The Knowledge Boy

Road closed.  Diversion signs.  All in the day's work for a London black cab driver and he or she will know the best  alternative route to go. Follow that arrow as it points towards the stationary scooter rider and this is where that knowledge will start.  To get a licence to drive a taxi in London you have to be able to find a route without looking at a map or relying on a sat nav and  pass "The Knowledge".   Our scooter driver is learning to do just that and is a Knowledge Boy learning the routes with his clipboard fixed to the handlebars showing the routes to be learnt that day.

He will have to learn 25,000 streets within 6 miles of Charing Cross and  major arterial routes, points of interest (hospitals, hotels, theatres, squares etc), traffic signals, cross junctions, roundabouts and know what is alongside at all points.  This Knowledge Boy was making notes and memorising, oblivious to the lines of traffic passing

The Knowledge test was started in 1865, the days of the hansom cab when only the clip clop of horses feet were heard in London.  Today it starts with a written test and then will need at least 12 appearances (attempts at final test) after preparing for an average of 34 months learning 320 standard routes or runs in central London when the Blue Book "Guide to Learning the Knowledge of London" will be their constant companion, until they pass the exam and can gain a license to drive a taxi cab.

Here is another Knowledge Boy where the clipboard routes of the day can be seen.  I was surprising that I accidentally managed to get a better picture of this with a moving target than one that was stationary.  Then I thought I would finish this post with a photo of a London black cab taxi but realised I'm usually trying to avoid cabs and cars when trying to photograph London architecture.  I've got a lot of half cabs disappearing or appearing the edges of photographs but managed to find one picture where it is just in shot,  taken  late on a winter's afternoon. 

Research has found that London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (the part of the brain that deals with spacial memory and navigation) than the general population.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, sojourning this week at K here

Jardiniere and Jalopy

Sailing by Harrington Harbour

Flowers in July planted by the Church Road Youth Club in what one could loosly term a  jaunty jardinière near the jetty,  but now landlocked forever.

Which is the only place for a Jaguar car seen here in the Lakeland Motor Museum a jumble of cars, bicycles and motor bikes. Down the side are shops recreating displays from the 1950s and 60s

Did I mention they also have lots of antique signs?  John Bull, a national personification of Britain was the name used by the Leicester Rubber Company (1906-1955) who produced tyres for all vehicles as well as that essential for the cyclist, the tyre repair kits.

which came in little tin boxes and much larger ones for those with horsepower:-

Photo from The Vintage Knitter's   'Tin of the Week'

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet,  this week sojourning at J here

I ♡ Ice Cream

This heart shaped ivy growing in St Bees Churchyard caught my interest.  

As indeed does any ice cream van, no matter the season and if it is being sold from a vintage van, irresistible.
This is one of five vintage ice cream vans owned by the Real Dairy Ice Cream Company from the Wirral.  It looks lovingly restored as it even has its make painted on the side - 1938 N1 - the distinctive shape of a Commer van.  A British company that made post office vehicles,  light vans, trucks, military vehicles and buses from 1905-1979.  As part of the Rootes group it was taken over by Chrysler when it continued to  made vehicles under the Dodge badge. 

I had spotted another vintage ice cream van by the Albert Dock earlier in the day when the September morning mist was just starting to clear. This is a 1948 Bradford Jowett which were built in Yorkshire from 1946-1953, its body variants a popular post war choice for a van noted for its sturdiness, stability and economic running.

  Time for an ice cream?

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at I here. 

Life and Death

A profusion of crocus covers St Andrew's churchyard in Coniston at the moment. It is a churchyard with many interesting and ornate gravestones, mostly on the other side of the church to this view, but the star of the show at the moment are the flowers.  No wonder John Ruskin opted for this peaceful place in the shadow of Lakeland hills to Westminster Abbey as his final resting place. 

Habitual Howling

 Last year Blackwell (the 'Arts and Crafts' house in the Lake District) played host to sculptures by Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003), and outside on the lawns were the larger pieces from his imagination.  Here is Howling Beast sitting on its haunches by the side of the house. A piece from 1990 when his sculptures took a darker turn

By the house entrance was this couple perpetually climbing stairs

'Stairs' (1991)

For those not able to climb stairs the house entrance has the gentle slope to the door leading to where more of Chadwick's sculptures were on display.  When asked about his working methods he said "I start by welding. If I start by thinking first I can't do anything".  His working technique was to build a skeleton from metal rods welding them together and then building up a form from stolit (a mix of plaster and iron filings) and working on pieces until  "they become something in their own right".  

 The 'Walking Women in Wind' (1986) seems to be doing just that.

Chadwick started out as an architectural draughtsman so I think he would appreciate the 'Sitting Couple' location by a house.  He repeated a variation of this sculpture many times and in fact there is a version of it in Canary Wharf, London.   He took up sculpture after serving as a pilot in World War 2  and started with metal mobiles in the 1940s, his first one man exhibition came in 1950  and among the many prizes he won was the International Sculpture prize at 1956 Venice Biennial . 

