1.
Sheffield
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Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, its derives from the River Sheaf. With some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its industrial roots to encompass a wider economic base. The population of the City of Sheffield is 569,700, Sheffield is the third largest English district by population. The metropolitan population of Sheffield is 1,569,000, in the 19th century, Sheffield gained an international reputation for steel production. Known as the Steel City, many innovations were developed locally, including crucible and stainless steel, Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, the 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield along with other British cities. Sheffields gross value added has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £9.2 billion in 2007, the economy has experienced steady growth averaging around 5% annually, greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber. The city is in the foothills of the Pennines, and the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin. 61% of Sheffields entire area is space, and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have inhabited since at least the late Upper Palaeolithic period. The earliest evidence of occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. In the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes and it is this tribe who are thought to have constructed several hill forts in and around Sheffield. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira, a Celtic presence within the Sheffield area is evidenced by two settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield, however, date from the half of the first millennium. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, after the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to protect the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city. By 1296, a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square, from 1570 to 1584, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor. During the 1740s, a form of the steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible
2.
Jodrell Bank Observatory
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The Jodrell Bank Observatory is a British observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, and is part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The managing director of the observatory is Professor Simon Garrington, the main telescope at the observatory is the Lovell Telescope, which is the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world. There are three other active telescopes located at the observatory, the Mark II, as well as 42 ft and 7 m diameter radio telescopes and it is reached from the A535. The telescope can be seen when travelling by train, as the Crewe to Manchester Line passes right by the site, Jodrell Bank was first used for academic purposes in 1939 when the University of Manchesters Department of Botany purchased three fields at the site from the Leighs. The site was extended in 1952 by the purchase of a farm from a local farmer, the new land included the site upon which the Lovell Telescope was sited. The first use of the site for astrophysics was in 1945, the equipment he was using was a GL II radar system working at a wavelength of 4.2 m, provided by J. S. Hey. He originally intended to use the equipment in Manchester, however, consequently, he moved the equipment to Jodrell Bank,25 miles south of the city, on 10 December 1945. Lovells main topic of research at the time were transient radio echoes, the first staff were Alf Dean and Frank Foden and meteors were observed by the naked eye while Lovell observed the electromagnetic signal on the equipment. Coincidentally, the first time he turned the radar on at Jodrell Bank –14 December 1945 – the Geminids meteor shower was at a maximum. Over the next few years, he accumulated more ex-military radio hardware, including a portable cabin, the first permanent building on the site was located near to this cabin, and was named after it. Today, Jodrell Bank is primarily used for investigating radio waves from the planets, a searchlight was loaned to Jodrell Bank in 1946 by the Army, a broadside array was constructed on the mount of this searchlight by J. Clegg, consisting of a number of Yagi antennas. This was first used for observations in October 1946. On 9 and 10 October 1946, the telescope was used to observe the ionisation in the atmosphere caused by meteors in the Giacobinids meteor shower, shortly after this, the telescope was used to determine the radiant points for meteors. This was possible as the rate is at a minimum at the radiant point. The telescope, as well as other receivers on the site, was used to study auroral streamers that were visible at the site in early August 1947. The Transit Telescope was a 218 ft parabolic reflector zenith telescope built at Jodrell Bank in 1947, at the time, it was the largest radio telescope in the world. It consisted of a wire suspended from a ring of 24 ft scaffold poles. The telescope mainly looked directly upwards, but the direction of the beam could be changed by small amounts by tilting the mast to change the position of the focal point
3.
