[modeleng] Built like a battleship!
- From: "Shep" <shep.28@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Modeleng" <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 10:43:17 -0000
Hi everyone.
After the flurry of November messages, we now have a pre-Christmas lull - so
here are a few comments about this and that. I was describing a machine tool
to a friend recently, and remarked that 'it was built like a battleship'.
This reminded me of the following story:
When Professor Lovell (later Sir Bernard Lovell) was building his famous radio
telescope at Jodrell bank, near Manchester; finance was meagre. He (or his
engineering advisors) realised that the 15" gun mechanisms and bearings
fulfilled similar functions to that of rotating a huge heavy dish.
Fortuitously the Battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Royal Sovereign were being
scrapped, and he scrounged suitable parts from the Royal Navy.
The result was the first huge radio telescope in the world - truly 'built like
a battleship'. The advent of this telescope was not world news until it
became the only telescope in the world to track Sputnik 1 and subsequent space
craft, and its reputation was made!
Cheers! Hubert
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