[BITList] For the Navigators?

[John Feltham]

G'day Hugh,

On 13/12/2011, at 7:25 AM, HUGH wrote:

> A few years ago I gave a talk in Glasgow to members of the Antiquarian Horological Society, on a Grand Orrery made by a distant relation, John Fulton (an Ayrshire shoemaker), in the early 1800s.  It was bought by Glasgow Corporation for £400 in the mid 1800s and, when last I saw it, it was in the care of the Transport Museum in Glasgow. I asked those present at the talk to give an estimate of what they thought it would fetch today.  Six or more figures was the consensus, erring on the conservative side.  Fulton also made the machines with which to make it.  Recently there was a video doing the rounds of a miniature 12-cylinder vee engine that lacked only scale nuts and screws to make it a perfect miniature (there were practical reasons for the type chosen), so the art of precision engineering by hand is not lost.

As a retired Instrument Fitter I always remind folk that James Watt was an Instrument Fitter too, before he took up with steam.


ooroo


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