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By the time I was 11 years old my poor Mother's kitchen had the look of a ramshackle chemistry laboratory. I'd discovered chemistry at around 7, when I'd begged my Dad to get me a bunsen burner to do flame and borax bead analysis of some of the mineral specimens I'd collected.
From then on, the kitchen had endured bunsen bombs, chlorine gas preparation, various pyrotechnic mixtures being "tested", molten antimony burns, the storage of concentrated acids, not to mention the inorganic poisons, phosphorus and the bottle of picric acid. At one point the whole kitchen was inundated with highly toxic barium carbonate when my witherite sample exploded (see here).
I needed a lab.
Fortunately I won £10. In 1970 this was a large amount of money for a working class 11 year old (£146 in today's money). I gave it to my Dad, who stumped up the rest of the cash, to buy me a large garden shed.
It was a sturdy shed. It lasted 30 years and survived many explosions, fires and high-voltage electrical mahem. It also got my huge mineral collection (incl. the radioactive autunite, torbernite, pitchblende, curite, & monazite sands) out of our living room, and removed the risk of fatal poisoning from my Mam's kitchen.
The full issue of "Newton News" is available here. Looking at the adverts, my Dad could have bought a car for the same money as my shed cost.
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A STEAMPUNK NOVEL, FULL OF
ANARCHIC EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
"Hodges emitted a scream the like of which
I hadn't heard since his scrotum was burned off
Unrelated to this post, below is an example of
eclectic science esoterica
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