Thursday 11 January 2018

Laboratory Shed in 1970

Main Menu - click above

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.


Please help beat cancer - DONATE click above

 

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
during my experiment with fluorine gas last year."


The Exotic Experimentation of Ernest Glitch,
Victorian Science with a Smile

More information & sample chapters here

Search for Ernest Glitch on your Kindle
or visit Amazon -
UK here
USA here


Unrelated to this post, below is an example of
eclectic science esoterica 




Main Menu - click above
WARNING - Many subjects outlined within this site are extremely dangerous and are provided here for information only. Please don`t experiment with high voltages or chemicals unless you are fully conversant with safe laboratory practices. No liability will be accepted for death, injury or damage arising from experimentation using any information or materials supplied.