Stories from the stores

Earlier this week, a team of British engineers broke the world steam-car land speed record. The ‘Inspiration’ car used a turbine driven by steam from twelve boilers fitted inside the car – check out the video here.

The previous record was set in 1906, by American racing car driver Fred Marriott. Marriott drove a Stanley steam car at Daytona Beach for his 1906 record-setting run, averaging an impressive 128mph. The record stood for more than a hundred years, until the Inspiration team drove their turbine car at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert at an average speed of 140mph.

If you want to see a Stanley steam car that’s even earlier than Marriott’s, come to Wroughton on 12 and 13 September to see our 1899 machine. It’s a bit different to the sleek Inspiration car that raced this week! 

Stanley Locomobile steam car, 1899 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

At the turn of the twentieth century, as the car started to gain popularity, it was steam and electric vehicles that far outsold internal combustion engine (ICE) ones.

Then with advances in ICE cars such as starter motors  (rather than hand-cranks that could break your arm if you weren’t careful), things switched around. Today, steam cars seem quaint and electric cars seem brand new. But things could have been very different.

More on our electric car collection another time, but here’s a couple of pictures of some of our other steam cars (not on show at the Wroughton festival, sadly):

Foster steam car, 1901 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

White steam car, 1903-5 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

The service ran between Hounslow Heath (near today’s London Heathrow Airport) and Le Bourget, just outside Paris. It was operated by the Aircraft Transport & Travel company run by George Holt-Thomas, and 25 August 1919 saw its inaugural flight. Those first services used planes designed by Geoffrey de Havilland that were bombers converted to include a glazed cabin for the passengers. We’ve a model of the D.H.4 bomber, on which the airliners were based, in our Flight gallery:

Model of a de Havilland D.H.4 aircraft (credit: David Rooney)

And out at Wroughton we’ve got a wooden propellor from a D.H.4 bomber, but I haven’t got a picture, I’m afraid. Instead, here’s a nice atmospheric shot of a later Handley Page aircraft at Paris-Le Bourget in 1930:

Handley Page HP42 at Paris-Le Bourget, 1930s (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

In those early days, passengers were reluctant to come forward. The flights were cramped, noisy and slow. In fact, it wasn’t really until pressurised airliners could fly above the weather (after the Second World War) that flying became remotely comfortable.

Fast forward to 2009: we have wide-bodied aircraft seating hundreds; turbo-fan jet engines combining speed with economy; and flights for a pound. But we also have climate-changing emissions, noise pollution and a nagging feeling that maybe the glamour has gone out of flying these days… here’s a great historic slideshow from the BBC.

I happened across this BBC news report about a stolen bus brought to a halt on the M1 motorway by a police stinger. If you want to see a stinger up close, you’d be better off visiting our Making the Modern World gallery and seeing the one we’ve got on display, rather than stealing a bus:

Metropolitan Police stinger (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

Quite by chance, our stinger is on display right next to a piece of the M1 motorway:

Core sample of M1 motorway (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

And to complete this very literal interpretation of the news story, while you’re in the gallery seeing the stinger and the bit of motorway, head up to the Models Walkway display. There’s a neat early model of a London General Omnibus Company ‘B’-type motor bus. Introduced in 1910, this was the first really reliable and commercially successful motor bus:

LGOC B-type motor omnibus (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

Some say the B-type is the bus equivalent of the Ford Model T motor car, introduced two years before. There’s one of those in Making the Modern World, too…

I had a great day yesterday at the Science Museum Wroughton, recording a series of video interviews promoting the Festival of Innovation (12 – 13 September). I was there to talk about twenty transport icons that shaped the modern world.

One was a Moulton bicycle, the first significant design change to the bike since J. K. Starley’s ‘Rover’ safety bicycle hit the scene in the 1880s. The Moulton is a small-wheel, compact cycle with full suspension that is easy to ride, mount and store.

'Rover' safety bicycle, 1885 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

Raleigh 'Moulton Mk3' bicycle, 1970 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

I’d never ridden one, so I arranged to use the Wroughton staff bike (which is a Moulton) to get from the entrance gate to the hangar I was filming in. Top fun – especially when I realised it had a coaster brake. I’ve never ridden a coaster brake before. I wondered why something seemed to be rubbing as I dawdled along the airstrip… I probably should have done my research properly first! Still, I did my bit for the planet.

