No. 1 
| Nano Machines With micro electronics reaching natural limits, nano machinery is an exciting new field of research that involves constructing mechanical machines at a molecular level. This technology is already in many households as the technology is behind the success of the Ninteno Wii. In the future, we can expect to find nano machines in chemical and biological applications such as water purification and medicine. |
No. 2 
| Airbus A380 Tipping the scales at over 500 tonnes, it is a marvel how this beast actually gets into the air. It can fly at 600mph, carry 800 people and it can travel for almost 10,000 miles before stopping to refuel. If you were to fill it up from empty at your local petrol station, you'd need a credit card with a £400,000 limit! |
No. 3 
| Lego Mindstorms NXT A fully fledged industrial PLC with Lego branded industrial LabView software powers this robot. You don't need any GCSE's to program it and it is guaranteed to bring out the Engineer in you (mostly a good thing!). It comes with servo motors, and sensors for light, sound and touch. You can program it to find it's way around the kitchen and to pick up small plastic balls from the floor. Brilliant! |
No. 4 
| Sinclair ZX81 If you remember this machine, then you'll probably be over 40! If you're too young, then strap yourself in because this micro computer brought personal computing into the home in the early 1980's well before Microsoft was even a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye. With just 1024 bytes of memory and a plastic membrane keypad, it sparked the imagination of a whole generation of kids, many of whom went on to become today's leading software developers. |
No. 5 
| No. 60163 Tornado 60163 Tornado is the first steam locomotive to be built in Britain for 50 years. It is also the 50th of the A1 Peppercorn Class and a brand new machine in it's own right. Tornado was approved for commercial use on 27th January 2009 and has been modified to suit modern manufacturing methods and safety requirements - for example, the boiler box is of welded construction as the capabilty to make the original riveted boiler no longer exists! |
No. 6 | The Enigma Machine Consider for a moment the electronic data encryption that we take for granted these days........now think about how this could be achieved by means of mechanics, and you have the Enigma. This machine was used to encrypt messages during WW2. The code sequence was eventually cracked by the allies which is believed to resulted in the War being shortened by 2 years. A simply brilliant piece of combined engineering and mathematics. Watch the movie and find out how it works! |
No. 7 
| Humbucker Pickup Made famous on the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, this device creates an electrical signal when a guitar string is vibrated in close proximity to its coils. The electrical signal can then be amplified and manipulated to create a wide range of different sounds and effects. The Humbucker is famous for its warm and mellow sound due to the unique design which uses patented twin coils which are wound in opposing directions and polarities. |
No. 8 
| Astute Class Submarine Remarkably, this Submarine will never need refuelling thanks to its Rolls Royce nuclear reactor power source. It is the most "stealthiest" design ever and the first boat to be constructed in a modular manner making full use of the latest lean manufacturing techniques. The photo left shows one of the modules being transported through the streets of Barrow. It is also the first boat not to have a traditional periscope - this is replaced by thermal imaging cameras and low light video and CCD TV sensors. |
No. 9 | Biological Robots Scientists at Reading University UK, have created robots that think and learn for themselves. These robots do not use microprocessors or software for decision making, instead they use neural networks grown in a culture which is connected to ultra sonic sensors which allow the robots to "see" the world around them. They have a single mission....do not crash! Sounds unbelievable, but it's absolutely true.......click on the video to learn more |
No. 10 
| BGP1 2009 F1 Car Jenson Button used this car to win both the F1 constructors and individual world championship titles in 2009. A high level of accuracy, precision and attention to detail during the design and production of this car provided the vital few 1/100th's of a second competitive advantage that was needed. It was also done with limited funds and within a very tight timescale - aren't all British suceess stories like this? |
No. 11 | Ultimate Roller Coaster Called the Kingda Ka, this machine is the world's tallest and faster roller coater and is located in USA. It accelerates to 128mph in just 3.5 seconds and reaches heights of over 450 feet. The whole experience is over in just a few seconds. Watch the movie but be patient as you have to wait nearly 50 seconds before the ride starts.....and don't blink because you'll miss it! |
No. 12 
| Oasis of the Seas Making the world's biggest cruise ship is simply a matter of size. But it is the contents of the engine room that is really interesting - power is provided by six Wärtsilä 46 engines, three 12-cylinder and three 16-cylinder engines, generating more than 96 MW. In fact, the bow thruster alone generates more power than most commercial cargo vessels! |
No. 13 
| Typhoon Eurofighter Probably the last manned fighter aircraft to be built, the design of this machine has had to take into account the limits of it's human pilot. The extreme agility of this aircraft have demanded the develpment of a special flight suit which helps the pilot survive the G-forces, altitude and temperatures experienced in the cockpit. Without this suit, the pilot could not survive. |
No. 14 
| Hubble Telescope Hubble travels around the earth once every 97 minutes at a height of 569km. It uses a series of mirrors to gather light coming from the far reaches of the universe and focussing the light on to cameras to produce an image. It does not magnify the image, instead, it works by collecting much more light than is possible with the naked eye. Hubble's largest mirror is a modest 2.4m diameter (relatively small by earth-based telescope standards) but because it is in space it is able to produce images with far more detail. |
No. 15 
| Rolls Royce Merlin Engine RR used advanced metallurgy, special alloys, a unique cooling system and a two-stage supercharger to produce an aero engine with an incredible power to weight ratio. Churchill considered the Merlin engine so important to Britain that in 1940 he secretly sent a set of blueprints the USA in case the UK was overrun by Nazi Germany. There, it was further refined by Packard in Detroit (Henry Ford turned down the opportunity because he was convinced that Britain would lose the war anyway!). |
No. 16 
| Turing Machine In 1937 Alan Turing first described the abstract concept of "computation" and in effect invented the first computer. He descibed a system containing an initial state, a load, a move and a new state. This concept gave rise to the development of machines which were fed instructions contained on a tape stream, a read head to load the data from the tape, storage cells which were used to move the data around after it had been loaded (memory), and actions (processing). Write heads were used to output the resulting data back to the tape. |
No. 17 
| Bagger 288 This German made strip mining machine was built in 1978 and to this day it is the world's largest tracked vehicle (surpassing NASA Shuttle Transporter) and weighs in at 13,500 tonnes. In the photo you can see the machine crossing a road during a 22km journey to it's next job (it was cheaper to drive it to the next site than strip it down and rebuild!). |
No. 18 
| Large Hadron Collider Built in a 27km long tunnel, this machine accelerates two counter rotating beams of protons and collides the beams together in a controlled manner in order to record and analyse the resultant particles. Scientists hope to conduct various experiments that will help test theories concerning the make up and workings of the universe. |
No. 19 
| Strontium Atomic Clock The world's most accurate clock loses about 1 second in 300 million years.The clock uses 2,000 atoms of strontium frozen to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero in grids of laser light. The oscillation of the atoms between different energy states is very consistent and by measuring these oscillations ("ticks"), the clock can keep track of time with the highest precision. |
No. 20 | The Human Body A intelligent, biological machine with the ability to self programme. It derives energy from plant and animal matter which is also used to power an internal climate control system which maintains a constant 37 degrees C. It uses wireless communication and has a transmitter and receiver which are capable of using various communication protocols across a common modulating carrier. There are 5 input sensors and various output mechanisms which allow the Human to interact with it's environment. |
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