One-Upmanship
Trying to be too smart often proves counter-productive as was demonstrated on many occasions with respect to British Ventures.
In their splendid isolation they often came up with concepts which, while being at first glance ingenuous and well-considered, turned out to be ill-conceived, over-engineered or misguided only needing to be abandoned in the end.
Engineers Frank Whittle & Hans von Ohain, once on opposite sides, got along fine after the Second World War as this picture doesn’t belie.
Since the centrifugal engine exploiting the Brayton Cycle for its prime functioning had been developed in the United Kingdom by Frank Whittle and, independent of him by Hans von Ohain in Germany, Britain was first to introduce a Jet-engine propelled Airliner, the De Havilland Comet
Britain transferred the patent to their Wartime Ally across the Ocean to allow them to replace their outdated propeller fighter planes with Jet-planes without delay but the US didn’t reciprocate the favor as they refused to share the Los Alamos Laboratory nuclear secrets with Britain.
It was Hans von Ohain who succeeded in building the 1st operational Planes propelled by centrifugal engines which even briefly saw action in the closing phases of the 2nd World War when they couldn’t make a real difference any more towards it outcome.
Genuine WW2 Footage of 1st Fighter Planes propelled by Jet Engines
Lately, when doing some genealogical research I learned that both my paternal & maternal ancestors were born & bred in the Duchy of Brabant going back many centuries being a source of great satisfaction to me.
Even when not sharing a drop of blood with the folk on the opposite side of the river Scheldt in the County of Flanders I’m nevertheless referred to as being Flemish which misnomer hereby stands corrected.
As it happens, the ancestors of Hans von Ohain also originate in this Duchy, native land of so many artists and scientists throughout its troubled history
This somewhat disorienting map doesn’t depict the Duchy with the North on top as did become customary on later cartographic renditions.
Not all Smartphone browsers offer the same functionality, so you might have to try an alternative one to enlarge this High Resolution map with its encirclement as described.
The father of scientific cartography, Mercator, also having been of Brabant origin by the way but having had to relocate to Germany due to persecution by the Habsburg Inquisition on account of his unconventional notions.
Reputed chiefly for his Global Projection Concept, resolving the problem of representing the three-dimensional object which the earth constitutes on a two-dimensional map without distortions occurring in the process.
Apart from his ground-breaking work in the field of cartography, he wrote more controversial works which attracted the attention of the Inquisitor.
You’ll have to enlarge this High Resolution map to see it clearly encircled.
This futuristic looking plane has been more or less erased from collective memory since so many of them crashed, setting back the fortunes of planes with centrifugal engines for Years since nobody wanted to fly them anymore, insisting on propeller airplanes with well-tested reciprocal engines.
If you look at the design now, it appears sleeker & more aerodynamic than present-day airliner models with their drag-reducing incorporation of the engines inside the wings.
This aprioristically sensible approach turned out to be its Fatum
Partake in this 1950s Newsreel featuring the De Havilland Comet
Whenever a malfunction occurred of the turbine engine, the whole wing disintegrated causing the plane to become uncontrollable and drop out of the sky like a brick.
All subsequent airliners forwent the by themselves laudable principles of aerodynamics for the less elegant and fuel-efficient concept of under wing attached engines, independent from the structure of the plane.
These engines are kept suspended by a single bolt, designed to fracture when vibration of the malfunctioning turbine becomes thus as to threaten the integrity of the wing or fuselage as a whole so the plane remains airworthy even when one or more of the engines fails and breaks off.
Only one exception to the rule obliges mentioning.
The DC-10 had a third engine fitted in the tail while being an integral part of the fuselage.
Not surprisingly, this airliner soon acquired a bad reputation for being accident-ridden but was kept in service by many airline companies for decades after its failings became apparent and irrespective of this circumstance.
The military version of the ill-fated civilian De Havilland Comet, known as Nimrod knew a troubled trajectory too with good money being thrown after bad money in the course of its development until it was finally jettisoned by the British Government not all that long ago.
When the necessity obviated itself to complement ground radar installations, incapable to detect incoming aircraft and missiles at a low cruising height while staying under the radar with air borne radar systems capable to scan the airspace far beyond the horizon ensued.