Moulton 'Major' bicycle used as staff site transport, Science Museum, Wroughton (credit: David Rooney)

I made it in one piece and went on to spend time with hovercrafts, trucks, planes, cars and bikes of every description, including our Boeing 247D and Douglas DC-3 airliners:

Boeing 247D flying into Science Museum Wroughton, 1982 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

Douglas DC-3 airliner at Science Museum Wroughton (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

More next week on the rise of the passenger plane, as there’s a significant anniversary coming up…

Last week I showed you one of our family of crash-test dummies, called Sierra Susie. I was never really sure whether that was a type name or a one-off until I found, quite by chance, a 1996 NATO report on crash test dummies. It was stuffed in a filing cabinet I had never previously had the courage to open. My office is full of them.

Anyway, right at the front I found a table of dummy types. The first whole-body test dummy was developed in 1949 by the Sierra Engineering Company for the US Air Force. He was called ‘Sierra Sam’, and the firm went on to develop a series of figures: Sierra Stan (1967), Sophisticated Sam (1968, with General Motors) and finally Sierra Susie (1970). That’s our girl! By then, other companies were developing crash test dummies, with such glorious names as Dynamic Dan, Repeatable Pete and Tuff Kelly.

Here’s the reference: Advisory Group for Aerospace Research & Development, Advisory Report 330, ‘Anthropomorphic Dummies for Crash and Escape Systems Testing’, NATO, July 1996 (ISBN 92-836-1039-3). Just in case you have trouble tracking it down, you might like to know that Mia (who runs this blog) subsequently found a very useful online history by a firm who currently make crash test dummies. Isn’t the web just one giant stuffed filing cabinet we need courage to open?

Having been responsible for acquiring our three dummies back in 1999, I got to spend quite a lot of time looking into their eyes (when moving them around the stores). It always left me rather sad. They looked so… resigned. As if they’d lost hope that the pain would ever end.

Crash test dummy on show in 'Making the Modern World' gallery (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

Last week our Antenna team brought in a pair of self-guided ‘pod cars’ that will soon be installed at Heathrow airport, transporting passengers from the car parks to the terminals. There’s no driver in the four-seat cabins – they’re controlled by lasers bouncing off an external guideway and feedback tells the pod to steer as necessary.

ULTra personal rapid transit pod car on show at the Science Museum, London, 13 August 2009 (credit: David Rooney)

It’s a sophisticated new take on a fifty-year-old concern. The Science Museum has a 1960 Citroen DS19 car which was modified by the Road Research Laboratory (RRL – now Transport Research Laboratory) to be automatically controlled.

You’ll be able to see it, along with lots of other cool stuff, in our Wroughton storage facility during the Festival of Innovation on 12 and 13 September.

Citroen DS19 automatically-controlled car at the Science Museum, Wroughton (credit: Peter Turvey)

The RRL chose this Citroen because its revolutionary hydraulic steering, braking and accelerator system lent itself very well to automation. An electric cable buried in a test track in Berkshire was fed with a high-frequency signal which was picked up by sensors in the car, telling the control systems what to do.

Apparently the car was perfectly happy travelling at 80mph, even around curves, and one RRL report outlines a glittering future where, by 2010, all vehicles on all major UK roads would be automated.

Following the 1960 tests on the 2.5 mile RRL track, the engineers laid a 9 mile control cable under the new M4 near Reading to carry out longer trials. It was abandoned once the M4 opened to public traffic, but I wonder if it’s still there, buried and forgotten?

The reports did recognise that it was human factors, not technology, that would limit motor car automation. We routinely trust autopilots in our airliners, and we use sat-nav and parking sensors daily, but hands-off driving is still a long way down the road.

On display in the museum we’ve got plenty about road safety. Here’s the first Gatso speed camera to be installed in Britain (on Twickenham Bridge, if I remember correctly):

Gatso speed trap camera in Science Museum display (credit: David Rooney)

Also on show is a selection of breathalysers, including a self-test kit bought at a garage:

BreathScan alcohol detector (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

We also have a small family of crash-test dummies used at the Motor Industry Research Association to model the effects of collisions on car occupants, including this one:

Crash test dummy (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society)

As far as I recall, this particular model is called ‘Sierra Susie’. I’ll tell you a little more about her and her friends in a later post.

I was brought up on all the road safety campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s and I can still recite my Green Cross Code (see a cool Green Cross safety film at the National Archives website here). I tried to find my old Tufty Club badge just now but I seem to have lost it.

I’d be really keen to collect road safety campaign paraphernalia for the Science Museum’s road transport collection, so if you’ve got a treasured archive of that stuff and you’re looking for a home for it, I’d love to hear from you!

