Innovative Ipswich III: A history of innovation?
This post is a pathetic attempt to offset my last, rather unkind, rant against the humble inhabitants of Ipswich. It has just occurred to me that Ipswich and its surrounding area can actually make quite a surprising boast. For nearly a century now it has been the centre of many scientific and technological discoveries. So please bare with me as I try to do a bit of history. Or just skip it entirely if you have lives to lead.Firstly, the 1920’s saw Felixstowe (which is a large sea port just down the road) used by the Royal Navy Air Service (and later the Royal Air Force) to develop and test new types of seaplanes. These aircraft were seen to be the future and were initially prized more highly than their land-based cousins. Remember that aircraft themselves were still relatively new at this time, and the sight of these strange looking creatures, plunging into the sea before then gracefully floating back up into the heavens, must have been quite a spectacular, and inspiring one, to the locals.
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posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 5:18 pm
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Secondly Martlesham Heath, upon which now rests the housing estate in which I live, used to be the centre for the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment. This organisation used the Martlesham airfield as a testing centre for new land based aircraft and many of the technologies developed there were later heavily relied upon during the Second World War.
In 1968 a third important development occurred. The Post Office bought up land in Martlesham and began to build itself a new Research Centre. The previous Research Centre, at Dollis Hill, was responsible for the development of COLOSSUS, the computer that broke the German Navy’s Enigma code. After the war it continued to make great leaps in computer technology. In 1968 then this institution, along with its highly educated staff, moved to Martlesham.
In a connected development Martlesham later became British Telecom’s R&D centre after it broke away from the Post Office. Once the company was privatised and under new leadership the site became known as Adastral Park and currently houses many hi-tech research companies and as well as a UCL postgraduate research centre. It was here that fibre optic cables were first developed.
And to top it all off up the road from Ipswich is the small island of Orfordness, which has had a whole host of research done on it (and to it). Firstly, it was where Sir Robert Watson-Watt invented and developed radar. The reputation earned with this remarkable feat saw it bought up by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. They then proceeded to use the island to develop and test (among other things) the triggering mechanisms for Britain’s first generation of atom bombs.
So all this begs the question, given that this region has been responsible for so much in the way of groundbreaking research and development – why is it still so relatively poor? Why are its inhabitants still regarded, and not without reason, as inbred rural types with little or no education? Why are the streets not buzzing with scientists and academics, looking all flash with their high incomes? Why are there no coffee shops in which excited looking techies discuss their new thoughts on wireless networking? Where are the start up companies formed by ex-BT employees? Why do comparatively few of the regions inhabitants go to university? Surely if generations of scientists and technicians have been moving into the area there would be some sort of corresponding ‘genius’ in their offspring? No?
I have occasionally heard people call the A12 between Ipswich and Cambridge Britain’s version of Silicon Valley. This sounds entirely bizarre to me and I can only presume all the young millionaires with world changing ideas must live in the Cambridge end of the ‘Valley’ because they are certainly not here. Whatever the reason, there is perhaps hope to be drawn from the fact that, despite Ipswich’s less that glamorous reputation, it has in past been the centre of much progressive thinking.
And if it happened before, it can happen again, right?
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