The US AWACS system employing a large jet plane as its operational platform with the electronic equipment and personnel handling it taking up a lot of space.
In the 1980s, Britain snubbed the Boeing Sentry based Air Borne Early Warning System AWACS preferring their home-built Nimrod as platform for an Air Borne Radar System.
As it turned out, Nimrod couldn’t accommodate the radar equipment so Britain had to purchase the Boeing based system after all.
Yet another example of trying to be smarter than the next guy.
The choice of national procurement rather than the available US alternative, involved not only higher costs for Britain but also the lack of an adequate system in-service when needed… It appears that buying British was given a high priority than having a system available to meet the assessed Soviet threat
Was the conclusion of historians Ron Smith and Jacques Fontanel
Before Boeing came to dominate the market for large passenger carriers in the 1960s, 70s & 80s the French Caravelle was the most popular Jet plane.
Learning from the experience of the Comet with engines integrated in the wing structure, it had no engines even near the wings but to the contrary detached from the fuselage in the back of plane.
When space exploration commenced in the late 1950s, Britain wouldn’t stay behind and launched its own space program with both military and civilian objectives.
Once again, their one-upmanship proved counter-productive.
Unlike the Soviet & American rockets which had a solid structure of cast & machined aluminium preserving their rigidity irrespective of the pressure of the liquids their contained..
.. the British designed ones were extremely light, made of ultra thin, milled steel plate with the inner pressure of the contents being a major factor in maintaining their shape.
1960s Newsreel on Launch of the British Blue Streak Rocket in Australia
Analogous with rigid-frame airships versus blimps, being self-supporting by inner pressure.
Soon it became obvious that this weight-economizing design caused them to go wobbly after launch with an inevitable crash ensuing.
I read about this ½ century ago in a book on early spaceflight being one of my many interests as a child and never forgot about it.
I remember watching the many failed launches of European space rockets in the 1960s & 1970s before the creation of ESA when all European countries were mucking about in their own corner.
It was the subject of derision at the time and a recurring feature of the evening news.
Failure after failure.
Britain launched its rockets in the Australian desert at Woomera as it also conduct its nuclear testing far away from its own territory.
Even tiny Holland pursued its own space program before ESA was set up in their faraway colony Dutch Guyana now known as Suriname, better suited for space launches because of its proximity to the Equator.
As Blue Streak started of as being a surface-to-air missile later to be converted into the 1st stage of a Multi-Stage Satellite Launcher, Dutch space rockets also utilized decommissioned surface-to-air missiles to which a second stage was mounted to perform rudimentary experiments on solar winds
Lutz Kayser, a German entrepreneur struck a deal in the 1970s with president Mobutu within a 1/4 of hour to set up a Space Base in the heart of the Congolese Jungle to launch the first 100 % commercial rocket, built on the cheap with only off-the-shelf components only for this ambitious project to abort prematurely because of geopolitical pressures.
In order to exploit the rotation of the globus to the full, economizing fuel and dead weight, proximity to the equator of launch sites being paramount.
Even Russian rockets are now being brought in orbit from the Kourou ESA Space Centre because of its ballistically more advantageous location.
President De Gaulle turned the overseas Colony Guyana into a French Département as to ensure France’s continued access to this strategic site.
Suriname gained independence from The Netherlands as late as 1975 leading to 1/2 its population relocating to the land of its former colonizer.
After mentioning the De Havilland Comet/Nimrod as British research having initially been in the forefront only needing to be abandoned in the end, we can’t omit another 1940s ambitious project running concurrent with it :
The Airliner ought to have become the world’s very first Airplane propelled by Turboprop Engines meaning they possess both turbines and propellers
Military Cargo Planes needing to fly at low speeds to enable persons or goods to be parashuted over the dropping zone with accuracy from the opened hatch in the back still make use of turboprop engines as they allow flight at lower speeds because of the mechanical reduction of rotations.
Contemporary Newsreel about the Brabazon Plane
The Turboprop engines soon had to be substituted by conventional piston engines as they met with too many technical difficulties.
