GREENWICH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY SOCIETY
AUTUMN MEETINGS 2020
All meetings will be virtual, held via Facebook Live, YouTube, Zoom or similar technology (technology to be decided).
Video attendance will be free of charge, live as they are delivered, and each meeting will be recorded for free viewing afterwards.
For full details, see http://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/ or see our Facebook group at https://tinyurl.com/GIHSoc
We hope to resume in-person meetings in 2021, depending on current laws about meetings, but we want to continue to make meetings available online at the same time.
There will be no charge for any GIHS meetings, live or virtual, at least through to the summer of 2021.
Tuesday 13 October
Starting online at 19:30
Greenwich and Woolwich, the birthplace of the global telecoms industry and the internet
The global network that we now call the internet was built in factories along the river in Greenwich, Charlton and North Woolwich. One of them is almost certainly the oldest working factory in the industry. And the optical fibre technology that the internet uses today was invented by an electronics engineer trained in Woolwich and North Woolwich.
Alan Burkitt-Gray, SE London-based telecoms and technology journalist and secretary of GIHS
Tuesday 10 November
Starting online at 19:30
Greenwich Marsh to Greenwich Peninsula – 300 years of regeneration
The Greenwich peninsula, now the home to the O2, North Greenwich station, hotels, endless blocks of flats and tunnels to the other side of the river, has been the scene of industry for a thousand years – with tide mills and factories that made gunpowder, rope, soap, linoleum, concrete and steel, not to mention the gasworks.
Dr Mary Mills, industrial historian and joint chair of GIHS
Tuesday 8 December
Starting online at 19:30
The Eastern Telegraph Company’s first cable system – the Red Sea Line to India
It’s 150 years this year since the UK was first connected directly to India, via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Aden and the Indian Ocean. The cable was made in Greenwich – and the Aden-Mumbai stretch was laid by the Great Eastern, the Brunel’s paddle steamer that was built on the Isle of Dogs.
Stewart Ash, SE London-based submarine cable consultant and historian