People are taking tea on the terrace behind our couple, the overcast day meaning there was no requirement for sun shades and maybe why tea inside was the preferred option, but the view outside had attracted the hardy few.

'Sitting Couple' on the Blackwell lawn overlooking Windermere

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at H here

Looking Out

Alan has provided a wonderfully evocative photograph for this week's Sepia Saturday prompt which was taken on Mount Løvstakken in Norway.  Perhaps our trio are looking out for Henrik Ibsen to come walk into view. The photograph could certainly be a scene from one of his plays. I have a confession to make. I speed read and missed the musical trio reference because I read Röntgen, and thought German physicist.  Read Beyer and thought Friedrich one of the founders of the pharmaceutical giant. This indeed would have been a disparate trio to walk in the Norwegian mountains so no wonder my first thought was wow, who knew.  Well nobody did as I discovered when I reread the intro and it is the reason for my scientific take on the theme.  Having said that a telescope is definitely the star of the show but in this case a giant one.

The Westinghouse |Electrical and Manufacturing crew in South Philadelphia assemble in the rig that would later attach to the 200" mirror of the Palomar telescope.  Construction sites of companies all over the USA in the 1930s were all making different parts for the telescope.  Our story starts in 1928 when George Ellery Hale got a large Rockefeller grant to build an observatory and he started his search for an appropriate place to site it, having had to eliminate his original idea of the Los Angeles area due to light pollution.  That fact is rather appropriate because I found this photo on the Palomar Skies blog created by the then Public Affairs Coordinator who left Palomar to work for the International Dark Skies Association, he hoped that someone else would continue his Palomar blog.  Unfortunately it looks as nobody has but it remains a wonderful resource.

But lets get back to Hale who found his ideal position for the telescope in the early 1930s on the 5,600 feet of Palomar Mountain and proceeded to buy 160 acres from local ranchers and the US Forestry Service.  His next next problem was to get a 200" mirror. General Electric failed to make one out of fused quartz so that was $600,000 down the drain. He turned to Corning Glass who decide  Pyrex would be less prone to expand and contract than ordinary glass. At the second attempt they are successful. 

The project moves on in 1936 with construction of the dome

(Caltech Astronomy)

which also involves road building, cottages for personnel and camps for the workers. The next problem is to move the mirror blank across country and the crowds come out to watch the "Great Eye" travel by train in 1936 from New York to Pasadena.  The trip takes 16 days travelling at a speed of 25 mph and on arrival Caltech start to grind and polish the mirror, an immense task which is interrupted by World War 2 when production is stopped and the disk is stored and protected by timber for three years.  As Caltch explain "to make the final mirror, almost 10,000 pounds of glass are polished away, including the top two inches which contain "scar tissue" left over from the casting and annealing process". 

Now finished the mirror has to move from Pasadena to Palomar, enter the Belyea Truck Company, who were famous for driving a ship across a desert and saying there was no cargo they could not move.

In November 1947 the 40 ton cargo rested on 3 diesel tractors pushing it up the mountain.  The 25 mile trip is completed in 32 hours and engineers install the mirror but the image is not ideal so another two years are spent polishing and aligning and adjusting. In July 1948, although still not fully operational the telescope is dedicated and named after Hale who had died in 1938 his vision outliving him.  The story goes that in the last few days of his life Hale looked up into the sky and said  “It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, and they are working on Palomar.”

Hale "The Journey to Palomar" University of Chicago

 Another famous name, Edwin Hubble took the first photograph with the "Big Eye" in January 1949 and the telescope became fully operational and remained the largest in the world until 1993.  Today it is still used for research and visitors are welcome to visit the public area or take a conducted tour.

Caltech's observatory on Palomar Mountain | Photo: Kevin L. Moore/Flickr/Creative Commons License

           

Its A Gas

One of the largest offshore gas fields in the UK ( South Morecambe's 32 sq miles) was discovered in 1974 and a decision was made to develop it to help winter demand for gas.   The first natural gas was piped inshore here in Barrow through 36 inch pipes in 1985.

Of course my attention was grabbed by the yellow gas flare pipes with yellow buttercups in the foreground but lets walk further on and the Gas Terminal comes into view

Photographs were taken in May which is when the gorse always looks its most startling yellow.  The Gas Terminal was built in the site of the old Rooscote coal fired power station but the soil here on the shoreline was found to be succeptable to liquefaction.   It will come as no surprise to know that that is because it was sandy (alluvial and glacial).  An unusual foundation  pile design was created to be able to overcome earthquake risks. Not that this is especially common occurrence as we are not on any fault lines ( the Irish Sea had minor tremor in August (3.3)) but the structure has to withstand the possibility of a 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 years event.

The cycle path and Cumbria Coastal Way from Rampside to Barrow passes briefly below and between the terminal and the shoreline.

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But for those of us that like a bit of industrial photography there is the small matter of a high fence to dissuade.

 The cycle path leads eventually to Cavendish Dock and the Gas Terminal can be seen over Roosecote Sands in the distance to the right of the fishing shelter.  The chimney to the left is the electricity station, and as I have a love of puns you could say this is a powerful view.  Is that a groan I can hear?

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at G here.