Image Credit: The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London

This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.

The closure of the coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar on September 30th 2024 quietly brought an end to the era of coal-fired power generation tracing back to Thomas Newcomen more than three centuries earlier.

In this paper, Ben Russell will trace the history of the Central Electricity Board’s coal-fired power stations, explore how they are being represented in the UK’s museum collections, and place them within the context both of earlier developments and of what might replace them in future.

About the Speaker

Ben Russell is Curator of Mechanical Engineering at the Science Museum, London. He has curated nine permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions at the museum, including Engineers (2023), Robots (2017) and James Watt’s Workshop (2011), as well as Cosmonauts (2015).

Ben is the author of James Watt: Making the World Anew, (Reaktion Books, 2014), and editor of Robots (Scala, 2017), as well as a wide range of published and conference papers.