Today at @stsucl.bsky.social History of Science Reading Group we discussed Alexander C.T. Geppert @actgeppert.bsky.social and Lu Liu's ‘The Celebrification of Qian Xuesen’, British Journal for the History of Science, 58 (2025), 237–60 (suggested by Charlotte Sleigh) dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000...
Rue-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites), bridge over Mildmay line, Dalston #wildflowerhour
Interested in doing a PhD in space heritage? If so, this opportunity might be for you!
It's a really exciting project, perhaps of interest to recent MSc students in history of science/technology/space, museum or conservation studies
Information on our AHRC PhD studentship on 'Rescue curation of space heritage' also found here:
RTs appreciated!
www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical...
We have a 4-year AHRC-funded PhD studentship on 'Rescue curation of space heritage' advertised!
Supervision by me, space scientist Lucie Green (@luciegreen.bsky.social), and curators of space and engineering at the Science Museum, Doug Millard and Ben Russell
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
The big white building that contains JET at Culham
Entrance to Culham. 1980s building
Goodbye JET!
Two blue shipping containers, stacked
Detail of container with ID number and a warning sign pinned on
I do like a repurposed shipping container.
These are in the JET Assembly Hall
Concrete sculpture. Picture a three layered vertical concrete slab with a ninety degree twist
Culham’s campus/new town feel is complete with a concrete sculpture
Geoffrey Clarke RA’s ‘Plasma stabile’ (1965)
Apparently never finished. Like fusion
Warning sign. Says ‘controlled area. Radiation high. Contamination low. Observe local rules. No eating, drinking, smoking or chewing of gum is permitted in this area’
Don’t eat gum in the JET torus hall!
(actually this is good universal advice)
Observe local rules!
(more good universal advice)
JET’s doors are huge, meters thick and made of concrete. Picture shows group wearing hard hats by the doors which are painted white and yellow and are very high and thick
JET is protected by what, I am told, are the second biggest & heaviest doors in the world
(what’s number one??)
Inside the replica of the JET torus called Octant 9 with a remote handled robot
You can’t go into the inside of JET’s torus (it’s radioactive from the tritium) and you can’t see it from outside because of the mass of pipes
But in the assembly hall there is a replica, with the paradoxical name of ‘Octant 9’, in which the remote handlers practice with the repair robots
Two big silvery curved pipes
nice pipes
Lit yellow circle with a red emerging stop button
Plaque reads ‘Pushbutton to switch off JET. Press only in case of extreme emergency’
JET had an emergency off switch!
Part of JET with a the access hatch visible
The radio waveguides that helped power JET, made in Germany
To create a pulse of extreme temperature to start fusion, 3 gigawatts of power was needed in fractions of a second, via accelerated hydrogen and radio frequency heating (like a giant microwave), released partly by enormous inertial flywheels (perhaps a 10th of the energy of the UK)
Reads: ‘This foundation stone was laid on 18 May 1979 by Dr Guido Brunner, member of the Commission of the European Communities’
Part of JET built by De Pretto-Escher Wyss, Italia
It was Europe manifested in the Oxfordshire countryside.
A symbol and evidence of a European vision of an fusion energy future
Inside the centre of JET is a hollow metal donut shape that contained the plasma
Started in the late 1970s and operating, first with hydrogen and then with deuterium and tritium.
Behind all those pipes and wires was the torus chamber where plasma temperatures reached 150 million degrees
The floor is tungsten and the walls are beryllium
JET (Joint European Torus). Pictures shows lots of pipes and industrial infrastructure in a huge hall, perhaps 30m high
Going into see JET are people from museums, historians etc with hard hats. Sign above door says ‘The Assembly Hall and Torus Hall. Home of JET’
Had an amazing day on a tour of the Joint European Torus (JET) nuclear fusion facility, beginning to be decommissioned at Culham
and, awkwardly, a weakening over time…
#reading
Benjamin Nathans, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause
Craig Harline, Miracles at the Jesus Oak
Anna Keay, The Restless Republic
Jack Vance, The Green Pearl (Lyonesse 2)
Ken Grimwood, Replay
John Heywood, In Search of Technological Excellence
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Today at @stsucl.bsky.social #histsci Reading Group we discussed @joshlauer.bsky.social Josh Lauer’s "Visualizing Black Telephone Users: Technological Whiteness and Racial Exclusion in Bell System Advertising." Technology and Culture (2024) muse.jhu.edu/article/933099 (ht Norberto Serpente)
"Historians of science interested in the 1980s [...] can profitably learn from one another by comparing how scientists of different stripes moved through the greedy waters they swam in."
Joseph Martin's review of Greedy Science: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Very nice. It’s a UK orchid - several species it could be - painted as a still life from a real specimen
“remains indispensable as a culture medium”
is even better
Yes. New motto
“remains indispensable”
Green leaves, small white divided petal flowers on dark brick wall
Heart shaped leaves and small white flowers
Whitlow-grass (Draba verna) from a railway bridge wall in Dalston, London, and Scurvy-grass (Cochlearia sp.) from harbour wall in Portscatho, Cornwall
(small, over-exposed, slightly look-alike wall-dwelling brassicas for #wildflowerhour)
Recommend Recife-based film The Secret Agent for its unexpected regional #scipol and #histsci and oral history themes
I’d like to apologise for my university’s craven actions, failing to defend staff and throwing the rest of the UK university sector under the bus on this issue.
UCL had the resources others do not have to fight this properly in court.
Greenish umbel flowers of Alexander’s
Primrose flower - very pale yellow with bright yellow centre
Lesser Celandine flower - eight yellow petals
More damp flowers for #wildflowerhour, this time from Cornish hedges: Alexanders, Primrose, Lesser Celandine
