To celebrate the birth date of Alexander Graham Bell (born in Edinburgh on this day in 1847), here is a newspaper report from 1878 about the interactive demo of the workings of the telephone, given by Alexander Graham Bell to Queen Victoria in 1878. Bell’s demo by royal appointment took place at Osborne House in January 1878, and it looks as though the experiment went very well – luckily for the Queen and Bell, PowerPoint hadn’t yet been invented to …
invention
Newspaper report from 1898 on the life and achievements of Sir Samuel Plimsoll On 10 February 1824, Sir Samuel Plimsoll, ‘the Sailors’ Friend’, was born in Bristol. The MP for Derby, philanthropist and social reformer had an amazing life, including a period of destitution in London, when he failed in business as a coal merchant. Today, he is mostly remembered for inventing ‘the Plimsoll Line’, which is a set of measurements and symbols on the side of ships indicating how …