Northern England

The general definition of northern England is everything between The Midlands, to the south, and Scotland, to the north. We have already visited "Liverpool" and "Manchester". For our visit today, let's have a look at the rest of northern England, and what it has contributed to the world.

At the mention of the city of Sheffield, the first thing that comes to mind is steel. It could best be described as England's version of Pittsburgh or Hamilton. Before the invention of modern steel-making processes, the city had long been known for the production of cutlery.

Older guns used to be muskets, which could fire only one shot at a time before being reloaded. The development of modern rapid-fire guns was challenging for steel-makers. The properties of steel can be varied by the amount of carbon that is added to the raw iron. More carbon makes a steel harder, but also more brittle. Steels can also be alloyed with other metals.

A native of Sheffield named Harry Brearley had the idea of alloying chromium with steel. The result was the very widely-used "stainless steel", which also doesn't rust.

Here is a look at Sheffield.

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The largest city of northern England, other than Liverpool and Manchester, is Leeds. It has a diverse economy, not revolving around any one industry, and is the financial center of northern England.

In the days of sailing ships, it was a simple matter to take a reading of the ship's latitude. All that was necessary was the measure the angular distance of the north star above a flat horizon. The earth is a 360 degree sphere and latitude is the angular distance north or south of the equator, with the equator being 0 degrees, the north pole being 90 degrees north (the north star would be directly overhead at the north pole or at 90 degrees), and the south pole being 90 degrees south. Lines of latitude thus run parallel to the equator.

But measuring the ship's longitude was more difficult. The solution came when John Harrison, from the Leeds area, invented a very accurate clock that did not rely on the motion of a pendulum. A pendulum-based clock was considered as unreliable at sea because the pitching and rolling of the ship in rough water might affect the timing of the pendulum.

The ship's clock could be set to what became known as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT or the time at 0 degrees longitude which was designated as the Prime Meridian. Local solar time could be determined on ship by devices such as a sundial, and this revealed the location of the ship relative to the Prime Meridian. Each hour ahead of GMT represented 15 degrees latitude east, and each hour behind GMT represented 15 degrees west. 360 degrees in a circle divided by 24 hours in a day equals 15 degrees.

These views of Leeds begin in Millennium Square.

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Bradford grew into a city around the Industrial Revolution, and was especially known for the production of textiles, wool and, silk.

After the development of radio Sir Edward Appleton, a native of the city of Bradford, began to wonder about something. Radio waves were known to travel in straight lines, in the same way as light. But sometimes, radio signals could be received far away from the transmitter. This should not be possible, due to the curvature of the earth.

To deepen the mystery, the reception of distant radio waves changed between day and night. Some distant radio signals could be received at night, but not during the day, or vice-versa.

The wavelength of the radio waves was also a factor. Some distant waves of long wavelength could almost always be received. Shorter wavelengths could be received at some times, but not at others, and still shorter wavelengths could not be received at a distance at all.

What had been discovered, of course, was the ionosphere. This is the upper layer of the earth's atmosphere where atoms are ionized by solar radiation, either gaining or losing an electron. This reflects radio waves, at least those of certain wavelengths. But since it involves the sun, it changes from day to night.

You may notice that you can receive radio stations from far away in short wave radio, but the frequencies at which they can be received changes from day to night. This is because the waves reflect off the ionosphere to get around the curvature of the earth. If the wavelength is long enough, the ionosphere effectively acts as a wave guide, and the signals can be received most anytime. But waves of shorter wavelength pass right through the ionosphere and are not reflected at all.

In North America, distant AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio stations may be able to be received at night, but not during the day. While the much shorter-wavelength FM (Frequency Modulation) stations cannot be received at a distance at all.

The trouble is that longer wavelengths, which means lower frequencies of the wave, cannot carry as much information as shorter wavelengths. The long wavelengths that are reflected by the ionosphere could not, for example, carry television signals because they contain too much information. The longest wavelengths were useful for signalling with Morse Code. Since the shortest wavelengths, which can carry the most information, pass right through the ionosphere, we use satellites in orbit as a kind of artificial ionosphere to get around the curvature of the earth.

This is the city of Bradford, just west of Leeds.

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The amazing thing about the city of York is how widely it has spread it's name. New York City and state. Toronto was originally called York, and there is the fort by that name. Yorkshire is the geographically largest county in Britain.

Here is the original city of York. It is known for it's numerous old alleys called "Snickelways". The ruins of the Catholic abbey that was abandoned after the Reformation is St. Mary's Abbey. Clifford's Tower is the keep of the original castle. York Minster is the famous cathedral. A minster is a cathedral or church that was used to train missionaries.

Have you ever wondered where perhaps the most popular of all candy bars, Kit Kat, came from? Here is York.

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Scarborough is a seaside resort on the east coast of northern England. There really was a "Scarborough Fair", the subject of the song by Simon and Garfunkel, but it was in the Middle Ages. Scarborough has given it's name to a number of places, including the eastern part of Toronto.

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As we might expect by the name, the city of Newcastle has a castle. It is not new today but was new when it was first built, nearly a thousand years ago. The city was known for shipbuilding and the ship on which I came across the ocean as a young boy, the Empress of England, was built at Newcastle, although we left from Liverpool. The name is an anachronism since England has never been ruled by anyone with the title of Empress or Emperor.

Newcastle honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his civil rights work in the U.S., and he visited in the year before his assassination.

One invention that most people do not pay much attention to is the steam turbine. It converts the energy in steam into rotary motion. A large ship has boilers which must build up steam before the ship can move. But how do you suppose the steam is converted into the rotary motion to drive the ship's propellers?

A lot of electricity is generated by nuclear power. But after the reactor generates heat, it still must be turned into the rotary energy that turns a generator. It requires a steam turbine. All that nuclear power really is amounts to just another way of boiling water.

Our world would be very different without steam turbines, which was invented at Newcastle by Sir Charles Parsons.

This is Newcastle, starting at the castle.

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Middlesbrough is another "steel town". Captain James Cook was a native of Middlesbrough. His Pacific voyages probably contributed more than anything else in bringing about accurate maps of the entire world, and is why there is a British flag on the state flag of Hawaii.

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This is a residential area of Middlesbrough that it fairly typical of postwar developments in Britain that were built to accommodate the Baby Boom. Much of the similar housing of that era were "council houses", public housing built by the government and rented to residents. There were various efforts, most notably by Margaret Thatcher, to get more of those living in council houses to own the homes. New housing developments today tend to be really nice homes.

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Just as Scarborough is the old seaside resort of northern England on the east coast, facing the North Sea, Blackpool is the seaside resort on the west coast, facing the Irish Sea. Both have, of course, declined somewhat as modern air travel has made sunnier places to vacation more accessible.

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In the far north of England, not far from Scotland, is the city of Carlisle. It is one of the relatively few places with both a historic castle and a cathedral. It also has the more-recent citadel, with the cylindrical fortified buildings. The following scenes begin at Carlisle Cathedral.

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The traditional northern limit of England is Hadrian's Wall, although it does not form the border with Scotland. This is actually the most extensive Roman artifact in the world.

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