Images Dated 17th May 2004

London: Mr Lord Charles Ellington, of Kings Cross, 57 year old British Railway train

London: Mr Lord Charles Ellington, of Kings Cross, 57 year old British Railway train driver nicknamed "The Duke" stqands beside 90 m.p.h diesel electric engine of the "Flying Scotsman" at Kings Cross,
18 June 1962
vintage stills archive picture library stock photographic

© 2003 Topham Picturepoint

Semaphore station

Semaphore station. Historical artwork of a semaphore station in Algeria. Semaphore is a system of communication based on visual signals. The station has a pair of wooden arms on its roof. These could form 196 different arrangements, each representing a letter, number, or other meaning. Messages were passed from one station to another by operators in the stations, who duplicated the signals they observed from the station preceding them in the line. The last operational semaphore station closed in 1860 in Algeria. Published in La Telegraphie Historique (History of Telegraphy) by Alexis Belloc in 1888

© SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Map of Mesopotamia

Map of Mesopotamia. Computer artwork of markings on a stone tablet showing a map of Mesopotamia. The stone tablet dates from between 700 and 500 BC and is from Sippar in southern Iraq. The ancient city of Babylon is the rectangle located at the centre of the map. Cuneiform script elsewhere on the tablet also mentions Assyria and Elam. The Mesopotamian world is surrounded by a circular waterway labelled salt-sea'. Triangular regions, or islands, beyond the sea were thought to be home to mythical creatures. Mesopotamia refers to a region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. The stone tablet is kept in the British Museum

© SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY