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If you are visiting and visually impaired then this page contains an audio tour of the LIA space to help navigate the exhibits. Just play each track in order and follow the instructions to move around the room. Even if you are not visually impaired, you can listen to the guide while moving around Virtual 3D tour:
Welcome to the Lanchester Interactive Archive! This audio tour will summarise the story of Frederick Lanchester, one of the UK's most remarkable scientists. It starts right as you come in through the door and guides you around the Discovery Space. But you don’t need to move for the first section: it's an introduction to the life and work of Frederick Lanchester.
To move into the aeronautics section, take two steps forward and turn left. On the wall in front of you there are reproductions of Fred Lanchester's notebooks, covered in mathematical formulae. There is also a big wooden object resembling an airplane and a picture of Fred Lanchester holding a similar object. These are called gliders. We'll talk about how Fred Lanchester used gliders in the next section.
To learn more about Fred's contributions to automotive engineer, turn 45 degrees to your left, take one step, and then turn another 45 degrees to your left. You are now standing in front of a red Lanchester car from 1933; it is taller than a modern car, has a big hood, and looks very old-fashioned. We will now talk about Lanchester cars and engine design.
To learn more about early cars built by the Lanchester brothers, turn left and take about six steps forward. You will pass in front of posters showing early Lanchester cars. Then turn right and take one step forward. You are now in front of a poster depicting a 1920s Lanchester armoured car.
In the next section we'll talk about some of Fred's inventions in the field of automotive engineering. Turn left and take two steps forward, then turn right again. In front of you there are posters with images of later Lanchester cars, including the 1926 40hp and the 1927 hybrid car.
To learn about Fred's other interests, turn to your right and take three steps. In front of you are technical drawings of some of Fred's inventions and a reproduction of the cover of Yoichi Takeda's book "The Lanchester Strategy for Management".
If you turn right and walk about five steps, you'll pass in front of a poster which highlights important events in Frederick Lanchester's life and career. The next section summarises this timeline.
This is the end of the audio tour. Thank you for visiting the Lanchester Interactive Archive; we hope you enjoyed your time here and you'll come back again. We welcome any feedback you may have about the tour, the exhibition, and the Archive in general; please speak to our staff or email us at outreach@lanchesterinteractive.org.
