Re: "The Death of Surplus".
Oh dear, that takes me back!- I recall having a go in the Jaguar sim at Lossiemouth as a kid and being shown around the installation by the techs, some time in the late 'seventies. The "flight" was the result of the output of a TV camera mounted on what was effectively a huge X-Y plotter moving about over a vast relief scale model that must have been a long-winded labour of love by a whole team of people. To cope with the camera sensitivity of the day, this swathe of Lilliput was illuminated by a tremendous and close-packed array of colour-corrected lights hanging above it. Lore had it that this lighting gantry made it the second-biggest electricity consumer in the north of Scotland, the biggest supposedly being the aluminium smelter down the road at Corpach.
As with much of the stuff we like here, an impressive achievement in its day, but doomed in short order to become "just sad old junk". Shame that more things can't be preserved as examples but there's only so much room on the planet, and I fear that only a small proportion of each generation is genuinely interested in the achievements of the past, the rest roll their eyes, yawn and revert to the iPad....
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