On Saturday 14 May 1994 Blackpool Tower celebrated its centenary. To commemorate this occasion a technical paper and correspondence relating the the design and construction of the tower, first published between 1893 and 1895, are reproduced below. R.T. McDonald
It was on 21 May 1894 that Queen Victoria made her Royal visit to Manchester to proclaim the £15M construction ofthe Manchester Ship Canal ‘well and truly open ’. Over the past 1O0 years the Ship Canal has served the region well, and its fortunes have been closely allied to all the vagaries of the political and economic climate, the effects of two World Wars and the general changes in the methods of conveying and handling freight. Hubert Dickson
This paper describes a conceptually simple and computationally eficient method of determining the collapse load of structures comprising of a number of masonry blocks. The method uses the upper-bound theory of plasticity in conjunction with geometrical compatibility criteria to obtain solutions to problems involving single- and multi-span arches; well established rigorous linear programming methods are used to obtain solutions. Specific parameters such as ring separation and attached spandrel walls can be modelled using the method. It is expected that case studies will be described in subsequent papers. M. Gilbert and Professor C. Melbourne
Blackpool Pleasure Beach (BPB), Britain’s most popular attraction with over 6.5 million visitors annually, occupies a 42 acre site on the sea front 2km south of the centre of Blackpool, Lancashire. Established in 1896, over 130 rides and attractions compete for space on a congested and exposed site. These include three famous and historic traditional timber rollercoasters ‘Grand National’ (1935) ‘Big Dipper’ (1921) ‘Rollercoaster’ ( 1909, reconstructed 1993) as well as a steel toboggan coaster (‘Avalanche’, 1988), a smaller timber coaster for young children (‘Zipper Dipper’, 1934), and several coaster derivatives such as Europe’s first modem looping coaster (‘Revolution’, 1979) and an indoor steel- racked ‘dark ride’ (‘Space Invader’, 1984). J.M. Roberts
Of all the inanimate objects that man possesses is there anything which he uses or depends on more than the buildings in which he lives, works, recreates himself or worships? A building is either new or it is not; if it is of any age then it is not new and anyone having an interest in that building will want to know if it has been altered; if it is used for its original purpose or is not; if it has been properly maintained or it has not, and so on! Brian Clancy