Globe used by Geoffrey Perry

Globe. Geoffrey Perry archive relating to the operation of the Kettering Group. Extent: c.60 boxes. Date: c.1960–1984.

This child’s globe was used by the Kettering Grammar School Satellite Tracking Unit. The Unit was set up by physics teacher Geoffrey Perry with colleague Derek Slater, Head of Chemistry and an amateur radio operator. In 1966 the Unit drew intense media attention with its announcing, having tracked the Cosmos 112 satellite, the existence of a previously unknown Soviet launch site at Plesetsk in northern Russia. Perry and Slater's award-winning satellite studies were notable for their being incorporated into the former's physics lessons, the students helping operate the equipment and gather the empirical data. The globe belonged to Perry’s daughter and was ‘borrowed’ and adapted to show the orbits of artificial satellites around the Earth.