Days Out: It's another industrial revolution
A new technology museum puts children's minds to work
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Your support makes all the difference.Cheeks bulging with cheese and onion crisps, Emma Lown is having the time of her three-year-old life.
She's hurling coloured balls at the gaping mouth of the Crazy Boiler while her sister Catherine is frantically turning a wheel on the side to generate water power. As the pressure builds, the balls should come shooting out of the funnel at the top.
Plastic balls are soon bouncing off the boiler and flying around the floor of Enginuity, the UK's first and only visitor attraction dedicated to design and technology. While an attendant retrieves some of the would-be boiler fuel, Emma's attention has been caught by the nearby water maze and she hurriedly discards her T-shirt. "God love her, she thinks it's a paddling pool," says her mother, Bernice, from Bangor, Northern Ireland, and stops the child from plunging in.
The blurb for Enginuity describes it as "aiming to excite all members of the family – from kiddies to grannies". Perhaps those a little older than Emma will reap more educational benefit from the undoubted fun of these ingenious exhibits. A boy with enormous spectacles is using the water maze as it was intended. "Look at that," he enthuses, pressing a button and spurting a jet into one of several raised, transparent buckets, connected by tubes and chutes. On the other side, a middle-aged man in a panama hat is frantically turning a large syringe-like device called "Archimedes' Screw" which can make water travel uphill.
Enginuity is in the former Coalbrookdale Company Engineering Works at Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire, a world heritage site and home to nine other museums. One of England's most rural counties just happens to have been the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
The latest hi-tech devices are used in Enginuity to explain the inventions of the past. Ranged around the vast hall are scanners; point one at any item on display, from a modern diving suit to an ancient washing machine, and two actors will appear on a small screen to discuss them in simple language. If you want to look inside the workings of anything from an electric guitar to a toaster, X-ray machines offer an insight into the parts. On the other side of the hall, two cub scouts are energetically swivelling a wheel to see how electricity is generated and which household items use the most. On the mezzanine floor, "kiddies" not too much older than Emma are being taught how to design a camera. Emma is otherwise engaged, taking aim once more at the mouth of the Crazy Boiler.
Ironbridge Gorge is signposted from junction 4 of the M54. Enginuity (01952 433970) is on Darby Road next to the Museum of Iron. Open daily 10am to 5pm. Adults £4.95, children £3.50, families £15.
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