I went back and forth about whether to post this or not. It made sense to do so, yet–as you can see, it’s not the best photograph:

That’s the problem with photographing displays in museum that are behind glass. The reflection. And not the kind of reflection I usually go for!

The label up close:

So this lab coat is displayed in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It’s right next to the Baby, the first computer ever constructed. Geoff Tootill worked on it, together with Alan Turing and others. Alan Turing is, of course, the best known one, the father of modern computing. I’ve previously posted pics of his statue in Sackville Gardens in Manchester. You might also know him from the film The Imitation Game, where he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

I’ve been to the Science and Industry Museum many times. But it was only on my last visit there, in June, that I paid any attention to the lab coat. I immediately thought: that looks like something from an old sci-fi, like Isaac Asimov! But I think it was a different short story I read recently that made me look at the lab coat. It is by an author who you would not think of when it comes to sci-fi–Daphne du Maurier! The story’s title is The Breakthrough. It’s included as a bonus in my Kindle version of The Birds and Other Stories. I was very surprised to read it, it has almost a dystopian feel, but fiction set in labs and science institutes evokes that feel in me. Basically, it’s like Frankenstein, except two centuries later. Proves that Daphne du Maurier had a range.

Anyway, that’s concludes my lab coat post.