Second World War The
RAF Fauld explosion on 27 November 1944 in east Staffordshire produced a 100-foot deep crater, and is the UK's largest explosion, being caused by around 4,000 tonnes of
high explosive, and may be the
world's largest non-nuclear explosion. Birmingham was the third
most bombed city in the UK after London and
Liverpool; Spitfires were built in Castle Bromwich,
Lancasters at Austin's works in
Longbridge at
Cofton Hackett, and the
Birmingham Small Arms Company at
Small Heath produced the
M1919 Browning machine gun.
Boulton Paul Aircraft had their main aircraft factory in the north of Wolverhampton.
RAF Defford, in the south of Worcestershire between Pershore and
Croome Park, was where many important
airborne radars were developed, such as
H2S (radar) and anti-submarine radars.
Scientific heritage Thomas Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood, discovered the first
photo-sensitive (light-sensitive) chemicals –
silver nitrate and
silver chloride in the 1790s. Sir
Norman Lockyer of
Rugby discovered
helium in 1868, for which he used electromagnetic
spectroscopy.
Edward Weston of Oswestry, who emigrated to the US, built the first accurate
voltmeter in the late 1880s, and the
Weston cell in 1893.
Francis W. Aston of Harborne, educated at the University of Birmingham, developed
mass spectrometry in 1919, which helped him to identify the first
isotopes, receiving the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922.
Dennis Gabor invented holography at
British Thomson-Houston in Rugby in 1947, receiving the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1971.
James Glaisher in 1862 took a record balloon flight with
Henry Tracey Coxwell for the
BAAS near Wolverhampton. They reached the composition of the Earth's atmosphere until then was not understood; the altitude records for the UK have not been exceeded since;
Project Excelsior in the US in 1960 would later reach .
Philip Lawley of Burton upon Trent was first person to realise that
chemical damage to DNA caused cancer (at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London) in the early 1960s.
Francis Galton (d. 1911) of the
Darwin–Wedgwood family's Birmingham branch was an early
eugenicist rooted in improving animal breeding stock and examining heredity. He invented terms eugenics and
nature versus nurture. His limited calls for human eugenics were widened by the
German Society for Racial Hygiene in 1905 founded by
Alfred Ploetz, which coupled with the racial superiority fallacies of
Aryanism reached its nadir in
genocidal antisemitism. Moral teachings and
inherent repulsions towards human eugenics were overcome by a minority of those in power espousing
racial equality; European media and leaders lamented
loss of Empire, advocated
ultranationalism and prized military physical advantage; Galton saw human eugenics as part of all means to
do better.
Industrial heritage Iron Bridge at
Coalbrookdale, opened in January 1781, was the first large-scale object made out of cast iron; but cast iron is not reliably strong due to impurities.
Wrought iron, where the carbon is hammered to remove the carbon and impurities is much stronger; the first large-scale wrought iron bridge was the
Britannia Bridge over the
Menai Strait, only possible due to its innovative
box girder design by
Robert Stephenson. Much of the
Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom began in
Birmingham and the
Black Country area of West Midlands. The Industrial Revolution is thought to have begun when
Abraham Darby substituted
coke in the place of charcoal to smelt iron, at his Old Furnace. The Black Country may be regarded as the world's first industrial landscape, while nearby
Ironbridge Gorge claims to be the Birthplace of Industry.
The world's first cast iron bridge in 1779 spans the Gorge. The first self-propelled locomotive to run on rails in 1803 at Coalbrookdale, was built by
Richard Trevithick. The
first iron rails for horse-drawn transport, were made at Coalbrookdale in 1768 by
Richard Reynolds at
Ketley Ironworks. Iron rails only became widely successful in 1820 when made out of
wrought iron at
Bedlington Ironworks in north-east England. , painted by
Philip James de Loutherbourg in 1801 Birmingham's industrial development was triggered by discussions at the
Lunar Society of Birmingham at
Soho House, Boulton's house, and products were carried along the
BCN Main Line canal.
Soho Manufactory was the first man-made-powered factory in world.
Chance Brothers of Smethwick built the glass for
The Crystal Palace in 1851.
Smethwick Engine, now at
Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, is the oldest working steam engine, made in 1779, and is the oldest working engine in the world. Smethwick was a main centre for making
lighthouse lanterns.
Valor Fires in Erdington developed the first
radiant gas fire in 1967, a balanced
flue fire in 1973, and a natural flame gas fire in 1978. The Erdington site, owned by Iceland's
BDR Thermea, closed in May 2012. The company also built
gas cookers; since 2011 the company has been part of
Glen Dimplex, who have a site at
Cooper's Bank, south of
Gornalwood. unit of power is the watt, most commonly found as the kW, a replacement for the imperial measurement of
horsepower.
Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewsbury was the first
iron-framed building in the world in 1797.