In a previous post I mentioned Malcolm Campbell and his remarkable speed records set on land and water in his Blue Bird vehicles. Campbell was buried in St Nicholas’s churchyard in Chislehurst, near Bromley. I was planning to go on a walk in Petts Wood (near Chislehurst) last weekend with friends anyway, so I thought I’d take a photo of his grave:

Grave of Malcolm Campbell at St Nicholas's Church, Chislehurst (credit: David Rooney)

Close to Malcolm’s plot is the grave of somebody perhaps less well known, but whose actions have had a profound effect on the way quarter of the world live their lives each summer: William Willett, the man who invented ‘Daylight Saving Time‘ (or ‘Summer Time’ – putting the clocks forward in summer). His grave was restored last year (following an exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich) and now looks terrific:

Grave of William Willett at St Nicholas's Church, Chislehurst (credit: David Rooney)

There is a link between the two men, beyond their physical proximity, though I admit it’s a bit laboured: road safety is often given as a reason to continue with Daylight Saving Time (although the matter’s highly complex), and the Campbells certainly stretched road safety to the limit in their fast-living lives. So, next post will be all about road safety technology at the Science Museum…

Back in January, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 airliner successfully tested a camelina-based biofuel, prompting hopes that a non-petroleum-based jet fuel might one day power the world’s airline fleets (and maybe cars and trucks too).

At the Science Museum we’ve been tracking jet engine technology since it was first developed, back before the Second World War. Of particular note in our displays is the Gloster-Whittle E.28/39, Britain’s first successful jet aircraft:

Gloster-Whittle E.28/39 jet aeroplane, 1941 (credit: Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library)

That’s in the Flight gallery, and you can find out more about Frank Whittle and the invention of the jet in our curator Andrew Nahum’s book.

In ‘Making the Modern World’, downstairs, is a more domestic-looking vehicle. It’s a 1950 Rover motor car, but the registration plate gives away the secret under the hood (or rather in the boot):

Rover gas turbine motor car (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library)

It’s a car powered by a jet engine! Jets are also known as gas turbines, and you can find out more about how they work here, far better than I can explain.

The Rover jet car wasn’t much of a success, really, as gas turbines are better going at a pretty constant speed, whereas cars need to speed up and slow down a lot. There was a marked accelerator lag in the Rover, for instance — put your foot down and it wouldn’t start moving for a little while. Not ideal at the traffic lights. And it was very thirsty, so while it was a useful experiment, it was back to the internal combustion engine for cars.

Hidden amongst our older displays is this monster, by Metropolitan-Vickers, from the 1940s, in the Marine Engineering gallery:

The first marine gas turbine, 1947 (credit: Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library)

It’s the first jet engine (gas turbine) ever used to power a ship – MGB 2009 (that’s Motor Gun Boat). Nowadays, many warships have gas turbines to drive the propellors. For instance, HMS Illustrious, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, uses four Concorde engines. I found myself standing next to the turbine air-intake vents on Illustrious’s deck a few weeks ago (I wangled a visit on board as part of the Royal Navy’s ‘Fly 100′ aviation celebrations) and boy, was it noisy!

It’s a busy time for transport anniversaries. I’ve already mentioned the centenary of Bleriot’s flight across the Channel and the ninetieth anniversary of Alcock & Brown’s crossing of the Atlantic.

Today, I’ll talk about one more pioneering flight across water. The craft was called ‘SR-N1′ (Saunders Roe Number 1), and it too flew across the Channel, fifty years to the day since Bleriot first flew over. But this flight, in 1959, was very close to the water.

You guessed it: it was the first hovercraft crossing. Christopher Cockerell, the hovercraft’s inventor, accompanied by a pilot and navigator, made the crossing on 25 July 1959; the craft had previously been demonstrated in the Solent on 11 July. SR-N1 is in the Science Museum’s collection and is stored at our Wroughton site. Here it is at Calais, before the maiden crossing:

SR-N1 hovercraft at Calais, France, 24 July 1959. Credit: NMeM Daily Herald Archive

But Cockerell’s own hovercraft had flown some four years previously. Having acquired a small shipyard on the Norfolk Broads, Cockerell experimented with improvised kit before completing an experimental prototype model (using model aircraft-type construction of nylon or silk over balsa wood with a glow-plug model aero engine) which he tested by tethering it to a rowing boat at his yard and flying it round. This prototype is also in the museum’s collection and is on show in the Flight gallery.

Hovercrafts have never really fulfilled the promise held out for them in the ’50s, apart from some ferry routes and niche uses such as military assault vehicles. Owing largely to their aircraft ancestry they have high manufacture, maintenance and fuel costs, the latter of particular concern now as we look to cut down on fuel use in transportation.

Here’s one Science Museum visitor, Lukas Esser, telling us his own very personal relationship with the hovercraft:

Still, it did lead to the hover mower. It’s said that lawnmower technician Karl Dahlman saw a picture of SR-N1 in flight and had the idea of applying its principles to lawncare. You can see a 1970s hover mower in the museum’s ‘Making the Modern World‘ gallery: