Welcome to another new regular feature – Did you know? In this feature I hope to highlight some of the important facts about Merthyr that you may or may not have known.
Did you know that the man who built the very first Dalek for Doctor Who was from Merthyr?
Bill Roberts was born in 1918 in Gwladys Street in Pant. He attended Cyfarthfa Grammar School, but moved to Uxbridge in 1936. He enjoyed a career as an aircraft engineer, working for Miles Aircraft, before setting up his own company – Shawcraft Models.
In 1963, when the Daleks were originally conceived by Terry Nation for the first series of Doctor Who, the BBC commissioned designer Raymond Cusick to design them, but the job of actually building them was given to Bill Roberts who worked from Cusick’s blueprints.
If anyone has any interesting items for the new ‘Did you know?’ feature, please get in touch.