So this is my object, it's from the electrical engineering collection here at UCL and it's what's known as an experimental valve. It was made for or by, I'm not sure which, a man called Ambrose Fleming who was the first Pender Professor of Electrical Engineering here at UCL. He was a very interesting man in himself, he was a creationist but also a scientist and electrician and he did a lot of work with the Marconi company who were responsible for a lot of the early advances in wireless technology and this valve was one of a group of fourteen I think it was that Fleming was working with experimenting looking into something called the Edison effect which basically results in a molecular shadow being made on the glass and this is known as the Thermyana Commission, it's the emissions of electrons from a hot cathode into a vacuum and a vacuum tube and this was discovered by Thomas Edison and I think it was about 1875 who was a very cany person in that he discovered this couldn't really work out a use for it but patented it anyway, he's got the most patents out of anyone in the world and part of the reason is that he just patent things even if he couldn't really work out what to do with them. So Fleming was experimenting with this, couldn't really get anything out of it and then he put the valves away and then apparently a few years later how a happy thought came back to them and experimenting with them again came up with something called the Thermyonic valve and the reason that this is important is that this was a receiver which basically improved the receiving capability of wireless and so this led to wireless being able to be used across the Atlantic so it was a huge advantage for the Marconi company and it also then led to radios and television and the space race and computers so the early computers used these valves and they were basically used right up until the 70s when they were superseded by something else so it really did lead to the modern world that we see today. I think it symbolises the connections I look after because it's an interesting piece of technology that looks very different from what we'd use today. It's got this amazing story behind it which can also put people off because it sounds a bit sciencey or technical but without this sort of invention we wouldn't be as a society where we are today and we would be as a human race where we are today because these were important discoveries that were made and changed the world.