Donald Campbell
The story of Campbell's last attempt at the water speed record on Coniston Water was told in the BBC television film "Across the Lake" in 1988, with Anthony Hopkins as Campbell. Nine years earlier, Robert Hardy had played Campbell's father, Sir Malcolm Campbell, in the "BBC2 Playhouse" television drama "Speed King"; both were written by Roger Milner and produced by Innes Lloyd. In 2003, the BBC showed a documentary reconstruction of Campbell's fateful water-speed record attempt in an episode of "Days That Shook the World". It featured a mixture of modern reconstruction and original film footage. All of the original colour clips were taken from a film capturing the event, "Campbell at Coniston" by John Lomax, a local amateur filmmaker from Wallasey, England. Lomax's film won awards worldwide in the late 1960s for recording the final weeks of Campbell's life.
Donald L. Campbell
Aside from his work, Campbell participated in other academic activities. For example, he shared thoughts with a group of academics from several fields, including filmmaking and other fields in science. He focused much of his inventive potential into the bridge games he so loved. He was a husband to Elizabeth Duff Campbell, a father to a son named Michael Duff Campbell and a daughter named Mary Louise Macom, a grandfather to eight grandchildren, and a great-grandfather to nine great-grandchildren. In 1999, he was awarded the Ronald H. Brown American Innovator Award and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame because of the contributions he had made to the field of chemical engineering. Before moving into a nursing home, Campbell spent much of his time in Short Hills, New Jersey. His son Michael said that his father never felt bitter about not making money off of his inventions. Michael then said, “He was just proud to have worked with very smart men and to have accomplished something.” Campbell died on September 14, 2002.