Abstract
This article investigates the origins and early history of the device known as the ‘Greathead Shield’, an important innovation in Victorian engineering crucial to constructing the London Underground. The aim is to explore the basis on which, many years later, a South African engineer, James Henry Greathead, was accorded prominent public acknowledgment, in the form of a statue, for ‘inventing’ the Shield. From a cultural studies perspective, how is the meaning of ‘invention’ to be understood, given that several other brilliant engineers were involved? The question is adjudicated using the notion of cultural ‘extelligence’, seen in relation to several contemporary and historical accounts, including Greathead’s own record of his achievements in the proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers and presented in The City and South London Railway (1896), edited by James Forrest. The paper was first delivered at the conference on ‘Novelty and Innovation in the Nineteenth Century’ held at the North-West University in May 2016.
Highlights
Smoking on London Underground trains was banned in 1984 and on all Underground stations in 1985
Was the smoking ban throughout the London Underground reinforced, but the ensuing safety investigation recommended wideranging safety modifications across the system (Fennell 1988). Among these was a requirement for improved ventilation at Bank Station, the station named for its proximity to the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street
Bank Station lies beneath Bank Junction, an intersection where nine roads converge in the heart of London’s old financial district
Summary
Smoking on London Underground trains was banned in 1984 and on all Underground stations in 1985. Tugnutt and an unnamed friend, who was something of a railway buff, came up with another suggestion: a statue of James Henry Greathead (1844–1896), the South African-born civil engineer who developed the technology known as the Greathead Shield, which enabled construction of the London Underground’s deep tunnels (Tugnutt n.d.).
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