And even the downgraded, less ambitious, piston-engine powered version never obtained as much as an airworthiness certificate
The Hercules C-140 has been the workhorse of many an Air Force for decades being one of the first highly successful turboprop Cargo Planes.
An excuse often forwarded not to repatriate parvenus who, after having exhausted all imaginable legal procedures at the states expense and their application for asylum finally being rejected, simply ignore the order to leave the territory, being the fact their countries of origin defiantly refuse to take them back.
Cargo Planes like the Hercules C-140 or its successor, the Airbus 400M provided a probate remedy for thus afflicted Occidental Societies when it comes to unburdoning themselves of such recalcitrant undesirables.
Just parachute them over their own country from a cargo plane with or without their consent.
UN Treaties formally ban signatory states from denying entry to their own nationals anyway but these treaties aren’t enforced with respect to all their provisions to the same extent as has been borne out repeatedly.
Its European Airbus-built successor has been contending with Issues too as far as the turboprop engine was concerned with delivery being retarded.
One more Saga the British want to forget about entails their embarking on a high speed train project, independent from the continental French system TGV.
The French TGV requires the whole rail infrastructure to be adapted in order for high speeds of over 300 km/h to be attained supposing the construction of expensive over- and underpasses to avoid curbs and detours along the trajectory linking major cities wherever possible.
The track had to be redesigned too, with sleepers in reinforced concrete rather than wood, containing shock absorbers, and, with rails being welded together excluding all gaps between the sections of track.
This in turn necessitates the placement of thermic anodes absorbing heat to prevent deformation of the track through heat expansion.
Temperatures at surface level can be 20 ° C higher than ambient ones causing the solid steel rails to contract & expand correspondingly.
The spaces between the sections can accommodate these temperature-induced variations in length.
Sealing gaps diminishes friction and offers a smoother riding experience.
In the 1930s, French tyre manufacturer Michelin introduced an alternative method to enhance comfort of rail vehicles by putting them on pneumatic rubber tyres resulting in the long since forgotten vehicle, the Micheline
The main objective of this rather having been boosting tyre sales in the Interwar Era when turn-over declined because of the Great Depression
Once the gaps removed, provision of ulterior methods imposes itself to maintain structural homeostasis under all prevailing circumstances.
The iron armor inside the purpose-built, concrete TGV sleepers act as heat sinks
The totality of infrastructure on the ground representing the majority of the huge investments required.
The ever so smart British engineers wanted to forgo all these expenses by designing a highly sophisticated train capable to attain high speeds on the existing rail track network without alterations being required.
They sought to achieve this by introducing the then still novel concept of tilting trains
The superstructure of the train being mounted as for it to lean over in the curbs, capable to be taken without having to slow down to avoid derailment by centrifugal forces.
The carriages, by virtue of not having been fixated to the undercarriage but rather being free agents shifting the center of gravity of the whole structure when negotiating curbs.
All good and well on paper but the engineers hadn’t reckoned with the numerous tunnels along the way, some of which among the oldest in the world.
The tilting trains rubbed against the walls of narrow, curbed tunnels.
The whole project finally had to be scrapped with the high-tech train, ahead of its time ending up in the Swindon Railway Museum being on display there as an eternal reminder of the downside of one-upmanship
The tilting train principle, subsequently emulated by other manufacturers, operated in several countries with varying success.
With Passengers complaining about nausea because of the awkward movements of the carriage, occasionally causing them to throw up in the neck of those seated in front of them.
Only the short stretch between the exit of the Channel Tunnel and Pancras Station in London was fitted with the high-tech TGV tracks in Britain.
Initially in the vanguard of high-speed train travel, Britain now lags behind compared to continental Europe where huge investments were made to construct the costly TGV infrastructure without this leading to significant reductions in short haul air travel.
With electricity in France being mainly generated by emission-free nuclear power plants and the TGV trajectory having been electrified, crossing the continent by TGV occasions a carbon footprint considerably below that than when doing so by airplane.
But aviation continuing to benefit from competition-distorting perks such as tax-free shopping and tax-free fuel renders them more attractive for undiscriminating travelers only looking for the best deal available.
The detached attitude of Britain being commendable in this instance since they’ve abolished Duty-Free Shopping at Airports after leaving the EU for most goods.
