A bit of a cheek posting under travel since it's only 10K from my front door, but it is a World Heritage Site, so here goes.
This is the main satellite dish at the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire. It was conceived by one man, (Sir) Bernard Lovell back in the 1950's and was struggling to attract sufficient funding to continue building. But then in 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik 1 and the world changed. What the telescope could uniquely offer was not the ability to track Sputnik, but the ability to detect and track the missile that launched it. During the Cuban missile crisis, the telescope was permanently pointing to the east. Today, the observatory is still a major player in world radio astronomy, and the main dish still one of the largest fully steerable dishes around.
A couple of snippets. When it was being constructed it was hand to mouth. The main gears that you can see in the second image were salvaged from the gun turrets of a WW1 battleship. And Jodrell Bank has appeared more than once in Doctor Who!
Regards, Dave
