James Watts Workshop and steam engine
Chris Allen Geograph.org.uk
I think this picture just about sums up Scotland’s attitude to science, but particularly engineering. It shows James Watt’s workshop at Kinneil where he did much of his work developing the steam engine. Beside it rusting away and covered in graffiti (worse when I visited) is one of the most important artefacts of the modern world: part of his steam engine.
What we need to understand, is that this need to create traction engines for mining was what drove the development of science. It was the impetus for Boyle and others to investigate the behaviour of gases. It is often suggested that science created the industrial revolution, the truth is that the industrial revolution drove the scientific revolution in the UK. Unfortunately, history is not written by industrial engineers but by academics.
Now Watt lived just a few years after the Jacobite rebellion which ended at Culloden. So Culloden is a famous defeat for the Scots. One which is celebrated and visited and generally made a fuss of. Culloden, was an English victory not over Scots, but over a King who had hardly seen Scotland who had an arrogant belief in his divine right to rule his people but was so incompetent it is a miracle he won any victories at all.
If we wanted to highlight any victory what about the Battle of Falkirk Muir where by cunning and great ingenuity, the Jacobites defeated the English (for the last time) and … ruined the day by running after the right fleeing flank, leaving the rest of the English army to walk of the field pretty much intact.
Yet despite being very much the same era, and quite clearly a huge success, we do not celebrate Scottish engineering. Where e.g. in Scotland can one see a full scale model of a steam engine?
What this shows, is that neither the politicians, the civil servants, the academics, the BBC, the rest of the media, and certainly not the majority of the public care at all about Scottish engineering. The decay and lack of interest we see in the picture is symptomatic of a decay and lack of interest in the whole of Scottish society.
Indeed, the whole idea of engineering in Scotland is of some dirty ragtag thing of a bygone age they want to forget.
An engineer, is a manager, they are a scientist, they are a statistician, a nurse, a doctor. Indeed, of all the professions the closest in skill and training and outlook is a doctor who I would call an engineer specialising in the human body. Like a doctor, an engineer is presented with a hugely complex system and must diagnose the right “treatment”. Like a doctor, it takes a very long time and a great deal of university training to reach the required skill to be a good engineer. Like a doctor, the engineer requires science, practice, inter-personal skills, they require management skills, and perhaps far more than a doctor, they require financial acumen.
With such a diverse range of skills and so a high level of training required, it is in my view the hardest profession anyone could chose … at least to do it well. It requires huge dedication, great skill and intellect, so why don’t we see engineers in parliament and the civil service?
The answer is that if not total indifference, there may be active hostility by some prominent groups to the engineer. In particular, I strongly suspect … that’s too weak, its obvious that the BBC (program makers) have an institutional dislike of engineering. This I think shows a huge tension between the program makers and the engineers who produce the equipment.
It is not beyond suspicion that some of the equipment “malfunctions” we see are in fact symptoms of hostility within the BBC …. engineers getting fed up of program makers and visa versa, program makers fed up of the “engineers” on who they rely to broadcast. This is no doubt not helped by the PC culture, petty politics and “jobs for life” of the BBC which still shows many of the union attitudes of the 1970s. We certainly see more than their fair share of trade union disputes.
This, I suspect, goes a long way in explaining, the way the BBC output is almost single minded in its exclusion of engineering in its output. More so because they have created the myth that engineering is just a type of science. So they can then claim that it is just a part of their science output which is largely “eco science” output which is actually quite hostile to engineering and particularly manufacturing engineering.
Bring on independence
And that is why I support independence. It is not that I have any strong views on Scottish nationalism. It is just that the sooner the Scottish economy is allowed to go its own way, the sooner politicians are given the freedom to indulge in their fanaticism and anti-industry ideas, ….
the sooner the whole economy will start collapsing and people will be so desperate to see a revival of manufacturing and engineering which are the bedrocks of any modern economy … that they will finally throw out the anti-engineering ethos of Scotland and
… wake up to the fact that engineering really does matter in Scotland.
A good post. I think you should send a 250 word version to the papers, & not just in Britain, as a letter.
Recently Adam Smith’s house in Edinburgh was saved by money, partly from rich donors.
Las century Shakespeare’s house, which was then a butcher’s shop, was saved for the nation. This happened because PT Barnum had a plan to cart it off the the USA & rebuild it and this stirred enough public shame to get something done. Thjis seems to me to be something of the same order.
This was a sad thing to read. As an American it is difficult to know about this kind of bias (i.e., against engineers) because we only hear what the BBC and the big newspapers have to say about society over there.
I don’t know if you are aware, but there’s been an investigation examining the close relationship between Murdoch’s media interests and the government as well as phone hacking. For obvious reasons, this close relationship is seen as bad. But … when you have the BBC doing just the same thing … with direct links into the heart of government, it is seen as completely OK.
Both Murdoch and the BBC have an agenda. Largely this is self-interest but also there is a significant attempt to influence government to their political way of thinking. This is just as corrupt if it happens by someone in the BBC as murdoch. The big difference is that we can stop buying Murdoch newspapers. We can’t stop paying for the BBC. Murdoch has to respond to public pressure, the BBC are largely immune, indeed, they probably do more than anyone else in the UK to create public opinion.
