Innovation and Controversy

Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company was in operation for 282 years and in that time they gathered some powerful clientele. Namely, the British Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy (RAN). This is the plan for an Oberon-class submarine that the company would go on to build for the RAN in 1967, the HMAS Onslow. The […]

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William’s Pitiful Plight

In an office at the Male Orphan School in Liverpool (now Bonnyrigg), on 24 March 1831, a clerk laid a freshly printed form on his desk and, with his pen and ink, filled in the blanks. Somewhere in the rooms of the school that day was an eight year old boy named William Smith. He […]

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A Tall Tale or True?

mahogany dining chair with simple design

Sometime in the 1780s, or even earlier, a furniture maker in England put the finishing touches on this utilitarian chair with its simplified fiddle back. He painted it with shellac and used his hammer to drive in iron tacks to secure the brown leather upholstery and to stamp the letters ‘S’ and ‘L’ (perhaps his […]

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