There is a very simple principle to the making of tea and it’s this – to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves. If it’s merely hot then the tea will be insipid.
A watched pot never boils but an electrical kettle does, and so every properly nice cup of tea has poured from the over-flowing cup of wonders that is Birmingham. That’s right, the science behind the modern electric kettle – and a decent cuppa – comes from Brum: Arthur Large created an immersed heating element and the boffins at Bullpit & Sons added a cut off valve. Thus was born the nice cup of tea and a sit down, and with it the space to think and ponder, to reframe the problem that you can’t solve while you refresh your mind and body.
How many more great ideas and inventions stand on the shoulders of this giant? How many innovations would not have come to fruition but for a soothing cup of PG Tips?
Too many to count – and we’re only going up to 101.
