Isaac Newton woz ere, according to the plaque on the wall but no superfast broadband in Granthan
I was picking up Kid3 from a gig in Grantham’s St Wulfram’s Church last weekend. Nice enough gaff as churches go, if you like that sort of thing. Kid3 plays in the Lincolnshire County Orchestra – it has a name but that eludes me as I write as it has changed over the years. Before picking him up I hung around the graveyard for a bit, as you do and couldn’t fail to notice a plaque on the wall opposite.
It read “In this hall of the King’s School Isaac Newton was taught 1654 – 1660. This plaque was set up to mark the tercentenary of the visit of the Royal Society 1960”.
Another of those, “gosh was he really” moments, somewhat akin to me seeing the Meccano bike but different. Now I’m not really comparing Isaac Newton to a Meccano bike. He was a superstar of literally earth moving magnitude, having “discovered” gravity or at least being the first person to notice what it was he was looking at.
Interesting to muse that Newton lived in the 17th Century and thus would have had little conception of technologies that exist today. They probably didn’t even know what a virus was in those days let alone a computer virus. In the interest of fitting with this week’s broadband theme I did a broadband availability check on Newton’s Alma Mater, or at least of the church over the road. The results are given below:
For Postcode NG31 6RR
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| For all ADSL and WBC Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) services, the stable line rate will be determined during the first 10 days of service usage.Throughput/download speeds will be less than line rates and can be affected by a number of factors within and external to BT’s network, Communication Providers’ networks and within customer premises.The Stop Sale date for Datastream is from 30-Jun-2012; the Formal Retirement date for Datastream is from 30-Jun-2014. The Stop Sale date for IPstream is from 31-Dec-2012; the Formal Retirement date for IPstream is from 30-Jun-2014.Note: Please note that postcode and address check results are indicative only. Most accurate results can be obtained from a telephone number check.Thank you for your interest. |
I wonder if they knew it was Isaac Newton asking for superfast broadband in Grantham whether they would have accelerated the roll out in the area. After all with such a great mind what discoveries might be hindered by the lack of uplink speed. Hanging out with his scientific cronies would certainly not have been a great experience. Better maybe than the several months round trip time for a letter in those days.
Note the formal retirement date of 30th June 2014 for IPstream. This was the old ADSL backhaul network. BT moved ISPs on from this to it’s 21CN version years ago by making cost of bandwidth on the newer service far more attractive than IPstream.
