Hello Prof Peter !
Your bike crash sounds much more horrific than Richie Porte's in the 2017
Tour de France. He is amazing to have done so well this year. Our hero here in
Ireland is, of course, Sam Bennett in the Green jersey. But his rival Sagan is
extraordinary in the Giro these days. Anyway, I was 12 when I first heard of the
Tour de France at St. Columba's. Pere Bernard Joinet (from Nevers, ordained at
Monteviot in '55) was there with a huge map of France with pegs indicating the
route for 1961.
I was one of the Science group that visited Vickers Armstrong in 1964. I recall
we were ushered into the smallish office of Barnes Wallis and while
he gave us a talk about the future of aircraft, I was sitting on his desk !
Beside me was a chunk of lightweight metal which he described as the best for
making planes, namely duralumin. We asked him what he was working on at present.
"We are going to design a plane that will fly to Australia in about one hour !"
(Why not ? I'm still thinking). If only that industry had kept up with the progress
made in the semiconductor world, it might have happened.
Robbie Dempsey.