The longest rail tunnel ever in Belgium was constructed in Brussels to allow TGV trains to reach the airport from Antwerp within ½ an hour but this didn’t result in the closure of environmentally prejudicial Antwerp regional Airport in spite of it being loss-making and heavily subsidized.
Antwerp Central Station, one of the follies of king Léopold of Congo Notoriety was conceived as a dead-end station meaning that trains destined for the Netherlands had to reverse out of the station in order to travel further North.
It contains dozens of different varieties of marble but proved of no practical utility.
This time-consuming determinant had to be removed by constructing an expensive tunnel under the city since Central Station had to be upheld as point of arrival of international trains at all cost.
All this resulting from a historic planning blunder in the 1960s when the old station prior to central station at Berchem was demolished only to be rebuilt 100 meters short of the Antwerp Ring Road the construction of which coincided with vast refurbishments of the Antwerp suburbs.
If Berchem Station had been reconstructed alongside the ring road, trains arriving from destinations to the West, South & East of Antwerp could have driven around the city parallel with the ring road, avoiding the costly tunneling operation just to scrape a few minutes off the travel time between London-Paris and Amsterdam later on.
Intercity trains still have to alter driving direction at Breda Station in the Netherlands to continue their journey to Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Trains do drive alongside the ring road in the direction of Gent.
A differently configured tunnel complex to the existing one would have accommodated trains coming from other directions allowing them to shadow the ring road as from Berchem Station provided this had been repositioned 100 meters from where it presently stands.
Berchem Station only being a few minutes removed by Premetro from the center of Antwerp.
The Antwerp subway can’t presume to be a proper Metro since trams still emerge from their tunnels to join above-ground traffic, defeating the object of metropolitan networks to the largest extent with them ongoingly being subject to the same vectors prejudicing punctuality as regular trams and buses.
Genuine metro-systems like the one in Paris can even run without drivers appreciably reducing operating cost being a timely asset with labor shortages becoming ever more compelling.
Several underground stations and many kilometers of tunnels were never finished after being built at the expense of millions, inconveniencing small business for decades with some even driven into bankruptcy for the plain reason of not being reachable by their prospected customers.
My own father was among those nearly bankrupted as a result of being cut off through interminable public works in the 1960s & 1970s.
The houses to the left, one of which accommodating my father’s business, originally at street level, became much more inaccessible after completion of the works lasting years with the garage having become unusable.
The stairs indicated on the map weren’t part of the original planning.
He bribed the contractors & laborers with lots of beer out of his own pocket in order to prompt them to add these unplanned, access facilitating stairs.
Unconventional method but all in a good cause and for the general benefit
Litigation against the responsible public authority ensued from which he eventually emerged an unqualified victor but only after already having deceased himself in the meantime with the legal fraternity solely being the beneficiaries.
This measure which would have costed only a fraction of subsequent expenses if it had been taken at the planning stage of the ring road in the early 1960s involving only the broadening of bridges what also would have enabled freight trains subject to the Agreement of Dangerous Road Haulage such as arriving from the German industrial heartland and destined for the Port of Antwerp to avoid traversing the heavily populated neighborhoods which they unchangingly did, even after the elaborate 1960s refurbishments.
Their number and axle loads having increased ceaselessly in the course of successive decades with Noise & Train-induced Shocks & Vibrations doing so accordingly to the detriment of those unfortunate enough to reside in the immediate vicinity.
Actual Footage of Rail Convoys subject to the Agreement on Dangerous Road Haulage transiting Railway Station at Berchem-Antwerp on embankments.
Ground leveling occurring immediately adjacent to the rail embankment to enable road broadening, further exacerbated pre-existent seismic issues as did nearby excavation works for an underground parking garage by the creation of a voluminous hollow space acting like a vibration amplifier, analogous to the sound box of string instruments.
All known physical phenomena being envisagable beforehand.
With even improvised shock absorbers under the bed legs being inadequate to guarantee sleep, shocks & vibrations having been so acute whenever the heavy freight trains thundered by over the embankments and bridges at just a 100 meters.
These train convoys with potentially hazardous chemicals & substances continue to transit some neighborhoods on top of embankments in spite of the billions invested in rail & road infrastructure elsewhere in the city.
