment with a camera looking at a monitor displaying its own picture". It was well known before Taylor's experiment that pointing a camera at a monitor of that camera would result in some kind of feedback. Taylor's innovation was in precisely lighting the monitor so the light reflecting off the monitor appeared to turn into a swirling cloud pattern, when echoed back through the camera. He had a relatively difficult time in "selling" the utility of his discovery within the BBC hierarchy, until it was picked up as possible way to start Doctor Who. He was paid £25 for it after it was used in Doctor Who. In later life, he claimed to have been "somewhat miffed that Bernard Lodge got the credit" for the title sequence "when all he did was to produce one white on black caption".[2]
