 Northfleet, Kent, by William Aspdin, son of Joseph Aspdin. The development was to heat the ingredients to around 1450C, producing clinker. Previously temperatures were taken to only 800C, which was not enough. The first ever cement kiln is still in Northfleet today in a cardboard factory. In the late 1800s, the rotary kiln made the process much more efficient. Concrete, effectively man-made stone, is the most widespread man-made material. 5% of all carbon emissions worldwide are from concrete production.
On 16 October 1908 the British Army Aeroplane No 1, flown by the American Samuel Franklin Cody, was the first aircraft flown in the UK, at Farnborough; on 14 May 1909 he flew it for more than a mile. On 13 August 1909, his wife would be the first woman in the UK to fly in a plane, also at Farnborough. The first Harrier aircraft XV738 flew on 28 December 1967; this was the first aircraft of the RAF to have a head-up display avionics system. The first two-seat Harrier XW174 flew on 24 April 1969, later crashing at Larkhill in June 1969. The British Aerospace Sea Harrier XZ450 first flew on 20 August 1978; on 4 May 1982 this aircraft would be hit by anti-aircraft fire at Goose Green, killing the pilot with 800 Naval Air Squadron from HMS Hermes; the aircraft had no radar warning receiver (RWR), due to testing the Sea Eagle, so could not detect the Skyguard radar had locked on to it, being destroyed with the Oerlikon GDF (35mm) of GADA 601; it was the first Sea Harrier lost in the Falklands campaign. The first manned airborne ejection seat firing took place on 24 July 1946 over Chalgrove Airfield, Oxfordshire, in a Meteor, piloted by Bernard Lynch; the first dummy ejection had been 10 May 1945 over RAF Oakley in west Buckinghamshire (today near the M40); on 13 March 1962, the first in-flight rocket-powered ejection took place by Peter Howard, an RAF doctor based at Farnborough's Institute of Aviation Medicine in Meteor WA364 at 250 ft over Chalgrove, with the rocket giving a maximum force of 16G. The Miles M.52, designed at Woodley Aerodrome in Berkshire by Miles Aircraft, was an advanced design of aircraft which had the innovation of the flying tail or all-moving tail also known as a stabilator; this would solve the problem of stability and aircraft control at supersonic speeds, and its design was taken wholesale into the American Bell X-1, the first supersonic aircraft.
On 3 May 1830 the world's first passenger train service, the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway (6 miles) built by George Stephenson, began, hauled by the locomotive Invicta and introduced world's first railway season ticket in 1834. Maidenhead Railway Bridge, known for its flat arch, was built in 1839 with 39-metre spans. The Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment, in Chertsey, developed Chobham armour.
UK-Belgium 5 laid in 1986 from Kent was the world's first optical fibre submarine cable, and is 36 miles long. The world's first submarine telephone cable was laid between England and France in 1891 by HMTS Monarch, enabling London-Paris calls from April 1891. On 3 December 1992, Neil Papworth of Reading, an engineer from Sema Group Telecoms at Vodafone in Newbury sent the world's first text message from his computer to an Orbitel 901 handset of Richard Jarvis, Vodafone's technical director. The first public automatic telephone exchange in the UK was at Epsom telephone exchange from 18 May 1912, and was introduced as standard across the UK's 6,700 telephone exchanges in 1922, lasting for around 70 years; it could handle up to 500 lines, and was the Strowger design and made by Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company of Liverpool. The world's first automatic telephone exchange had opened in La Porte, Indiana in November 1892.
The BritNed 1000MW power supply submarine cable from Isle of Grain to Rotterdam, was built in 2009. The HVDC Cross-Channel (2000MW) submarine cable was built 1986. This is the world's highest capacity submarine HVDC cable; it goes from France and lands near Folkestone, with the large transformer station (built by GEC) squeezed