WE should all be very proud of our town and its association with events that have changed the world. It does irritate me when locals express contrary opinions.

The town should publicise all these achievements together in Church Square so that all residents and visitors to the Town Centre are reminded.

Railways: The Rainhill Trials of 1829 and the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830.

It was George Stephenson’s Rocket at the Rainhill Trials that proved a steam locomotive was the correct choice for the future of the line, rather than with the assistance of horses or stationary engines.

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester triggered an explosion that less than forty years later, New York was linked across the USA to California. Earlestown (or Newton Junction as it was first called) was the first Junction, first reaching Warrington and then extending to London.

We still have FIVE railway stations on the route, Rainhill, Lea Green (the original on an earlier site), St Helens Junction (which became a Junction later), Earlestown, and Newton-le-Willows.

Float Glass: Alistair Pilkington’s target was to make the high-quality glass essential for shop windows, cars, mirrors and other applications, where distortion free glass was necessary, much more economically. At that time this quality of glass could only be made by the costly and wasteful plate process, of which Pilkington Brothers had also been the innovator. Because there was glass-to-roller contact, surfaces were marked. They had to be ground and polished to produce the parallel surfaces which bring optical perfection in the finished product.

They patented and licensed this float glass process. A glass of uniform thickness is produced without the need for grinding and polishing. Now, virtually every sheet of glass in the world is produced this way.

Recycled hot air:

It was a German patent, but it was a local bottle maker, Cannington Shaw, who first put the idea into practice, and lodged several patents on the way.

Normally, when you have a fire, the hot air rises and escapes into the atmosphere. Now you have already spent a fortune on coal to make the molten glass. Suppose you could channel that hot air so it came around again and again. You would use much less coal just to reheat it.

That’s why English Heritage designated it an Ancient Monument and why I am involved with a group working with English Heritage to save it.

The talkies:

The revolution happened on Broadway, on 6 October 1927. One sentence uttered on screen that night changed the movie industry as it had never been changed before – and perhaps would never be altered quite so excitingly again. In ‘The Jazz Singer’, Al Jolson saying "Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain't heard nothin' yet" not only marked the arrival of what from that moment on became known as the talkies, it instantly killed off the silent cinema.

It was St. Helens lad George Groves who was at the other end of the microphone, ensuring those words were captured for the soundtrack. By then he was working for Warner Brothers and helped them earn 32 Academy Award nominations for Sound. Probably his greatest work was cleaning up the sound tapes for ‘Woodstock’. A career that spans ‘The Jazz Singer’ to ‘Woodstock’ ain’t half bad.

In 1996 I organised a plaque for the house on Hamer Street where he was born. It’s still there.

The sky at night:

Television is keen to show us photos taken from space telescopes and space probes and observatories, but they are all descended from the first ever photograph of an object in the night sky. This was taken 175 years ago back in 1840, by John William Draper.

By then he was in America, but he was born May 5, 1811 in St Helens to John Christopher Draper, a Wesleyan clergyman. His father often needed to move the family due to serving various congregations throughout England. Following his father’s death in 1831, the family moved to the U.S.A. and he worked at New York’s University.

In 1839–1840, Draper produced clear photographs, which at that time were regarded as the first life photographs of a human face. One of those, of his sister, Dorothy, survives. In 1850 he was making photo-micrographs (microfilming). He developed the proposition in 1842 that only light rays that are absorbed can produce chemical change. In 1847 he published the observation that all solids glow red at about the same temperature, about 977 °F (798 K), which has come to be known as the Draper point.

Canals:Yes, I know it wasn’t even Britain’s first Canal, for the Romans had done that before, but it was the first canal of England’s Canal Age. The Mersey flats using the canal had 60’ masts to carry the sails, which is why George Stephenson opted for 70’ arches for his Viaduct to cross the canal. A significant location in transport history.

Rugby – Liverpool St Helens Rugby Union Football Club is the World’s oldest open rugby club. It was founded in 1857. It was in 1895 that another St. Helens club joined others to break away and help found the first rugby league League.