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I remember the thrill of joy which went through me every time I climbed the half-dozen steps which led up to the great front door: the surge of delight as I passed into the wonderful Great Hall and sensed the magic of its atmosphere. For in this place were gathered together examples of all the latest scientific wonders of the day. First, just inside the entrance, was a huge plate-glass static electricity machine. Given a boy big enough to turn the handle — it was too heavy for my little arm — you could have long sparks of miniature lightning at will. At the far end of the Great Hall there was an immense induction-coil whose spark, they told me, could kill a horse. There was a long narrow lake the whole length of the hall, shallow for the most part but deep enough at the far end to sink the big diving bell. Right above the lake and along the whole length of the hall was slung a tight-rope upon which, at stated intervals, an automatic full-size figure of a man would walk from end to end. There was a gallery all round this hall and here there was a model railway with electric trains which ran 'all by themselves' in a day when there was scarce a real one to be found anywhere. And here in this gallery there was a 'wheel-of-life' — a cinematograph in embryo. It was a big disc which you could turn quite easily and it had narrow slots cut at intervals all round its edge. Between these slots, on the other side of the disc, a little dancing figure was painted in consecutive stages of movement. When you turned the wheel and peeped through the slots at a mirror hung a foot or two beyond it you saw the little figure dance as though alive.
For sixpence you could take your seat with a lot of other boys in the huge diving bell and be completely submerged. Just below your feet there was the surface of the blue water, for the bell was open at the bottom, but as it descended the surface of the water went down too and you didn't get your school boots even wet. I have been told since, but I don't believe it, that the band played particularly loudly while the diving bell was going down to smother the screams of the drowning people inside it.
Alongside the Great Hall was the part I liked best of all — the theatre. This was a rather complicated mixture of an ordinary theatre, with stage and scenery and so on, and a projection theatre more elaborate than would be found in any cinema today. The operating box ran the whole width of the theatre at dress circle level, and with a galleryful of seats above it, I think, though I can't be sure about that. In the operating box there were about
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