Radio telescope
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A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to receive radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky in radio astronomy. Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic antennas similar to those employed in tracking and communicating with satellites and they may be used singly, or linked together electronically in an array. Unlike optical telescopes, radio telescopes can be used in the daytime as well as at night, Radio waves from space were first detected by engineer Karl Guthe Jansky in 1932 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey using an antenna built to study noise in radio receivers. The first purpose-built radio telescope was a 9-meter parabolic dish constructed by radio amateur Grote Reber in his yard in Wheaton. The sky survey he did with it is considered the beginning of the field of radio astronomy. The first radio antenna used to identify an astronomical radio source was one built by Karl Guthe Jansky, Jansky was assigned the job of identifying sources of static that might interfere with radio telephone service. Janskys antenna was an array of dipoles and reflectors designed to receive short wave radio signals at a frequency of 20.5 MHz and it was mounted on a turntable that allowed it to rotate in any direction, earning it the name Janskys merry-go-round. It had a diameter of approximately 100 ft and stood 20 ft tall, by rotating the antenna, the direction of the received interfering radio source could be pinpointed. A small shed to the side of the antenna housed an analog recording system. Jansky finally determined that the faint hiss repeated on a cycle of 23 hours and 56 minutes and this period is the length of an astronomical sidereal day, the time it takes any fixed object located on the celestial sphere to come back to the same location in the sky. An amateur radio operator, Grote Reber, was one of the pioneers of what became known as radio astronomy and he built the first parabolic dish radio telescope, a 9 metres in diameter) in his back yard in Wheaton, Illinois in 1937. The range of frequencies in the spectrum that makes up the radio spectrum is very large. This means that the types of antennas that are used as radio telescopes vary widely in design, size, at wavelengths of 30 meters to 3 meters, they are generally either directional antenna arrays similar to TV antennas or large stationary reflectors with moveable focal points. Since the wavelengths being observed with these types of antennas are so long, at shorter wavelengths parabolic dish antennas predominate. The angular resolution of an antenna is determined by the ratio of the diameter of the dish to the wavelength of the radio waves being observed. This dictates the size a radio telescope needs for a useful resolution. Radio telescopes that operate at wavelengths of 3 meters to 30 cm are usually well over 100 meters in diameter, telescopes working at wavelengths shorter than 30 cm range in size from 3 to 90 meters in diameter. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe mapped the Cosmic microwave background radiation in 5 different frequency bands, centered on 23 GHz,33 GHz,41 GHz,61 GHz, the worlds largest filled-aperture radio telescope is the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope completed in 2016 by China
4.
Lovell Telescope
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The Lovell Telescope /ˈlʌvəl/ is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire in the north-west of England. It was originally known as the 250 ft telescope or the Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank and it was renamed to the Lovell Telescope in 1987 after Sir Bernard Lovell, and became a Grade I listed building in 1988. The telescope forms part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network arrays of radio telescopes, both Bernard Lovell and Charles Husband were knighted for their roles in creating the telescope. In September 2006, the won the BBCs online competition to find the UKs greatest Unsung Landmark. 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the telescope and it can also be seen from the Terminal 1 restaurant area and departure lounges of Manchester Airport. Bernard Lovell built the Transit Telescope at Jodrell Bank in the late 1940s and this turned out to be Charles Husband, whom Lovell first met on 8 September 1949. Two bearing assemblies from 15-inch gun turrets were bought cheaply in 1950, these came from the World War I battleships HMS Revenge and Royal Sovereign, the bearings became the two main altitude rotator bearings of the telescope, with the appropriate parts of the telescope being designed around them. Husband presented the first drawings of the giant, fully steerable radio telescope in 1950. After refinements, these plans were detailed in a Blue Book, which was presented to the DSIR on 20 March 1951, construction began on 3 September 1952. The foundations for the telescope were completed on 21 May 1953 after being sunk 90 ft into the ground and it then took until Mid-March 1954 to get the double railway lines completed due to their required accuracy. The central pivot was delivered to the site on 11 May 1954, although the funding was not ultimately made available from the Air Ministry, the planning process had already progressed too far and so this improvement was made anyway. The telescope was constructed so that the bowl could be completely inverted, originally, it was intended to use a movable tower at the base of the telescope to change the receivers at the focus. However, the tower was never built, due jointly to funding constraints. Instead, receivers were mounted on 50-foot long steel tubes, which were inserted by a winch into the top of the aerial tower while the bowl was inverted. The cables from the receivers then ran down the inside of this tube, the telescope moved for the first time on 3 February 1957, by an inch. It was first moved azimuthally under power on 12 June 1957, the bowl was tilted under power for the first time on 20 June 1957. By the end of July the dish surface was completed, and first light was on 2 August 1957, the telescope was first controlled from the control room on 9 October 1957, by a purpose-built analogue computer. There were large cost overruns with the construction, mainly due to the steeply rising cost of steel at the time the telescope was constructed
5.
