A few months ago I commented about the effect on reflecting heat that painting roofs with white paint could have.

I was therefore interested to see via Everything Popular is Wrong that there is now a group set up specifically to promote the idea.

The organisation – Paint the Globe – promotes the idea, although its website is rather light on supporting facts, and rather heavy on presuming that the reader is based in the USA – which is ironic for an organisation with the word “globe” in its title. That quibble aside, in terms of total impact on climate change, this is mere tokenism, but quite often tokenism leads to bigger and better changes and more awareness of the issues. Which can only be a good thing.

As it is difficult to persuade people to get out the white paint after a building is constructed – maybe the planning system should encourage upward facing surfaces to be painted white as part of the process of getting planning permission?

One of the areas where I agreed with the former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone is when he commissioned a report on promoting green roofs in London, although I am not sure if it was pushed as an important issue for planning controls.

In the meantime, I am off to buy shares in the makers of Dulux paints.

Some fairly young school kids were taken on a visit to Fermilab, the USA’s equivalent to Europe’s CERN particle research facility.

Before Visit

Before they went though, they were asked to draw a picture of a “scientist” and describe the person – and you got drawings of stereotypical balding males in white coats holding flasks of chemicals.

After their visit the exercise was repeated – and you got drawings of fairly normal people in average clothing, and in surroundings that quite often veered towards almost being outdoors.

I thought it was an interesting experiment and you can see all the results here.

I have myself had such a transformation in opinion – as an adult – after a visit to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing centre. Our group was lucky enough to spend a day at the place going to all the bits you don’t normally get to see.

Before I went, I wasn’t entirely sure what the work was like – which was part of the reason for visiting – and had presumed it to be largely lots of people in white overalls wandering round with clipboards and monitoring systems.

After Visit

Actually, most of the people working there are blue-collar workers who are physically working on, for example, cutting up nuclear waste containers. All the work is done through radiation shielding, but the manual labour is unchanged. In fact, part of the reason for the sitting of Sellafield where it is was to take advantage of the local labour force which had been largely mining and manual labour at the time.

A total “eye opener” as they say.

Incidentally, don’t ever go to Sellafield for the public exhibition centre, it is utterly crap. Try to organise a day trip with tour which is quite amazing.

An interesting article from a copy of the Illustrated London News of October 1856 that I recently acquired – on a mobile elevating platform that would have been used to peer over the walls of a city being besieged by an army.

However, I am still somewhat at a loss as to why the besiegers were unable to put up a ladder that was just below line-of-sight and climb up that to peer over the walls of the city.

Anyhow, as with many inventions, the initial motivation was military with civilian uses a later potential benefit, and although we see mechanical lifting platforms used in some situations, the enthusiasm that the invention would effectively render the humble ladder redundant proved hopelessly optimistic.

THE PATENT ELEVATOR AND OBSERVATORY

Illustrated London News, October 11, 1856

During the siege of Sebastopol a good deal of natural anxiety was felt to obtain a view of the interior of the enemy’s works, and several plans to this effect were suggested, none of which were feasible. Two or three months before the town yielded to the Allied armies, Mr. Stocqueler, the military writer, conceived that a machine constructed upon the principle of the “lazy tongs,” with a vertical action, might be made available for carrying a person up a considerable height, and at a safe distance, so as to afford a perfect view of the interior of the fortifications.

He communicated his idea to Mr. W.B. Saunders; and the father of that gentleman, Mr. W. Saunders, formerly of Jersey, a remarkably ingenious person, hit upon expedient of applying the “lazy tongs” principle in the manner shown in the accompanying engraving. It will be observed that a series of tiers of expanding laths, each lath six feet in length, worked by a wheel acting on a spindle, rises from the three sides of a triangular base, carrying up an individual, secured by a circular railing, to a height of fifty or even one hundred feet, according to the dimensions of the base.

A model of the machine having been shown to Lord Panmure, that nobleman, after taking the opinion of scientific officers, encouraged Messrs. Stocqueler and Saunders to construct a machine properly reserving his undertaking to become a purchaser on behalf of the Government until the promise of the model should be realised in the elevator itself.

No time was lost by the projectors in commencing the construction of the machine. Several difficulties and obstacles presented themselves, but they were all surmounted by the energy of Mr. Saunders and the skill of Mr. Burley, the engineer – not, however, until Sebastopol had fallen. In the mean, while Messrs. Stocqueler and Saunders patented their invention in England, France, Belgium, &c.; and it is now offered to the public for the various purposes to which it is applicable.

Its utility in superseding scaffolding to a great degree is obvious. For cleaning the inside of the roods of churches, chapels, halls, and museums; painting and repairing the fronts of houses; assisting firemen to direct the jets of water upon burning houses; facilitating reconnaissances and observations; rendering ladders and climbing unnecessary in gathering fruit; lopping the branches of tall trees, and watering conservatories; painting and caulking the sides of ships – in face, for all purposes in which a certain elevation, without the expense and incumbrance of scaffolding, is requisite, this invention will prove of much value.

We understand that it is viewed with much favour on the other side of the Channel.

Whenever a new energy or force was discovered in the past, it wasn’t long before someone tried to see if it could be used as a medical treatment.

As most things can treat something though, it wouldn’t be long before “this might work in some cases on a few illnesses” is turned into CURES EVERYTHING!

Just as the discovery of radiation initially lead to the use of radioactive elements as treatments – and indeed still are in more controlled conditions, the discovery of controllable electricity spurred an entire industry in dubious cures for all manner of ailments.

As regular readers may recall, I have a growing collection of old newspapers, from which I have learnt that rheumatism and gout seemed to be the greatest medical concern of the age.

Today I acquired a collection of prints from various newspapers and this advert from October 1882 jumped out at me.

What I like most about these adverts is the improbable list of the things the device will cure: Nervous headaches; bilious headaches; neuralgia; dandruff – not to mention preventing grey hairs and baldness.

Click on the image for a larger version.

Considering the quackery of the claims made about the brush, even more amusing to my mind is the dire warning that there are fakes around that wont work as promised, and that people simply must make sure they buy only from Dr Scott.

Note also how they push the address of the shop quite strongly – as it would have been just a few doors down from the first electricity generator for public use in London, which powered street lighting in the Holborn area. Hanging onto the coattails of its more legitimate neighbour!

I was at the LSE’s Literary Festival at the weekend, of which more in a day or two, but I couldn’t resist posting a couple of photos that resulted from from some exploratory work after I left the event.

At a talk on the history of the Bloomsbury Area, Professor Rosemary Ashton mentioned that she is currently studying the archives within the British Museum and delighted to tell us of two “secret rooms” hidden behind fake doors within the museum, where she spends time in her labours of research.

Now that was just too much to leave unexplored!

Hence a detour to the museum was mandatory following the lectures, and with a couple of clues from the Professor, the following two doors were identified, one in the Enlightenment Gallery and the other in Gallery 2.

Not totally invisible, but the fake books do mean that it not the sort of thing that the casual observer would notice.