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Recent blog posts
Bars and stripes at the checkout
Barcodes were developed by Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, graduates at the Philadelphia Drexel Institute of Technology, in response to a request by a chain store owner for an automated checkout method for reading product information.The inspiration came from Morse code; the dots and dashes were simply extended downwards to make machine-readable representation of data.
Clashes over carbon in Cumbria
The humble pencil is an unlikely reason for armed guards, skirmishes, smuggling and an Act of Parliament. As early as 1500 an enormous deposit of graphite — the allotrope of carbon used as pencil “lead” — was discovered in the Lake District at Seathwaite Fell near Borrowdale.
When east met west on the Silk Road
[img_assist|nid=883118|title=The Silk Road (Callie Jones)|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=225|height=159]The Silk Road was a network of trade routes that for 2,000 years linked China with the West.
