From Semaphore to Smartphone

The 6th annual Manchester Science Festival ran until 4 November this year and included a special guest appearance from Openreach Ollie during an interactive communications technology event at MediaCityUK.

The nine-day, multi-venue Festival engages and inspires people with science, building their confidence in exploring and questioning science in the most creative ways possible. Events take place in cultural and unusual venues around the city, in Salford, Bolton and across Greater Manchester.

Openreach Ollie dials back in time 

At the centre of the Festival is a family programme including science shows and hands-on activities to keep the kids busy and entertained during half term.

One of these was ‘From Semaphore to Smartphone’, a free interactive exhibition which showed how people communicated before smartphones came along! So people could try their hands at sending messages using flags and Morse Code, among other things. Even Openreach Ollie got in on the act.

And as part of the University of Salford’s weekend of technology at MediaCityUK, there was also the ever popular Digital Retro event, showing computers through the ages. From the Dragon 32 and the Commodore 64 all the way to the Raspberry Pi, there was a range of vintage computers and software to try out.