Thomas Bolton & Sons of
Froghall, Staffordshire, made the world's first
transatlantic telegraph cable in 1857, having supplied a
submarine cable across the English Channel in 1850. On 10 July 1890, a trunk circuit telephone line was opened between London and Birmingham by the
National Telephone Company; for the first time this allowed phone calls between the London and the north. The world's first
coaxial cable was laid between London and Birmingham in 1936 to give 40 channels for telephone traffic. and brought into use in 1938, later extended to Manchester in 1940.
Alexander Parkes invented the first man-made plastic (
thermoplastic) in Birmingham in 1856. Princess Square, Wolverhampton, was the site of Britain's first traffic lights in 1927. Infrared cameras were developed at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern (with EMI Electronics) in 1967. The world's first
Maglev train operated at
Birmingham Airport in 1983. The tallest freestanding structure in the region was the chimney of
Ironbridge power station at 673 ft.
John Baskerville of Birmingham, a former stone carver, largely invented fonts, or
typefaces, for printing. Much of the UK's car industry would be centred in Coventry and Birmingham; most of this has now gone.
Midland Motor Cylinder (part of
Birmid Industries) of Smethwick was the largest producer of automobile
cylinder blocks in Europe.
Fort Dunlop was Europe's largest tyre plant.
Metro-Cammell in Birmingham made most of the 1970s and 1980s
London Underground trains.
MG Rover (a company of Rover) closed in 2005 (from 1885), The
Ryton plant, which made the
Peugeot 206, closed at the end of 2006, with production moving to
Trnava in Slovakia, and some to a plant at
Kolín in the
Czech Republic.
Alfred Herbert of Coventry was the largest
machine-tool manufacturer in the UK for many decades; it was brought down in the 1970s by advancing technology overseas, and complacent strategic decisions of the management, finally closing in 1982; many Midlands manufacturing companies followed similar fates in the 1970s and 1980s. roundabout, on the
A4540 Middleway and the A38(M)
Henry Wiggin & Co of Hereford developed the metal
alloys necessary for other Midlands' (and beyond) automotive and aerospace companies –
Inconel,
Incoloy and
Nimonic. It was the lack of
vanadium for
high-melting point alloys, caused by Royal Navy action, that prevented German
Me 262 engines being serviceable; had German Second World War engineers had a greater supply of vanadium and
molybdenum, the engine life (around 12 hours maximum, from entering service in April 1944 to the end of the war) of their
jet engine would have increased much more, which would have been significant to the war's outcome.
Bristol Siddeley developed the rocket engines for
Black Arrow at Ansty; in fact all of R-R's rocket engines were developed and built there at R-R's Industrial and Marine Gas Turbine Division; Britain's smaller rocket engines for missiles were built by
Bristol Aerojet in what is now
North Somerset. High Duty Alloys at Redditch constructed (forged) the compressor and turbine blades for Whittle's first engines, and many of the early jet engines; it made
Concorde's airframe from the
Hiduminium R.R.58
aluminium alloy.
Maxaret, the world's first
ABS braking system, was invented in Coventry by Dunlop in the early 1950s for aircraft;
John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish vet who had first produced the first pneumatic
tyres in 1889.
Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, grandson of Matthew Boulton, and born in the area, invented the
aileron, an important
flight control surface in 1868, decades before the first actual flight.
Triumph Engineering was a famous motorbike firm in Meriden. About a quarter of all British WWI planes were built in Coventry. The
Jensen Interceptor FF was the first production four-wheel-drive car in the world, designed by Major
Tony Rolt, and built at their factory in West Bromwich. Cadbury launched
Dairy Milk in 1905,
Bournville in 1906,
Fruit & Nut in 1928,
Whole Nut in 1930,
Cadbury Roses in 1938, and the
Cadbury Creme Egg in 1971.
George and
Richard Cadbury built their factory in 1879 and
Bournville in 1893, named after the
Bourn brook.
Iceland (supermarket) opened its first store in Oswestry in 1970 – heralding the onset of frozen food in the UK.
Alfred Bird invented egg-free custard in 1837 in Birmingham – accidentally given to guests at his home, being created as his wife had an allergy to eggs; he then invented
baking powder in 1843 as his wife also had an allergy to
yeast.
Culture J. R. R. Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, Kings Heath, then part of Worcestershire, and was inspired by
Moseley Bog and
Sarehole, and perhaps by the
Perrott's Folly.
Philip Larkin came from Coventry.
Rowland Hill (stamps) was from Kidderminster. The writer
George Eliot came from
Nuneaton.
Anthony E. Pratt from Birmingham invented
Cluedo.
Frederick Gibberd of Coventry designed
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.
Edward Cave from Rugby made Britain's first magazine in 1731 –
The Gentleman's Magazine.
Philip Astley from Newcastle-under-Lyme invented the modern day circus in 1768 –
Astley's Amphitheatre. The
Castlemorton Common Festival in May 1992 near Malvern, led to the
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The
Nowka Bais is a
Bengali boat racing festival which takes place annually in
Birmingham. It is a cultural event in the West Midlands,
United Kingdom attracting not only the
Bangladeshi diaspora but a variety of cultures. It is also the largest kind of
boat race in the
United Kingdom. ==Demographics==