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
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Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large radiocommunication site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. The site also links into undersea cable lines and its first dish, Antenna One, was built in 1962 to link with Telstar. It was the first open parabolic design and is 25.9 metres in diameter and it is now a Grade II listed structure and is therefore protected. The site has played a key role in communications events such as the Muhammad Ali fights, the Olympic Games, the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The sites largest dish, dubbed Merlin, has a diameter of 32 metres, other dishes include Guinevere, Tristan, and Isolde after characters in Arthurian legend, much of which takes place in Cornwall. The earth station is powered by the National Grid, if power fails, all essential equipment will run off huge batteries for up to 20 minutes, during which time four one-megawatt diesel generators will take over. The nearby wind farm is not part of the complex. Until Easter 2010 the site had a visitor centre inside which the Connected Earth gallery told the history of satellite communications, there were many other interactive exhibits, a cafe, a shop and one of Britains fastest cybercafés. There were also tours around the main BT site and into the heart of Arthur. At its prime, the site attracted around 80,000 visitors a year, on 11 January 2011 it was announced that part of the site is to be sold to create a space science centre. This will involve upgrading some of the dishes to make suitable for deep space communication with spacecraft missions. A new company has formed to manage the operations, Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. The company will lease most of the antennas for at least three years with the option to buy the complex in the future. Goonhilly Earth Station Limited took ownership of the site in January 2014, there are plans to connect one or more of the Goonhilly dishes into global radio astronomy interferometer networks. There are also plans to upgrade the former visitor centre into an outreach centre promoting space and space science for visitors, including local residents and schools. In July 2015 European Space Agency has begun a 9-month feasibility study to examine if antenna Goonhilly 6 could be used to support Exploration Mission 1 of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
6.
Robert Stephenson
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Robert Stephenson FRS was an early railway and civil engineer. The only son of George Stephenson, the Father of Railways, Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century. Robert was born in Willington Quay, Northumberland, to George and Frances née Henderson, before moved to Killingworth. Robert attended the middle-class Percy Street Academy in Newcastle and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to the mining engineer Nicholas Wood and he left before he had completed his three years to help his father survey the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Robert spent six months at Edinburgh University before working for three years as an engineer in Colombia. When he returned his father was building the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and he was appointed chief engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1833 with a salary of £1,500 per annum. By 1850 Robert had been involved in the construction of a third of the railway system. He designed the High Level Bridge and Royal Border Bridge on the East Coast Main Line and he eventually worked on 160 commissions from 60 companies, building railways in other countries such as Belgium, Norway, Egypt and France. In 1829 Robert married Frances Sanderson who died in 1842, the couple had no children, in 1847 he was elected Member of Parliament for Whitby, and held the seat until his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1849 and he served as President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Institution of Civil Engineers. Roberts death was widely mourned, and his funeral cortège was given permission by Queen Victoria to pass through Hyde Park and he is buried in Westminster Abbey. Robert Stephenson was born on 16 October 1803, at Willington Quay, east of Newcastle upon Tyne, to George Stephenson and Frances née Henderson and she was twelve years older than George, and when they met was working as a servant where George was lodging. Fanny was suffering from tuberculosis, so George would take care of his son in the evening, in autumn 1804 George became a brakesman at the West Moor Pit and the family moved to two rooms in a cottage at Killingworth. On 13 July 1805 Fanny gave birth to a daughter who lived for three weeks, Fannys health deteriorated and she died on 14 May 1806. George employed a housekeeper to look after his son and went away for three months to look after a Watt engine in Montrose, Scotland and he returned to find his housekeeper had married his brother Robert. He moved back into the cottage with his son and briefly employed another housekeeper before his sister Eleanor moved in, known to Robert as Aunt Nelly, Eleanor had been engaged to be married before travelling to London to work in domestic service. However, returning to get married Eleanors ship was delayed by poor winds, Eleanor attended the local Methodist church, whereas George would not regularly attend church, preferring on Sundays to work on engineering problems and meet his friends. Robert was first sent to a village school 1½ miles away in Long Benton, on his way to school, he would carry picks to the smiths at Long Benton to be sharpened
7.
