The paper is a tribute to Nicol Peacock and has a focus on interests and developments at Culham Laboratory from ~ 1970 when Nicol led the UKAEA spectroscopy team. The paper charts a little of the evolution of these models and their data through the seventies and eighties on into this century at Culham. The paper concludes with the state of efforts to enable easy, universal access to spectral analysis across the scope of Culham activity, of which it is hoped Nicol would approve.