The Music of Manchester's Science and Industry Museum

The transport section of Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry

Even without instrumentation, Manchester is filed with music.

In Manchester, I listen to footsteps, empty alleyways, smashed bottles, fist fights and 3 am “good nights.”

The Victorian brick and smokestack look of the city has updated. A skyscraping blue hotel occupies the same footprint a factory once did. Yet, like that factory must have, it hums over your shoulder, wherever you go in the city, extolling the business of the times.

At Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry, one’s ear is constantly stimulated. Sometimes by a steam turbine, sometimes by the rollers and combs of a cotton sliver.

Sometime, one listens to the imagination. What were those conversations like on the world’s first passenger airplane? What does the furnace of a star sound like?

Consider the excitement that build Manchester: the concentration of ideas and innovation. The bicycle chain, purple dye, water-resistant clothing, and synthetic fabrics owe their birth to the tremendous concentration of industrial-era minds that met here.

This small coal-train runs for ten minutes down two stretches of track. Adult rides are 2£.

The challenge for those living during those heady years was to nurture a love of art and culture, to lead a life of moral example, all while being invigorated by wealth and punished by brutalizing conditions.

So it is poignant that, in the relative peace of our time, we may educate ourselves to the everyday music of theirs.