Explaining experimental electricity: animations at Cragside

As the project draws to a close we are polishing up our outputs ready for final delivery.  One of the outputs which we are producing for Cragside is a set of three bespoke educational animations to help volunteers to explain Cragside’s electrical heritage to visitors.  The animations have been produced by our undergraduate animation intern, Alex, and will be used to demonstrate how Lord Armstrong employed and experimented with electricity at Cragside, and how he used the surrounding landscape to generate hydroelectricity to light his house – the first private house to do so.

Of the three animations, one illustrates how the house’s iconic cloisonné lamps were originally electrified in December 1880.  This was a little unusual and can be hard to explain.  The only source we have is a letter Armstrong wrote to the Engineer in January 1881, in which he explained that the lamps could be switched off or on by picking them up and putting them down again.  As this was a very experimental period in the history of electrification, before switches were readily available, this was accomplished using a dish of mercury.

A wire ran down from the bulb at the top of the vase, and dipped into the mercury.  The dish was set in the centre of a metal disc connected to two wires: one carrying current to the bulb, and the other being the return wire for the circuit.  The metal body of the vase itself – copper – served to return the current back to the return wire.  Thus, when the vase was placed on the metal disc and the wire from the bulb dipped into the dish of mercury the circuit was completed and the bulb was lit.  Lifting the vase from the metal disc would have switched the light off.  As the cloisonne vases were coated entirely in enamel it is likely that this would have provided sufficient insulation for the vases to have been moved by hand.  The animation provides volunteers with a very visual way of explaining this process.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2G4JIWbEw]

 

The second animation is of the arc light which used to hang in the Picture Gallery at Cragside between c1878 and 1880 – when Armstrong and Joseph Swan installed Swan’s bulbs.  This can no longer be seen at the property, but the animation gives an idea of how it worked – including the noise of operating it.  The animation demonstrates how early arc lights comprised two vertical rods of carbon in an electrical circuit, separated by a gap.  The current jumped across the gap, creating a bright arc.  The distance between the two rods needed to be carefully regulated: if it was too small, the arc would correspondingly be too small to generate sufficient light.  If the gap was too wide, the current would not be able to arc across it.  However, as the rods burned away with use it was important to have a mechanism which automatically moved the rods to keep the gap the same size as the rods became shorter.  Arc lights were more commonly used for outdoor lighting, and not many people experimented with bringing them inside to illuminate their rooms.  This, alongside the cloisonne animation, therefore helps to highlight Armstrong’s willingness to experiment and innovate.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O83e71MJ2H8]

 

The final animation shows how the hydroelectric system at Cragside worked, with water running down the hill from a man-made lake at the top, and operating a dynamo in the Power House – a separate building containing the dynamos and the batteries, which stored excess electrical charge for periods of high demand.  When more current was required to light more rooms, the butler used a telephone to ring down to the Power House to request more power.  The animation shows this simply as the movement of a lever: this operation might have been performed by switching resistance coils out of the circuit (thus decreasing the resistance and effectively making more current available for the lights in the house), or by switching the batteries into the circuit.  After this happens in the animation we see more lights coming on in the house, represented by the cloisonné lamp in the Library, until it is entirely illuminated.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyZHEZtoQ_Y]

 

Volunteers will have these animations on tablets, and will be able to use them as explanatory tools when discussing the history of electricity at the property with visitors.  The role of volunteers in providing explanatory interpretative content is very important at Cragside, as at many other country houses.  When discussing how the project could deliver outputs which would best benefit Cragside, representatives of the house were keen to produce something which emphasised the role of volunteers, rather than written interpretative content such as panels or trails.

When drawing up the storyboards for each of the three animations, therefore, Alex and I consulted with Cragside staff in order ensure that the content was accurate and suitable for this purpose: the animations needed to be short – concise and focused without distracting elements – and visual, without relying on text.  The animations will be in use at Cragside in the next month, and will also be available to view online.

[Edit, 4/7/16 – This post now contains final versions of all three of the animations.  Please also see our Downloads page for further supporting information on these animations.]

Invitation to our project workshop: 1 Feb 2016, University of Leeds

On Monday 1 February we will be holding our project workshop at the University, in the Brotherton Room of the Brotherton Library.  This is the same venue where we held our Light Night performance in October.

Please see below for the full text of the invitation.

The ‘Electrifying the country house’ project, run by Professor Graeme Gooday and Dr. Abigail Harrison-Moore at the University of Leeds, is holding a workshop on Monday 1 February 2016 at the University to present our work so far and to discuss how we can further develop and build on this existing work.

Over the course of this one year AHRC-funded project, we have been developing educational visitor resources for country houses based around their electrical heritage technologies, such as lighting and telephony. Our three partner houses are Cragside, Rothbury and Standen, East Grinstead (National Trust), and Lotherton Hall, Leeds (Leeds City Council). At this workshop our discussions will include considering potential future funding avenues for the project and the involvement of new partner houses.

