At the weekend we went north to the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, the highlight of which is James Cox's Silver Swan automaton. Made in 1773, it was nearly 100 when Mark Twain wrote: ‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes - … Continue reading The Silver Swan
Greetings from 2008! I'm really pleased you've picked the Early 21st Century Social History module this term. You're going to love it. But before you dive into the wealth of primary evidence we've left on the net, there's something we need you to understand. We know it doesn't look good, but we weren't really shallow … Continue reading Note to future historians: We know it doesn’t look good, but we weren’t really shallow time-wasters in the Noughties
"But daddy, if people didn't have computers, how did they buy things from the internet?" It's amazing how something we've come to take for granted hangs from such a fragile thread. As part of a new product trial for my employer, we recently had a visit from two very helpful telecoms engineers who checked out … Continue reading Thomas A. Watson Ate My Internet
In the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Whitby, we came across this unexpected result of the interplay between people and the elements. I love the idea that for some reason, after this tombstone was carved, they needed to change it. Maybe extra family members were added the original words wore away and had to be … Continue reading Only the afterthought remains
The payphone has bluescreened... ... the departure board has 404ed... ... the giant TV screen is somebody's Windows desktop... Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Since posting my three broken technology pictures, I've been suffering the blogger's equivalent of what the French call "l'esprit de l'escalier," and for which German has the … Continue reading Sous les pavés, la plage
We recently inherited a stack of Ladybird books and have wasted many happy hours inside the uncomplicated mind of the 1960s educationalist. Here's what we've learned: Computers do not have brains and they cannot really think for themselves A stockbroker in the City is probably more interested in financial news, and has time to read … Continue reading Everything I Know I Learned From Old Ladybird books
On holiday in Cornwall this summer we visited Polperro, a Cornish fishing village so archetypal that it featured in Ptolemy Dean's BBC programme The Perfect Village. As the programme synopsis says: On the surface, Polperro looks as if it hasn’t changed for centuries, but in fact it exemplifies a delicate balance between the tourist village … Continue reading Polperro
From Simon Thurley's fascinating Buildings That Shaped Britain we learn that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had only once travelled on a train when he designed the gloriously non-standard Great Western Railway from London Paddington to Bristol. Now that, for good or ill, is the difference between innovation and design.
Whoops there goes another piece of the old Holbeck :( There must be an anagram in there, though. Collect enough old signs and you'd have a giant cast iron version of magnetic poetry...
National Railway Museum. Mainly popular with men in their 50s and boys under four.
Matt Edgar writes here 