Britannia Bridge
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Britannia Bridge is a bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. It was originally designed and built by Robert Stephenson as a bridge of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans for carrying rail traffic. Following a fire in 1970 it was rebuilt, initially as a single tier steel truss arch bridge, a second tier was added later and opened in 1980 to accommodate road traffic. The opening of the Menai Bridge in 1826, one mile to the east of where Britannia Bridge was later built, the increasing popularity of rail travel necessitated a second bridge to provide a direct rail link between London and the port of Holyhead, the Chester and Holyhead Railway. Other railway schemes were proposed, including one in 1838 to cross Thomas Telfords existing Menai Bridge, by 1840, a Treasury committee decided broadly in favour of Stephensons proposals, with final consent to the route including Britannia Bridge given in 1845. Stephensons son Robert was appointed as chief engineer, two additional spans of 230 ft length completed the bridge, making a 1, 511-foot-long continuous girder. The trains were to run inside the tubes, Hodgkinson believed that it would be impractical to make the tubes stiff enough, and advised auxiliary suspension from link chains. The consensus of received engineering opinion was with Hodgkinson, but Stephenson, rather nervously, a 75-foot span model was constructed and tested at Fairbairns Millwall shipyard, and used as a basis for the final design. Although Stephenson had pressed for the tubes to be elliptical in section, fairbairn was responsible both for the cellular construction of the top part of the tubes, and for developing the stiffening of the side panels. The bridge was decorated by four large lions sculpted in limestone by John Thomas, the idea of raising them to road level has been suggested from time to time. Begun in 1846, the bridge was opened on 5 March 1850, for its time, it was a bridge of magnitude and singular novelty, far surpassing in length contemporary cast beam or plate girder iron bridges. One aspect of its method of construction was also novel, The box sections were assembled on-shore and this station closed after 8½ years in operation owing to low passenger volumes. Nothing now remains of the other than the remnants of the lower-level station building. A new station named Menai Bridge was opened shortly afterwards, the construction techniques employed on the Britannia Bridge influenced Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the construction of the Royal Albert Bridge across the River Tamar at Saltash. During the evening of 23 May 1970 the bridge was damaged when boys playing inside the bridge dropped a burning torch. After the fire had burned out the bridge was still standing. As a consequence the bridge was rebuilt by Husband & Co. The new design was for an arched bridge, concrete supports were built under the approach spans and steel archways constructed under the long spans on either side of the central Britannia Tower
8.
Royal Society
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Founded in November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Societys President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the members of the society. As of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, there are also royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015, since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London which was previously used by the Embassy of Germany, London. The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at variety of locations and they were influenced by the new science, as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library, after the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College. It is widely held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society, I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, and hinder us. But tis well known who were the men that began and promoted that design. This initial royal favour has continued and, since then, every monarch has been the patron of the society, the societys early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and then by Denis Papin, who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their area, and were both important in some cases and trivial in others. The Society returned to Gresham in 1673, there had been an attempt in 1667 to establish a permanent college for the society. Michael Hunter argues that this was influenced by Solomons House in Bacons New Atlantis and, to a lesser extent, by J. V. The first proposal was given by John Evelyn to Robert Boyle in a letter dated 3 September 1659, he suggested a scheme, with apartments for members. The societys ideas were simpler and only included residences for a handful of staff and these plans were progressing by November 1667, but never came to anything, given the lack of contributions from members and the unrealised—perhaps unrealistic—aspirations of the society. During the 18th century, the gusto that had characterised the early years of the society faded, with a number of scientific greats compared to other periods. The pointed lightning conductor had been invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, during the same time period, it became customary to appoint society fellows to serve on government committees where science was concerned, something that still continues. The 18th century featured remedies to many of the early problems
9.