We will present and demonstrate the outputs we have produced for our partner houses, including: electrical heritage house trails; explanatory animations about electrical artefacts and systems; an online digital interactive resource for KS2 pupils; and a short drama performance about the different responses people had towards the use of electricity in the home.

We would like to invite representatives from country houses around the UK who might be interested in our work to join us at the University. The workshop will take place in the Brotherton Library, from 12-5pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception from 5-6pm.

We have funding available to cover transport costs, and lunch will be provided. However, places are limited, so please register your interest soon in order to avoid disappointment. To book a place, please email the project researcher, Michael Kay, at M.A.Kay@leeds.ac.uk, by 1 January.

To learn more about our project please read our blog, www.electrifyingthecountryhouse.org, or follow us on Twitter, @EtCHProject (Electrical Heritage).

Thank you for reading,

Kind regards,

Michael Kay.

The Cragside Chronicles

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Graeme and me on our way to Cragside!

Over the past two weeks I’ve made a couple of trips up to one of our partner houses, Cragside, near Rothbury in Northumberland. I’ve met members of staff (including Katherine the house steward and Andrew the curator, both of whom have been very friendly and helpful), found things to film for the digital interactive (on which more here) and decided on electrical items to be animated for use around the house.

The digital interactive will tell the story of all three of our partner houses, drawing out common themes in the history of electrification as noted in the Principal Investigator Graeme Gooday’s book, Domesticating Electricity, on which this project is based. These themes will include the aesthetics of electric lighting, how electricity was used for communication, and how early electrical lighting systems were often unreliable. Where possible, we intend to illustrate these themes, and rooms in the houses to which they relate, with video footage, so it was important to look around and see what we should film. Here I was grateful to have my friend and colleague Paul with me taking photographs, while I furiously scribbled partially legible notes on my little pad.

A fire alarm in the Owl Suite.

A fire alarm in the Owl Suite. ©Paul Coleman

For example, did you know Cragside has two electric dinner gongs upstairs, which were operated by the butler from downstairs to let everyone know it was time for tea? The house was so big you wouldn’t have heard the normal gong at the bottom of the stairs! The old fire alarms are also a very practical and a very attractive technology, especially the one installed in the Owl Suite of bedrooms, where the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children stayed whilst staying at Cragside in August 1884. I can imagine it might have been a little too easy to set these off by accident though!

The animations we will produce will be cartoon-style explanations of various electrical items and systems around the house and wider estate. They will be used on tablets by volunteers and staff to show to visitors. For example, in the library are four vases which were originally oil lamps, but were converted over to use Joseph Swan’s lightbulbs in 1880, making them some of the very first such electric lamps. As there was no effective electric lightswitch yet, these lamps sat on a base which contained a small cup of mercury. When the wire which came down from the bulb through the vase dipped into the mercury, the lamps lit up; when the vases were moved, the bulbs went out. I don’t think you’d want one of those in your house today! We will also be animating the hydroelectric system to demonstrate how it worked, as well as the telephone system which was used by the butler to regulate the supply of electricity to the house.

The view from the Tower at Cragside.

Blessed with lovely weather on both of my visits, it was very useful to walk around the grounds and get a feel for the layout and the scale of the estate. On my second visit, with Graeme Gooday, the curator Andrew took us up to the top of the house to the tower, not normally seen by visitors. The view was fantastic. I also need to thank Andrew in particular for the treasure trove of primary sources he’s given me to read through, and which I’m very grateful to have. Over the course of the project I hope that maybe I can add to this, possibly by going through volumes of old electrical journals like the Electrician and the Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review to find references to Cragside and Lord Armstrong from the 1880s and 1890s.

Later, Mark, the Cragside representative on the project, and Andrew took Graeme and myself up to the lake at the top of the hill. Armstrong had this lake built around 1886 to provide a supply of water for the turbine which, connected to a dynamo, provided electricity to light the house. This was the second major stage in a project which had begun at the other end of the estate in around 1878; however, the original hydroelectric generating system had been too far from the house and wasn’t efficient enough to deal with the increasing demand as Armstrong installed more lights, so he built a second, closer, generating system.

The lake which powered the electric lighting from 1886.

The lake which powered the electric lighting from 1886.

As you can just about make out from the photo, the view of the otherwise idyllic landscape also includes a couple of electricity pylons lurking in the background, marching their wires across the rolling hills. Some might consider this a rather unfortunate juxtaposition of natural beauty and artificial unsightliness. However, as Andrew pointed out, given Lord Armstrong’s passion for electrification, and pioneering efforts in providing electricity at a distance, maybe this symbol of progress and electrical infrastructure, forming the backdrop to a view of Armstrong’s own early attempts, is really rather appropriate.

I came back from Cragside with plenty to think about, and lots of notes, primary sources and photographs. I’m looking forward to sorting through everything and to doing the filming in early August. In the meantime, here is a photo, taken on the main staircase at the end of our visit by a very patient member of staff, of Paul and myself wearing funny hats. You’re welcome.

Look out for these funny hats at Cragside!