That such convoys aren’t devoid of risks for those living nearby in the event of derailments and/or explosions was obviated on many occasions as can be learned about in this montage of mine.
It doesn’t bear thinking about what would have been the consequences if such a convoy would have derailed while transiting Berchem-Antwerp.
In the 1980s, Europe’s largest Postal Sorting Center Antwerpen-X was build next to Berchem Station complete with a rail connection allowing postal Trains to drive straight into the building for loading & unloading purposes also causing additional vibration in nearby buildings.
With demolition of the state-of-art sorting center ensuing within mere decades of becoming operational as new electronic media such as Faxes & later Email supplanted paper envelopes as main means of communication with sorting facilities being surplus to requirement.
Another example of lack of foresight on the part of Belgian Planners.
This not being attributable to one-upmanship but plain Belgian stupidity, short-sightedness and total contempt of suburban residential interests.
Lately, the longest railtunnel in the whole of Europe was constructed in the non-residential Port Zone of Antwerp fitted with the most sophisticated safety features in the case of an explosion or fire occurring during transit of ADR — train convoys with no expenses spared.
To all appearances, investments in rail facilities know no limit in places where the well-being & safety of residents is in no way compromised but the smooth operation of commerce is as borne out by this project.
This montage gives an impression of the scale & cost of the project
The Precautionary Principle having been blatantly dismissive of in every instance and at every stage of this sordid, consequential Saga begging for retro-active exposure and correction.
But all train concepts based on bi-centennial working principles can be deemed to be overtaken by events and unsuitable to address reigning operational conditions such as will prevail in the future.
Humid & Breezy conditions becoming a constant while being no longer occasionally disrupting of train services.
Electricity-based train concepts being the ones most vulnerable to such conditions.
The First Ouvertures of weather patterns likely to become permanent if the envisaged effects of Global Warming were to eventuate.
The fact Britain wasn’t occupied by Napoleon and therefore never subject to French decrees as all conquered continental territories were meant that perfidious Albion never possessed a National Para-Military Police Force with a central command structure or Gendarmerie like other once occupied countries do to the present day.
In the Bad Old Eighties, under the tenure of Margaret Thatcher, Britain came dangerously close to a National Police Force or at least something displaying all the whole marks of it when Constables from all-over the UK were dispatched to Mining Towns to crush the 1984 Great Miners Strike
According to some observers, doing so she overstepped her constitutional competences by departing from the principle that local police should be local and not deployed outside their constabulary for oppressive reasons.
Creating a de facto Gendarmerie as it were.
Neither does it keep a National Register of all its inhabitants or imposes the carrying of identity papers at all time to be compulsory produced to each civil servant with law enforcing competences on request.
The British aversion to Public Registration and Compulsory Identity Card being somewhat incongruent since they were first to deploy CCTV surveillance cameras in the public arena on a massive scale.
About 6 Million there being of them at present.
The dichotomy between the omnipresence of surveillance cameras with facial recognition capable of monitoring the in’s and out’s of all residents with the parallel reluctance to introduce an identity card scheme being another Oddity proper to the British Isles.
There have been identity cards in the past though but these never lasted.
It can’t escape the notice of anyone that this absence of National Identity Cards and associated National Register figures among the main reasons of Britain being so attractive to illegal migration from across the Channel as it makes it very easy to evade detection after irregular entry of the territory.
There being a direct causal relationship between the amassing of parvenus on the beaches of Northern France & this anachronistic security vacuum, not respecting of the realities of this present age of rampant parvenuship
Since Britain left the EU, National Identity Cards such as owned by almost all EU-Citizens no longer suffice as identification to enter Britain.
You even need an expensive Passport for a day trip to London.
An scheme to introduce Identity Cards was legislated in 2006 but later repealed with a National Register already having been established.
Text of the repealed United Kingdom Identity Cards Act of 2006
In The Netherlands, resistance against compulsory Identity Cards also lasted very long but compulsory identification was eventually imposed without having to carry papers on your person all the time like in Belgium.
