Watts Up Doc?

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Watching a repeat of one of Fred Dibnah's programmes on the box (colloquial term used by older people for the TV - itself pretty much an obsolescent concept - for those unfamiliar with the idiom), I randomly flashed on a particular piece of cultural appropriation that is so typical of Great Britain (I use the term Great loosely, and as a generally agreed appellation only). This particular instance of imperialist - dare I say peculiarly English - appropriation, was the case of James Watt's Garret Workshop at his house in Heathfield; then near, rather than in, Birmingham; his home from 1790 until his death in 1819. The room stayed pretty much undisturbed until 1924, when it was decided that its contents be moved, not to the Birmingham Museum of Science & Industry, its pretty obviously natural home, given that his work was so rooted in Birmingham and the Midlands; but to the Science Museum in South Kensington, London, to reside in a replica of the garret built there. Never seemed right to me...

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