University of Sheffield
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The University of Sheffield is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Sheffield is a multi-campus university predominantly over two areas, the Western Bank and the St Georges. The university is organised into five academic faculties composed of multiple departments, Sheffield was placed 84th worldwide by The QS World University Rankings 2016. In 2011, Sheffield was named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education awards, the Times Higher Education Student Experience Survey 2014 ranked the University of Sheffield 1st for student experience, social life, university facilities and accommodation, among other categories. There are seven Nobel Prize laureates amongst Sheffield academics, six of which are its alumni or former staff, the University of Sheffield was originally formed by the merger of three colleges. Firth College then helped to fund the opening of the Sheffield Technical School in 1884 to teach applied science, the only major faculty the existing colleges did not cover. The Sheffield Technical School was founded because of concern about the need for technical training, particularly steelmaking in Sheffield. The three institutions merged in 1897 to form the University College of Sheffield by Royal Charter, Sheffield was the only large city in England without a University. Steelworkers, coal miners, factory workers and the people of Sheffield donated over £50,000 in 1904 to help found the University of Sheffield and it was originally envisaged that the University College would join Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds as the fourth member of the federal Victoria University. In July 1905, Firth Court on Western Bank was opened by King Edward VII, St Georges Square remained the centre of departments of Applied Science, and the departments of Arts, Medicine and Science moved to Western Bank. Sheffield is one of the six red brick universities, the universities founded in the major industrial cities of England. In 1905, there were 114 full-time students, and the first Hall of Residence, the number of students increased to a short-lived peak of 1,000 in 1919. During the First World War, some of the subjects and courses were replaced by teaching of munitions making. Rather than from a centre, the university has expanded since the 1920s from two ends, the Firth Court on Western Bank and the Sir Frederick Mappin Building on the St Georges site. In 1943, the University Grants Committee announced that universities in the UK should look forward to expansion in the years after the Second World War, Sheffield predicted a 50% increase in student population but the university was unprepared for such growth. There was pressure on the university to expand since the student numbers had increased from around 1,000 to 3,000 by 1946, the university then grew slowly until the 1950s and 1960s when it began to expand rapidly. Many new buildings were built and older houses were brought into academic use, Student numbers increased to their present levels of just under 26,000. At the same time in the 1950s, the university was expanding at other sites, from the 1960s, many more buildings have been constructed or extended, including the Union of Students and St Georges Library
10.
Owen Williams (engineer)
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Williams ultimately believed architecture and engineering must be inseparable. Williams born at 16 Caroline Terrace in Tottenham, London, England and he was the son of Evan Owen Williams, a Welsh-born grocer and Mary Roberts. Originally both farmers, they moved to London some years before Owen was born. Williams had two sisters and two brothers, Mary Kate, died young, but the second born, Elizabeth Maud, became an author. Owen had a brother, Robert Osian, who was a successful banker. Williams attended Tottenham Grammar School and Williams excelled in mathematics and he was apprenticed to the Electrical Tramways Co. in London in 1907 and at the same time did an engineering degree at the University of London. In 1912 Williams assumed a position as engineer and designer with the Trussed Concrete Company, seven years later, he started his own consulting firm, Williams Concrete Structures. Appointed chief consulting engineer to the British Empire Exhibition which included the old Wembley Stadium. The commission also included the Palace of Industry building in Brent, the building was listed in 1997 in recognition of this but was delisted in 2004 after an appeal by a property developer. Williams was recognised for his achievements and recognised a knighthood in 1924, through the exhibition, Williams came into an association with its architect, Maxwell Ayrton, which led to their working together on the design of Williamss bridges in Scotland. Williams designed his buildings as functional structures sheathed with decorative facades, more an engineer than an architect, Williams produced a series of reinforced concrete buildings during the period between the wars. After World War II he worked on developing the first plan for Britains motorway system and his other works include the Dorchester Hotel, the Boots pharmaceutical factory in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the M1 motorway and the Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham, south London. In the 1940s the company expanded and became Sir Owen Williams and this followed the building of the Daily Express Building, Manchester which Williams designed. Contrary to popular belief, the Manchester building was the one of the three Express Buildings which Williams designed – the others in Glasgow and London were designed by Ellis. Although Williams was more of an engineer than an architect, the Manchester Express Building was lauded for architecture and demonstrated his proficiency as an architect. His nephew is quoted as saying Just fancy Taid taking all that time over the trip to Barnet, Owen Williams grandson, Richard Williams, was Chief Executive of the Owen Williams Group until its acquisition by Amey in 2006. Architect, Maxwell Aryton 1925–26 – Crubenmore and Loch Alvie Bridges, architect, Maxwell Aryton 1925–26 – Duntocher Bridge. O