When Municipal Registers were introduced in Holland in 1800 under French occupation, everybody had to adopt a surname insofar they hadn’t one already and many Dutchmen chose a ridiculous name reckoning the French wouldn’t be there fore ever and the French Law would be repealed once they had left.
Before introduction of compulsory municipal registration by no means everybody had a surname, being known only by their Christian names by their immediate family circle and acquaintances which sufficed as they would never leave their village throughout their lifetime.
They assumed wrong as the successor Dutch Government kept many of the measures introduced by the French such as municipal registers, universal conscription, the gendarmerie, the decimal system, public museums, etc.
Consequently, they’re stuck with their silly names to the present day.
In the absence of any form of public registration, those eligible to vote have to register first in order to execute their democratic right.
In all other countries, voting lists just being extracted from the national & municipal registers.
Ecclesiastical registers exist since medieval times even in Britain, with Parishes keeping records on all baptisms, marriages and deaths.
Disciples of the Church of Latter Day Saints have been going around Europe meticulously microfilming these records to preserve them for eternity in vaults in Salt Lake City.
In the Mormon Faith, knowing your ancestors being paramount in order for them to become partial to Eternal Life hence this registration policy.
Municipalities & Parishes usually consent to this as they receive a free copy of the microfilm avoiding the expense of doing it themselves.
Another major difference between Britain and Continental Countries once part of the Napoleonic Empire being the Civil Code not applying there.
The attitude towards the investigation and prosecution of crime differs in that respect that the apprehension of miscreants and resolution of their activities takes place completely separate from their eventual prosecution.
There not being such thing as a Judicial Police in common law nor Investigative Judges all being French Inventions of around 1800 and never abandonment in some countries occupied by France, even after they left.
The very notion of a Judicial Police & Investigative Judges diametrically going against these hallowed principles of upholding strict separation between the investigative and judicial process.
The right to be judged by a Jury of your Peers for all crimes, not just the most severe ones, being another major distinctive feature of common law
In the United States, Juries can award compensation to victims of crimes without any legal limits being imposed on these unlike in Europe where due reparations are determined by Judges and subject to limitations.
The impossibility to be convicted for murder in the absence of a corpus delicti known as the habeas corpus principle being proper to common law
Explanatory for the lengths murderers go to making to object of their crime disappear in Anglo-Saxon countries where common law is practiced.
In recent times this habeas corpus rule having been adapted with a tiny amount of DNA sufficing to prosecute, convict and sentence for murder and no longer the discovery of complete corpses being required.
Not all too juvenile readers of this exposé won’t be unfamiliar with this contraption straight from the 70s & 80s, the Double Deck Cassette Recorder
Such Cassette Recorders could record & play back 2 Compact Audio Cassettes in succession as well as dub cassettes at a very high speed.
They couldn’t make 2 identical recordings on 2 cassettes simultaneously.
For the purpose of doing just that, British manufacturer Neal specializes in recording equipment for specific application in UK Police Interview Rooms making 2 or 3 identical copies of Interview Recordings with suspects.
For several decades the legal obligation exists in the United Kingdom to record all interrogations with suspects and seal one copy afterwards not to be opened or tampered with again until the Court hearing.
The second copy being a working copy for the Police Investigator and the 3rd copy, if available, being handed to the defendant.
With manipulations of Recordings rendered almost impossible, Police Interviewers desist from Intimidatory Interrogation Practices such as are commonplace in countries like Belgium were such recorders don’t exist.
UK Regulations pertaining to Police Interrogations & Recordings
One other distinctive feature of law as only practiced in Britain consists in the fact that no previous convictions insofar such exist can be mentioned in Court during a trial or be taken into account determining the sentence.
Each casus being judged on its own merits without the determination of guilt being influenced by any previous cases, however numerous or serious.
The presumption of innocence being upheld retro-actively.
Such rights of defendants not being safeguarded in Napoleonic Law
Further rudiments of Law guaranteed by both UN & COE Treaties and thus applicable in every Court of any State however judicially structured being you can never be sanctioned twice for the same offence.
And, if new facts come to light after conviction which might have altered the original verdict if they would have been known at the time of the original Court Hearings, the convicted individual is entitled to a retrial.
