Day 37 - 17 September - Manchester

Today we visited the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) here in Manchester.  We walked there from our hotel, and on the way got a much closer look at the Beetham Tower and the Castlefield Roman Ruins that I've mentioned in previous posts.

The MOSI is located in a group of 5 separate buildings, one of which is the oldest surviving passenger railway station in the world.  They still occasionally run steam trains from it, but it's not part of the main train system.  It is still in quite good condition though.  The other buildings are all relatively old and contain a huge range of displays from historical information and items about the area as far back as Roman times, right through to a display about the nearby Hadron Collider and all sorts of things in between.  Of course as you'd expect, the displays concentrate on science, technology and industry.

Just as we arrived they were about to start a talk and demonstration about cotton spinning and weaving which was a huge industry here up to the early 20th century.  They have samples of all the machines used in the process, most of them still in working order although they didn't use all of them in the demonstration.  They handed us a number of samples of cotton at the various stages of production. It was really well done.   I have to say - I'd be astounded if anyone who worked in the cotton mills had any hearing left after even a short period working there - even one at a time some of the machines were deafening and there'd have been dozens or hundreds of them in each factory.  

This high quality of displays extended through much of the museum - well presented, interesting information.  I'd like to let some pictures do the talking here, but the internet access tonight is just terrible - I've been trying to upload three pictures to my report on Leeds for 15 minutes now!  So, some pictures may or may not appear here.....

Part of the spinning and weaving display

Part of the Underground display - all about the history of water and sewage in Manchester.  Far more interesting than it might sound actually.

Makes me a bit nervous about walking around the city  :-)

Replica of Baby - the first computer in the world to store and run a program.  Alan Turing came here to work on the original one.  The iPads on display in front of it each have about 10,000 times more processing power than Baby did.

Lots of planes

And cars

It's now our last night in Manchester - the 'Rainy City' - and we seem to have caused a drought.  It has not rained on us once in the 9 days we have been here, and there has even been some direct sunlight!!   Actually I've just googled it and am told the rainy city thing is a myth; they say that Manchester is often overcast but not overly rainy at all....