Calendar

We will see how Britain was transformed once the ice sheets had disappeared approximately 16,000 years ago.

As the climate warmed trees moved north from Southern Europe but each species moved at a different pace so the landscape continually changed.

The meaning of the terms ‘native tree’, naturalised tree’, and ‘introduced tree’ will be discussed.

We will also see the impact that mankind and the industrial revolution has had on our treescapes as we move towards modern times.

English interest in North America began with John Cabot, a contemporary of Columbus, who sailed to Newfoundland in 1497 in search of a route to Asia.  The first attempts at settlement came a century later and were unsuccessful.  The most ambitious failure was in the 1580s under Walter Raleigh at Roanoke Island in today’s North Carolina.

The first successful colony was Jamestown (Virginia), established in 1607 by economic migrants.  The second was at Plymouth (Massachusetts), founded by settlers arriving on Mayflower in 1620, escaping religious persecution in England.

By 1750, the British had 13 colonies (soon to become the first 13 members of the United States) on the eastern seaboard between Georgia and Maine, together with two in present-day Canada: Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

The lecture will examine the origins and development of these colonies, with some emphasis on Jamestown and Plymouth.  Reference will also be made to the parallel activities of the Spanish, French, and Dutch.

(Click on any image to enlarge)

SPEAKER ROSALIND MIRANDA.

This talk was inspired by an article by Denise Murrell, who did her doctoral thesis on unnamed black models in famous Western artworks.

It starts with sub-Saharan African art from 70,000 years ago in South Africa, then some from Niger, Benin bronzes, & wooden sculptures.

Next, Western artists who were influenced by Afrtican art around the start of the 20th century:

Vlaminck – Derain – Modigliani – Matisse – Picasso

Then, black models in Western art:

Manet’s Olympia, etc

Géricault’s model at the apex of the Raft of the Medusa

To end, four of the many blacks who have “made it” as artists:

Edmonia Lewis, an African-American woman sculptress, 1844-1907

Elizabeth Catlett, American, 1915-2012

Jean Michel Basquiat, American, 1960-1988

Chris Ofili, British (No Woman No Cry), b 1968

The lecture will explore the work of two groups of Canadian artists: those with an indigenous background whose work comes from a tradition developed over thousands of years; and those with an immigrant background (mostly European) going back only as far as the start of the colonial period in the 18th century.

The principal focus under the immigrant heading will be the Group of Seven: Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley.  They were a loose association of men with a British background who set out to develop a distinctly Canadian style of landscape painting.  Associated with the group, other important artists that we shall look at include Tom Thomson and Emily Carr.

Indigenous artists paint relatively few landscapes and often portray myth and traditional culture.  Their styles vary geographically.  Those whose backgrounds and work we shall explore include, on the west coast, Bill Read and Mungo Martin; in northern Ontario, Daphne Odjig and Norval Morrisseau; and in the Arctic, Kenojuak Ashevak, and Peter Kooyoo.

 – From Mesopotamian Origins to Colonel Drake

The discovery of crude oil and bitumen can be traced back to the Neandertals but more widespread use started in Mesopotamia around 8000BC. Ziggurats were made secure by bitumen oil mortar and Nebuchadnezzar allegedly waterproofed his hanging gardens with bitumen.

Unlikely medicinal uses were found and it was not long before the flammable properties of crude were exploited by the Byzantines who made oil grenades as a naval warfare weapon. We will see that in North America the native Indians were using crude oil as an insecticide and for skin treatments long before the famous sinking of Drake’s Well in Pennsylvania in 1861.

The first fully recorded submarine was built in 1620 by a Dutchman, Cornelius Van Drebbel, who was in the service of King James 1^st of England. Despite it being an underwater rowing boat, it proved to be very successful and Von Drebbel later built two larger versions in one of which it is believed the King accompanied Van Drebbel in a voyage up the river Thames.

Von Drebbel’s submarine was watched by thousands of disbelieving Londoners who gathered along the banks of the Thames.

However, it wasn’t until 155 years later in 1775 when an American called David Bushnell built a submarine intended to sink British warships during the American revolution against the British, that the full possibilities began to be realised by Governments and various prototypes began to be constructed.

In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned another American, called Robert Fulton to build a submarine intended to sink British vessels but despite building a submarine which proved to be perfectly viable the French Naval authorities decided to abandon the project.

Various other experimental submarines were built in the following years but it wasn’t until the American Civil War that the Confederate submarine ‘Hunley’ successfully sank the Union warship ‘Housatonic’ in 1864 by ramming an explosive charge into its hull. Unfortunately, the explosion was so powerful that the Hunley submarine also sank.

This talk ends at the beginning of the first World War before submarines became sophisticated vessels so there is no highly technical content.

A non-technical look at the history of computing from the abacus to the quantum computer and the story of the key individuals involved.

Today’s business computers are soulless. They even have a soulless name –“servers”.  We talk to them every time we Google something on our pc, but we’re not aware of it.  They hold vast amounts of data and work at incredible speeds, and when bunched together in server centre they generate so much heat that many are being located in the Arctic to save on refrigeration.  But who cares?

It hasn’t always been like that.  In the 1960s computers had rows of colourful switches and flashing lights, like the bridge on the Tardis.  They emitted a barely perceptible, sinister, hum.    Much more fun.

Come along on 24^th October and hear Mike Granville answer these and other questions:

• What place does Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Byron, have in the history of computing?
• Was what Alan Turing helped devise in Bletchley Park to break the German’s Enigma code the first modern computer?  Why was it destroyed after the war?
• Which science fiction author first predicted the modern computer (it’s not who you think)?
• Is it true that your phone has more computing power than the first lunar lander?
• Who is that Ernie bloke and why does he never pick your Premium Bonds?

Professor D. R. Hartree and Mr. A. Porter, of the Department of Mathematics, The University, Manchester, with a wonderful Meccano mechanism they have constructed to solve complex mathematical problems. This mechanism is a reproduction on a smaller scale of the Bush Differential Analyser.