An early image of the James Douglass lighthouse, with the stump of the Smeaton-designed building beside it.
Eddystone Lighthouse is located in the English Channel, 14 miles south of Plymouth, England. The reef upon which it stands was the source of many shipwrecks... and many lighthouses, the first of which was built in 1698. The first three lighthouses were wooden, and suffered the fate of sea storms. John Smeaton built the fourth lighthouse in 1759 of Cornish granite.
UK
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Image Credit: Public Domain; Produced prior to 1/1/1923Image Caption: Eddystone LighthouseEra_date_from: 1882
1991
This elegant cast iron arch bridge designed by Scotland's famous Thomas Telford was built from 1812 to 1814. It is the earliest surviving example of a portable lattice-braced standard type that Telford developed for use at wide and deep water crossing sites unsuitable for masonry spans. At least 10 of these bridge types were erected throughout Britain between 1814 and 1829.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Graham Robertson (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Craigellachie BridgeEra_date_from: 1814
2007
Built by Robert Stephenson to carry the Chester and Holyhead Railway across the River Conwy, this bridge was erected between 1846 and 1848. It consists of a single span 400 feet long, formed by two parallel rectangular wrought iron tubes, each weighing 1300 tons. Masonry towers were built on the abutments and topped with battlements and turrets to harmonize with the nearby Conwy Castle. The Conwy Tubular Bridge was the first railway bridge in which trains ran through the main girders. It represents a pioneering use of wrought iron for bridges.
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Image Credit: Original Photo: Flickr/Glenn J. MasonImage Caption: Conwy Tubular BridgeEra_date_from: 1849
2002
When a new road bridge was constructed alongside it, plans were made to demolish the Conwy Suspension Bridge. There was a national outcry and, since 1958, the bridge has been in the care of the National Trust and closed to vehicular traffic.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Verity Cridland (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Conwy Suspension BridgeEra_date_from: 1826
2002
On this site during the 1939-45 World War, 12,000 men and women broke the German Lorenz and Enigma ciphers, as well as Japanese and Italian codes and ciphers. They used innovative mathematical analysis and were assisted by two computing machines developed here by teams led by Alan Turing: the electro-mechanical Bombe developed with Gordon Welchman, and the electronic Colossus designed by Tommy Flowers. These achievements greatly shortened the war, thereby saving countless lives.
"Benjamin Franklin, American electrician, printer, and diplomat, spent many years on Craven Street. He lived at No. 7 between 1772 and 1775 and at No. 36 from 1757-1762 and again from 1764-1772. During these years, Franklin popularized the study of electricity, performed experiments, and served as an adviser on lightning conductors."
(The plaque may be viewed at the Franklin house museum at 36 Craven St, London, England.)
Franklin, considered one of the founders of modern Physics, was already a famous scientist when he arrived at Craven Street in 1757.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Elliott Brown (CC BY-SA 2.0)Image Caption: The Benjamin Franklin House on Craven Street in London, where Franklin lived for 16 years, and where he did much of his most famous work. Converted into a museum.Era_date_from: 1757
2003
The unprecedented innovation of the steam-atmospheric engine by Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) of Dartmouth and his assistant John Calley stands at the beginning of the development of practical thermal prime movers in the early years of the eighteenth century. Spreading through Europe and then to the Cornwall mines in the New World, it was one of the strategic innovations in world history and the single greatest act of synthesis in the ensuing history of the steam engine.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Charles Pence (CC BY-SA 2.0)Image Caption: A surviving example of the Newcomen Steam Engine, in the Henry Ford Museum (Dearborn, Michigan).Era_date_from: 1712
1981
In the early 1830s, the merchants of Bristol, long dissatisfied with their communication with London, began to wonder if the new railroad technology might be a solution to their problem. The Bristol Chamber of Commerce, the Merchant Adventurers and other local industrial bodies formed a committee in 1833 to discuss the ambitious proposal of laying a railway to London. Matters progressed swiftly. Money was advanced and the search for a first-class engineer to guide the effort.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Ingy The Wingy (CC BY-ND 2.0)Image Caption: Great Western Railway lower quadrant semaphore signals; 1952Era_date_from: 1838
2005
The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s, which began the era of antibiotics, has been recognized as one of the greatest advances in therapeutic medicine. The discovery of penicillin and the initial recognition of its therapeutic potential occurred in the United Kingdom, but, due to World War II, the United States played the major role in developing large-scale production of the drug, thus making a life-saving substance in limited supply into a widely available medicine.
The plaque commemorating the event reads:
Innovations
