Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1955 the gas in the pipes was made in the town, out of coal, by men shovelling it into furnaces and raking out the coke by hand.…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1965 a coal-fired power station was the largest thing in its district, burned trainloads of coal a day, employed hundreds of people across a dozen trades, and…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1965 a large shipyard employed thousands of people who mostly walked to work, assembled a hull outdoors plate by plate on an open berth, worked at eighty…
There is a common assumption about early steam power that inverts the actual mechanism, and correcting it makes the whole development sequence comprehensible.
The assumption is that steam pushes. High-pressure…
There is a small category of materials obtained from a living organism without killing it, and a smaller category still where the organism replaces what was taken.
Cork belongs to…
There is a useful question to ask about any traditional material: what problem does the processing solve, and what happens if you skip it?
For leather the answer is unusually…