gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Shredding, old school

Last week the folks in the offices beside mine moved out, now occupying new digs on the ninth floor of the Toronto CBC building.

They took with them the paper shredder, but I was able to find an old one - a really old one - amid the rubble of old SCSI cards, 5 1/4" disks and skeletons of BASIC programmers.

Here's the shredder:

Handsome! But did you catch the brand name?

Yep, "Watergate - top secret". Someone in the manufacturing world obviously has a sense of humour!

Seemed like an odd omen for Inauguration Day, though. In fact, my very first memory of television is sitting down with my parents to watch Richard Nixon depart the Whitehouse. "He was a very bad man, and now he has to go away," my mom told me.

But I was four, so what I heard was, "He lied, so now he gets to ride in a helicopter!"

Amazing, then, to watch the crowds gather in the CBC atrium to watch Barack Obama being sworn in. If you want a better taste of history, please check out the new topic we posted on the CBC Digital Archives: Swearing In: U.S. Presidential Inaugurations - we've got clips of speeches from FDR right through to Dubya.