A monkey in an apes world. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
United Kingdom
Joined August 2010
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It has been suggested that the Bristol Aeroplane Company didn’t make interesting planes, which I find sacrilegious.
So it started with the Boxkite Britain’s first mass produced aircraft, used to train the majority of British WW2 pilots and prove aircraft’s worth in war.
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BristOli retweeted
1/30 Look under the stern of any ship and you find two things that took thousands of years to get right: the rudder that steers her and the propeller that drives her. One began as an oar held over the side. The other began as a pump for lifting water. #maritimehistory
BristOli retweeted
Something humans built is now flying where the Sun’s power finally gives out.
Voyager 1 has left the giant bubble our star blows around the solar system. It pushed through the heliosheath, slipped past the heliopause, and is now cruising through real interstellar space.
How far out is that? About 25.9 billion km from home.
No human-made object has ever been farther. And it was launched back in 1977.
Still going.
It’s Halloween apparently so here’s my AC 3000ME looking mildly spooky in its own fog with the number plate I was told could be read as BOOO ME. 😂
Tenuous I know.
#classiccars #Halloween
BristOli retweeted
✈️ It’s official: Filton recognised as the world’s longest continuously operating site of aircraft manufacture and design!
Proud to commemorate this at Aerospace Bristol, where I’m Vice Patron. A tribute to generations of local people who’ve helped change the way the world flies
A bussin’ day at @BristolAero thanks to the superb Bristol Vintage Bus group bringing a lovely selection of vehicles. #Bristol #Engineering #British #transport #vintage #bus #coach #sunset
And both of these have strong Bristol links!
I can’t help but notice some Americans are using Tesla demoing a shell concept car hopping for two seconds as some kind of global claim of technical superiority.
Well…
Thrust-based vertical manoeuvring? Developed in Britain in 1957, culminating in the Harrier Jump Jet, with the P.1127 making its first hover in 1960.
And the upside-down car stuff? That’s fan-generated downforce, already demonstrated by British car company McMurtry with its electric Spéirling, which has been destroying track records around the world for the last few years using that exact technology.
So let’s not confuse demonstrating an existing engineering principle for the first time in a Tesla prototype to inventing the underlying technology. And the difference is, both the Harrier and McMurtry are real world products, not vastly adapted prototypes designed for a single demonstration.
Rule Britannia, spiffing stuff boys and all that. 🇬🇧
BristOli retweeted
1/x Two of the best-known coats on any high street began as working kit for sailors on cold decks. Both carry names from my little corner of the North Sea: Duffel, a small town near Antwerp, and the Dutch word "pij". The story of the duffel coat and the peacoat. #maritimehistory
ALT A Royal Navy sailor on watch in a duffle coat and steel helmet, with binoculars, beside a quadruple .5-inch anti-aircraft machine gun, 1942 (Royal Navy official photographer, IWM TR 100). Public domain. Link:
BristOli retweeted
Across Bristol you will find examples of this distinct logo. Named “Bristol Scroll”, it was first used in a 1910 pamphlet for the Bristol & Colonial Aeroplane Company and later adopted by Bristol Tramways and the city’s buses before being used throughout the city.
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BristOli retweeted
Die Mimik der Tethys ("The Facial Expressions of Tethys") by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.
BristOli retweeted
The River Trym (from Anglo-Saxon “strong”) begins near Filton and winds for 4 1/2 miles through Bristol before reaching the Avon at Sea Mills. Much of its course through residential areas is culverted underground but sections can be spotted such as here in Westbury-on-Trym.
BristOli retweeted
Check this out you ✈️🚁 nerds!
This dude put together a website with airplanes and helicopters on display across the world, it’s pretty awesome.
🎥 planeindex
Link 👇
BristOli retweeted
If we’re going to build suburbs, let’s build them like this!
Brabazon on the outskirts of Bristol has a density of 75 homes per hectare, triple the usual. It was originally planned for 2,000 homes but will now see 6,500 built
There’s start up offices, parks, trees, a lake…
BristOli retweeted
So Bristol Docks is the place to be right now. There’s boats, cranes, miniature models and trains all on the go. This is so exciting
BristOli retweeted
I keep reading factually incorrect comments like this (sorry to pick you out Stephen, but you’re one of many) from those who believe our car industry is no longer significant.
Last year the U.K. car industry built 764,715 cars, of which 555,826 were exported and the industry employs 860,000 people.
Yes some are foreign owned, but we should not underestimate how valuable the sector is, including for our national security as the engineers & factories can be repurposed if required.
Then there’s motorsport, with most of the F1 teams based here and a significant motorsport valley built around them.
Let’s not underestimate the value in all of the above.
