Just in case list members think that I spend all my time ranting about TV
programmes – I can recommend ‘Engineering Solutions’, which is Adam
Hart-Davis’s new series on Radio 4 (Thursday evening, but probably
repeated). The first was about the £5bn Channel Tunnel link from King’s
Cross to east London.
Hart-Davis shows that it is possible to popularise a subject and still make
it interesting for those with more than a passing interest in mining and
civil engineering. Apart from giving details of the boring machine, the
conveyor system which services it, and historical comparisons with Brunel’s
tunnelling shield, he even talked enthusiastically about the importance of
precision surveying – mentioning co-planing and plumb-bobs, in vats of oil,
hanging on piano-wire for aligning the underground with the surface. If
he’d got as far a Weiss quadrilarals I’d have been shedding sentimental
tears.
Mike Gill
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