Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: jw0752
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 3565 views
  • Likes 19 likes
  • Comments 31 comments
Related
Recommended

World Tour

jw0752

I got the idea for this Blog from . Since the Covid 19 has kept us from getting out and traveling I thought it might be fun to give you a short tour of my home town Chippewa Falls Wisconsin USA and to invite you to add your own tour of your home town in the comments. I am suggesting that we make it a short tour with six pictures or less. If you can highlight an industry that relates to electronics all the better. Background information and history is always appreciated.

 

image

Very close to Chippewa Falls is Lake Wissota. If you have ever watched the movie "Titanic" this lake was reference by the hero Jack as the place where he and his grandfather went ice fishing. Unfortunately this was an anachronism as Jack and the Titanic sank in 1912 and the Lake didn't fill with water behind a newly constructed hydroelectric dam until 1917. The Lake draws lots of tourists and the local people use it for fishing, boating, water skiing, swimming, and in the winter they do indeed do a lot of ice fishing.

 

image

 

In the early 1960s native son Seymour Cray returned to Chippewa Falls to develop the first Super Computer. In its heyday Cray had dozens of research and manufacturing facilities in Chippewa Falls. Today this is the only building that remains. The rest are now filled with other companies such as HP, TTM Technologies, and a host of small specialized companies.

 

image

 

This is the Chippewa Falls version of Notre Dame Church. It is wife Millies' church and it has a good view of the city in the Winter time when there are no leaves. I went up to the Church to take a picture of the city for you but there were so many leaves that all one could see was forest. Therefore not to waste the moment I took a picture of the church.

 

image

 

No it's not about the roses. In the background you will see the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company which has been putting Chippewa Falls on the map for the last 153 years. While I am not a beer aficionado myself I have heard that it is a great brew and they like to specialize in many seasonal products. They also have a nice hospitality center and give brewery tours when things aren't locked down by the Corona Virus.

 

image

 

Chippewa Falls was originally in the early 1800s a lumber town with saw mills to process the White Pine timber that was being harvested and floated down the Chippewa River. One of the people who became wealthy in this enterprise was William Irvine. Part of his legacy to the area was the donation of a beautiful section of land which is now known as Irvine Park. There are hiking trails, a very nice Zoo, picnic areas, play equipment for the children, and this water falls called Glen Loc. It is actually an abandoned mill dam with the water overflowing the top.

 

There you have a 5 picture overview of my home town.

 

Please take some pictures and share what is interesting and beautiful about where you live in a comment to this blog. I look forward to touring your home town.

 

John

Parents

  • I live in Colchester in the UK.

     

    My 'tourist picture' is the local castle. It's a Norman keep. The present height is reckoned to be about two-

    thirds of the original height; the locals were evidently good at recycling building material. It was built on the

    foundations of a Roman temple [to Claudius] which was left over from when the town was a Roman colony.

     

    image

     

    This is a view of the High Street, taken on a misty day last November. The very grand town hall was built in

    Victorian times. In the background there is an old Victorian water tower, known locally as 'Jumbo'.

     

    image

     

    This is the town from the north-east, an area where I've been taking exercise during the 'lockdown'. The castle

    is behind the trees on the lefthand side of the skyline. Although it's not very evident from the photograph,

    we're looking across a river valley, with the main part of the original town on the ridge the other side. It's

    not quite as rural as it looks: behind the line of trees at the bottom of the meadow lies a railway line, a ring

    road, out-of-town shops, a leisure centre, and the river itself, before you get to a park which leads up to the

    castle.

     

    image

     

    For my public art picture, a sculpture of Boudicca by the artist Jonathan Clarke. I'm not entirely sure about

    what I think of it as a form of representation, but it's interesting, technically, because it's aluminium, cast

    using a lost-polystyrene process [the model is made with polystyrene, packed around with sand, and then the

    molten aluminium displaces the polystyrene].

     

    image

     

    This is a somewhat different kind of sculpture: a crankshaft from a Paxman diesel marine engine.

     

    image

     

    It's a small reminder of an urban industrial past that is now mostly gone. Their Britannia Works was located just

    behind me where I was taking that photograph. Here's some more information on the particular engine, if you're

    interested in such things: https://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxeng34.htm#12tp

     

    Finally, the only local link to electricity I could think of was this

     

    image

     

    The building you see through the archway is supposed to have been the home of William Gilberd, author of an

    influential treatise on magnetism and [static] electricity.

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Magnete

     

    This is a better view of the plaque behind the lamp.

     

    image

  • in reply to jc2048

    Hi Jon,

     

    Thanks for the great Tour of your town.  It is nice when a city can still retain a feeling of rural open spaces.

     

    John

Comment Children
No Data