Foremost precept of all jurisprudence as understood by Internationally agreed upon Treaties, signed and ratified by the offending State being the right to defend yourself against whatever accusation in the exact same circumstances & with identical means as those available to your accusers.
Such derogaters who demonstratively fail to comply with the very fundamentals of Justice will be sanctioned themselves in one way or another in the fullness of time with the character, place and moment only to be revealed if and when it happens in the absence of any tell-tale signs.
As one of the most momentous failures in the history of British commercial endeavor we can’t omit the disastrous 1985 launch of the Sinclair C-5, an electric, hybrid vehicle of which only 5000 of the 14.000 produced were sold before the company went into receivership.
Although ahead of its time in some respects like the plastic body, lagging hopelessly behind in others such as its antiquated lead-acid battery.
The inventor wasn’t just anybody, Clive Sinclair had been knighted by then for his previously introduced more successful products.
Apart from the very limited radius, lacking the at the time already available light-weight Nickel-Cadmium dry battery with longer range, it was soon perceived to be a highly very hazardous to drive a vehicle so close to ground in busy traffic.
As there wasn’t any recharging infrastructure in the 1980s, it was conceived as a hybrid vehicle, capable to be self-propelled by pedals in the case of the battery going flat before having reached your destination.
It was rumored that it was propelled by an electric motor originally designed for a washing machine but that turned out to be an urban myth.
Short video of a Sinclair C-5 being driven in busy city traffic
It didn’t even had a differential and drove only one of the rear wheels.
Some of the more commercially successful ventures of Sir Clive.
I remember these earliest digital Calculators coming on the market in the early seventies when still at school where their use was formally banned.
Functioning with Light Emitting Diode displays or LED’s, preceding the now ubiquitous Liquid Crystal Displays or LCD’s their battery life was extremely short as LED’s consume lots more power than LCD’s.
The early digital LED-watches weren’t successful for the same reason.
Latin Countries like France & Italy do distinguish themselves from Northern European States by designating an entire ministry to the sole furtherance of Culture and nothing else.
They deem Culture of sufficient importance in order not to confound it with several other, completely unrelated departments like is the case in Britain, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria and probably many others.
Britain doesn’t even have a secretary wholly devoted to Culture alone.
Recently Digital Issues have been added to an already charged agenda.
I plead guilty myself of blending Art & Science in the course of these exposés as I never could choose between the two, not knowing where my heart really goes out to.
Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach in meine brust, die eine will sich von die andere trennen as a German bard aptly remarked centuries ago.
By way of artistically contextualizing the subject of the Nimrod Air Plane you can hear here the movement Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations conducted by the new Wonderboy of the musical world Gustavo Dudamel.
Elgar’s Nimrod proven to have been a British product of more enduring success than his winged counterpart.
Venezuelan Dudamel claims to have been first to feature deaf performers in an opera he staged in the United States not so long ago.
My great-uncle preceded him by almost a century, having been the founder of a choir consisting exclusively of the profoundly deaf in Antwerp.
He was afflicted with the worse fate a musician can visit, he suffered from progressive deafness which condition caused his eventual dismissal at the Antwerp Opera where he played in the string-section like my grand-father.
Throughout the Old Continent these unlikely amalgams obscuring the foundation of every self-respecting society and foremost definer of identity
In Eastern Europe, Culture seems to be more than a side-issue.
The plurality of existential issues in 3rd World Countries doesn’t prevent Culture being attributed a fully fledged Ministry & portfolio there.
Ireland, having had to struggle to preserve its cultural identity during centuries of Anglo-Saxon domination, doesn’t see fit in the actual context to entertain culture as its core interest, undiluted by ulterior Issues.
The Ministry of Culture actually was the 1st 100 % Flemish Ministry in the 1960s after the earliest shy attempts to emancipate the Flemish Region.
Culture being a ministry in its own right didn’t last very long however.
To conclude on a positive note with regard to British one-upmanship.
We can commend this island state as being sole in Europe not to charge any Value Added Tax on printed material whatsoever.
VAT legislation on Printed Material — United Kingdom
In France 5,5 % VAT applies to Books, Papers & Magazines.
In Germany 7 %
Reynaerts KFJ