I think an example will help. We have two programs on TV: “Antiques Road Show” and “Dirty great machines”. They are both fairly niche but I doubt anyone would have much problem guessing which is on the BBC. A commercial company would look at both shows, work out if they have enough interest for advertising and buy it.
The BBC will look at them … decide that the one that they like is educational, and decide the other is just for “people who like engines and silly things like that” and they will give their audience what they think is good TV. When you remember that everyone in TV is much the same kind of person … who want to “put on a show” and they don’t care much about machines and engines and making things and working in factories, and commerce, you can see that the output of the BBC might be “good” but it is fairly well entirely biased to the interests of a certain type of person in the BBC. Perhaps I would describe them as:
– London based
– upper or upper-middle class
– interested in arts and culture
– thinks a monkey wrench is a kind of injury.
– thinks an “engineer” is someone who cleans the drain
– It would appear many take drugs (I’m not against drugs, I just don’t know anyone who takes them)
– A far higher percentage than in normal life are attracted to the opposite sex
So, we get a lot of dramas with the main character being a gay, drug taking, middle class, person living in London with a nanny … who just happens to be a writer working for the BBC.
And to be fair, I think there was once a show which featured an engineer … sorry … I mean an engine (Thomas the Tank Engine)
I totally agree with all that, but be fair, there was Ivor the Engine too. Though I was always a fan of the Clangers myself.
I remember when I told my teacher I wanted to go into engineering she said “you don’t want to work on cars!” Even as a fourteen year old I rolled my eyes and wondered what planet she was on to think engineering started and stopped with a spanner. Sadly it’s not just the Lovies from the BBC who dismiss engineering.
While I agree with most of the post I think it is only fair to point out that Culloden was a defeat for the mostly Highland Jacobites, not for the Scots. There were many Scottish soldiers, including Highlanders, on the Government side and much of Scotland was delighted that the Jacobites were defeated.
Sad but true.
As an engineer with some 35 years practicing experience, I know full well that the whole of western society lives off the backs of the great – like James Watt – and yet these folk are thought so little of now.
I have spent my whole working life (graduated 1975 and still working) planning and designing power substations, lines and cables, to meet the needs my community. It is indeed sad, that parts the community have declined in their thinking, to almost despise or think so lowly of the engineering developments that have brought so much improvement in lifestyle, safety, length of life, freedom to travel, and so on, almost ad infinitum. Grossly ignorant and sad.
Fantastic, someone who knows about substations!!
Lenzie is a village with green belt around it. 7 mile NE of Glasgow. One night for fun I decided to work out where our electricity came from. I assumed it would be a simple thing to follow the 33kv lines from Lenzie back to the power station where there would be the 133kv (or 475kv I’m writing these from memory).
This didn’t prove as easy as I thought. Satellite imagery is jut about good enough to spot the 33kv lines, but even so after about an hour of searching on google maps around Lenzie thinking “maybe it’s this 33kv line I have to follow”. I had run out of 33kv lines.
So, I tried to search from the other end at the pylons. There’s a long line heading up to the east of us and some others to the North of Glasgow. Somehow I just imagined that where the big pylons stopped, there would be a big yard from which all the little 33kv lines would spread out … a bit like a tree. A trunk, branches, smaller branches until eventually you got the 240v domestic supply.
But I can’t see that pattern. The 33kv lines seem to be almost random. Some even appear to cross each other. So, I wondered if this were something like a ring main. But again, unless most of it is underground, it doesn’t seem to fit.
It would indeed be a challenge to work out the circuitry of a network without the aid of a decent set of schematic and geographic plans. Good of you to try though. Parts would be underground and then you’d get lost. Even with plans it is hard enough.
Regarding configurations, depending on the reliability one is trying to acheive (depends on population density and economics), there are four general configurations. Single radial – cheapest and no backup. Open ring – two supplies avaliable but has to be switched – cheaper protection system than closed ring. Closed ring – where several substations are around a ring the system is tolerant to a single fault, however because it is closed it needs special directional or zoned protection to quickly detect the location of faults, so the right bit of the faulted ring can be removed and yet keep the power on to the remaining network. The last one is a fully redundant twin supply which is simple and reliable but most expensive.
I’ve just remembered how I got into this. I’ve been investigating possible mining archaeology in the area. To see if this was related to anything modern, I started trying to work out what these huge bed-sized covers were. I assume they are mine-shafts, but they appeared to go in a line and when I looked, one said: “Scottish water” so I started considering water supply and gas – I know where these come because we had them changed recently, then I thought: “why don’t I know where the electric comes … it should be obvious”.
If you were interested, I could send you a googleearth place file of what I’ve found?
It might be an idea if someone took a look at the BBC’s staff cuts. Huge cuts have been made. In engineering the loss of skilled engineers has been enormous. How do you think transmitters, aerials, lines mobile studios, static studios etc are made, lit, modified, maitained; with relevant staff need attended to? Add to which the BBC has centres in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and now Salford, not to mention other smaller regional centres and the World Service.
Jacko’beacon