SCI Members' Lunch and Lecture 2022

Synopsis

Professor David Perrett is Professor Emeritus of Bioanalytical Science, Barts & the London School of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London.

Although an active biomedical researcher with over 200 papers on human diseases and bioanalysis mainly using separation sciences, his interests relevant to this event can be traced to an upbringing in a coal mining community in Yorkshire. He was President of the Newcomen Society for the History of Technology from 2007 to 2009. He is Chair of the Association for Industrial Archaeology at present.  

His interests include stationary steam engines especially the Newcomen Engine and Industrial Archaeology in both Yorkshire and London, where he is President of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS). He lectures both nationally and internationally on bioscience and also on the history of technology and industrial archaeology.

Hydraulic Power – A Victorian public utility

Prior to the 1850s there were few means of transmitting power from its source to where it was needed. The Yorkshire engineer Joseph Bramah suggested that water under pressure could be used to transmit power to remoter sites, a practice developed by Armstrong in the 1850s. Widespread use of hydraulic power was found not just in Britain but around the world until the 1980s. In London it powered lock gates in the docks, raised the bascules of Tower Bridge and turned the stage at the end of Sunday Night at the London Palladium. This lecture will tell of its rise and the turning off of the taps.

Programme

Friday 4 November

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