Adam Sampson <ats(a)offog.org> wrote: A picture of Wilkes with some mercury delay lines and a corner of an EDSAC rack. https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004368-03-01.jpg?w=6… There was a lot of loose mercury kicking around on that site. Some of the Victorian lecture theatres I attended as an undergrad were later refurbished for use by another department and the rumours were that they discovered there had been a lot of spillage from old physics demonstrations when they were part of the Cavendish laboratory. More recently (10ish years ago?) my boss was briefly evicted from his office in the Phoenix building after they discovered mercury under the floorboards. The building was not named after the IBM mainframe computer, but because it had been burned down and rebuilt such that the top two storeys looked quite different from the bottom two. Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ Biscay: West or southwest 4 to 6. Moderate, occasionally slight in north. Thundery showers. Good, occasionally poor.