Friday, June 20

Newcomen Engine

We spent the last day of vacation in Edinburgh,and what a wonderful day it was. Edinburgh may not inspire a lot of photography, but it’s a very nice city. We spent the morning at the Botanical Garden. It’s an excellent garden – over 70 acres. We didn’t even have time to see it all.

For lunch, we left the gardens and had high tea. This was the nicest tea we had. Everybody knows that some words have different meanings in the UK. Normally, it’s not a real issue. But if you’re in the UK and you want a biscuit, you better order a “scone”. Because if you order a “biscuit”, you’ll get a cookie. I don’t know whether they have what we call scones in England.

Watt Engine

Then it was off to the National Museum of Scotland. We enjoyed an excellent introductory tour. The highlight for me was the steam engine exhibit. They had a Newcomen (atmosphere) steam engine. These were used to pump water out of coal mines, and were the size of a small house. They also had a James Watt – Boulton engine. The Newcoman engines were used without significant improvements for 50 years. Watt’s improvements made steam engines three times more efficient. When he was done, engines went from 1% to 3% efficient! A couple of their steam engines were “running” (they were driven by a hidden motor). Well, they can hardly fire up a boiler in the museum building. One could see the valves being switched on and off, and get an excellent idea of how the engines worked. The man running the exhibit was quite knowledgeable. He pointed out all of Watt’s major improvements and explained how each improvement made the engine better — even the unique planetary  gear that Watt invented to keep from paying for somebody else’s patent!

Saturday, June 21

We spent the entire day on the plane. Our first flight from Edinburgh to London was half an hour late. That was no big deal because we had a 2-hour layover in London, and because our flight home left over an hour late. We finally made it home about 9:30. Too bad the airlines can’t be as on-time as the trains. It felt strange to see it was dark outside already. It was a wonderful vacation. We had such a good time, we are already talking about where we will go next year.

Amazing Things We Encountered

The shower in our guest house in S-U-A had a control box mounted to the wall. It had a dial for temperature, a dial with 5 positions from “low” to “high”, and a push button marked “Power”. Our first morning there, I was turning dials and pushing buttons, but no water was coming out of the shower head. It took me over 10 minutes to figure this thing out. Converting a residence into a guest house means adding lots of bathrooms. If the hot water heater can’t handle all those showers, one can install an individual electric water heater and run just one cold water pipe to the heater. The British love to have cut-off switches everywhere. In the US, a typical electrical power outlet has two plugs. In the UK, it has two plugs and two switches. This shower heater also had a cut-off switch. It was a pull string hanging from the ceiling, far away from the shower.

It’s common for rooms in the US to have a drip coffee maker. If a guest wants tea, there are often tea bags, but the hot water comes from the coffee maker. Some people claim the hot water always tastes faintly of coffee. The UK has more tea drinkers, so rooms provide a water heater. This is a pitcher with an immersion heater coil in the bottom. Those who want coffee have to make due with instant. What’s amazing is how quickly these things bring water to boil. A US outlet can provide 150 to 200 Watts. The UK uses 220 V and the outlet hardware looks like it’s designed for at least 15 A. I figure they can get 400 W or more from their outlets. They use it all. These water heaters bring 4 cups of water to a full boil in less than two minutes.

In the US, complaining about our ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a national sport. But at least some of us have a choice. If I don’t like Comcast, I can use Verizon FIOS. I realize that not everybody in the US has a choice, but eventually I think many will. In the UK, people can select from many different ISP companies. But all ISPs rely on British Telecom for their data lines. If one doesn’t like the service provided by British Telecom, one can move to France. (Or so I was told. I don’t have a lot of personal evidence, but what I saw doesn’t contradict this.) What’s amazing is that I have seen several articles containing a list of quality of Internet service for different countries. The US is always near the bottom of the list, below many 3rd world countries. I don’t know how these lists are compiled, but our home Internet is superior to anything I experienced in the UK.