North East

In Tyne and Wear Adam Hart-Davis re-creates the device conceived by Whitley Bay's Gladstone Adams. Travelling home from the FA Cup final, Adams had to fold down his windscreen in order to cope with a snowstorm. He realised there must be a better way to drive in bad weather, and invented the windscreen wiper. Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, Hart-Davis discovers, is the site of the invention of the friction match, devised by accident by John Walker. The cycling scientist also dismounts to build a steam turbine in the kitchen of its inventor's house, and to make a light bulb to celebrate its Gateshead creator.