Recently in Blue Plaques Category

Controversial former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is now an international Peace Envoy, philanthropist and £12 million a year public speaker.

The Office of Tony Blair is based at 9 Grosvenor Square. This was once the first US Embassy, back in the 18th century, and is situated at the north east corner of Grosvenor Square and the corner of Brook Street and Duke Street.

Latitude: N51:30:45 ( 51.512602 )
Longitude: W0:09:01 ( -0.150239 )

The Office of Tony Blair - John Adams House - 9 Grosvenor Square from the Canadian High Commission side

9 Grosvenor Square from the park in the middle of Grosvenor Square

Property Week reports that the rent on these offices is over half a million pounds a year. This is all paid for by the Quartet on the Middle East - the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the United Nations and the European Union, for whom Tony Blair acts as a Special Envoy mostly to Israel and Palestine, as well as a base for his Faith and Sports Charitable Foundations, and Corporate Directorships etc.

There is a Blue Plaque dedicated to John Harrison (1693 - 1776) the inventor of the Marine Chronometer, a technological achievement which allowed for accurate timekeeping and the determination of Longitude, essential for marine navigation, and something which helped to establish the British Empire, and is one of the foundations of the modern world.

The Blue Plaque is on Summit House, at 17 Red Lion Square, on the corner with Dane Street.

Location:

GPS Coordinates:

Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:08 ( 51.518772 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:07 ( -0.118639 )

This Blue Plaque memorial to mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer Alan Turing is not in central London, but in the South West suburb of Hampton, when he worked at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, after World War 2.

Whilst at NPL Alan Turing designed a ACE general purpose computer in 1946, a scaled down working model of which called Pilot ACE is now in the Science Museum in South Kensington.

Ivy House
78 High Street
Hampton
TW12 2SW

See Andrew Hodges'
The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook for more details of other such memorials, Blue Plaques and statues etc.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:24:55 ( 51.415151 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:21:33 ( -0.359262 )

Google Street View

London has so much history, that there are many buildings, or sites of former buildings, which have strong historical connections with famous artists, architects, politicians and scientists and inventors.

There are several scheme involving the placing of round ceramic Blue Plaques (and some other colours) to honour these famous people, and to provide a photo opportunity and a bit of interest to tourists and historians.

Some of the Blue Plaques in central London, which honour telecommunications scientists, inventors, mathematicians and cryptographers are noted in this Blue Plaques category archive.

Just to the east of Monmouth Street, about halfway between Seven Dials and the northern (Forbidden Planet Megastore) end, is courtyard called Neal's Yard.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:51 ( 51.514285 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:35 ( -0.126506 )

Neal's Yard is mentioned by William Gibson in Pattern Recognition, where Cayce visits a Pilates exercise studio. There are still Pilates, Reflexology, "healing crystals", vegetarian food etc. to be found in there, as well as corporate managed office space and skateboard fashions etc.

There is also a Blue Plaque dedicated to Monty Python, where the famous eccentric British comedy series / industry began its initial recordings.

The Short's Gardens entrance to Neal's Yard has a water clock sculpture. One shop to west, is the Neal's Yard Dairy Cheese Shop, which harks back to the original use of the premises.

This shop produces an overwhelming taste and smell sensation, with real "live" cheeses such as Cheddar and Stilton etc.. and is one of cyberpunk fiction author William Gibson's favourite shops in this area :

Friday, August 31, 2007

A SOVEREIGN FOR SOUL-DELAY
posted 5:03 AM
Yesterday morning I walked around the corner to Neils Yard Dairy and bought myself 200g. of the Montgomery's unpasteurized cheddar.

Asked for it by name. The clerk, in a proper cheeseman's cap, wrapped my interestingly discoloured wedge in that special white paper they use, glossy on the inside, folding it that way I can never quite master.

Now it's 5:23AM PST, back in Vancouver, and the Montgomery's cheddar really *is* a sovereign medicine for jet lag. And that is the reason it costs almost as much as heroin, in America.

Interestingly, now (20th August 2009), the offices above this Neil's Yard Dairy are being advertised as "Trendy Offices to Let"

(1802-1875),

Many of you will have used a Wheatsone Bridge during your physics lessons at school, to accurately measure the resistance of a piece of wire. This was also the technological breakthrough which allowed signals to be detected over trans-oceanic telegraph cables. He also invented the Playfair Cipher

Alan Turing
(1912-1954)

Mathematical genius and code breaker, pioneer of computing and artificial intelligence. The Turing test is still the used to assess the progress of artificial machine intelligence towards simulating human intelligence.

The "Turing Institute", the "Turing police" etc. were terms used by William Gibson in Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer etc. to imply societal control mechanisms on uppity Artificial Intelligences (AIs) - not to be confused with the real life Turing Institute(s) set up later at various universities like Manchester or Glasgow etc.

The Blue Plaque memorial us at:

Collonade Hotel
2 Warrington Crescent,
Little Venice,
London W9 1ER

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:28 ( 51.524317 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:11:05 ( -0.184635 )

Google Street View

Charles Babbage
(1791-1871)

1a Dorset Street, Marylebone, W1U 4EE

Mathematician, Cryptographer and Inventor of mechanical computing devices including the Analytical Engine and the Difference Engine (see the Science Museum entry)

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a “SteamPunk” novel based on this The Difference Engine.

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:31:12 ( 51.519876 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:09:17 ( -0.154759 )

Ada, Countess of Lovelace

(1815-1852)
12 St James's Square.

The first "computer programmer" of Charles Babbage's Difference and Analytical Engines.

See this BBC article and this University of Warwick article

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:28 ( 51.507743 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:11 ( -0.136415 )

The brown brick building on the corner, at 10 St.James Square, is the Royal Institute of International Affairs a famous diplomacy, security and intelligence think tank, known as Chatham House, famous for the Chatham House Rule:

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."

John Logie Baird
(1888-1946)

22 Frith Street
Soho
Westminster, W1

Invented Television in this Frith Street attic laboratory - first picture transmitted on 2 Oct 1925. He also had other patents involving radar and video recording.

This Blue Plaque was recently mentioned by William Gibson in an interview with Steve Ranger of silicon.com:

"There's a blue plaque in London that says, in effect, 'Broadcast television was invented here'. Nobody in that room above the shop was filled with a kind of eldritch horror and a vision of a world of closed circuit surveillance - it was the last thing they were thinking."

Samuel F. B. Morse
(1791-1872)

American painter and inventor of the Morse code

141 Cleveland Street
Westminster, W1T 6QG