harwood-yoha / coal_fired_computers

Coal Fired Computers was produced for the 25th anniversary of the 1984/85 UK miners' strike with miner activists including the National Union of Mineworkers. The work employed a 17.5 ton steam engine to power a single computer for three days at the Discovery Centre, Newcastle-Upon Thyme that displayed the records from two contentious databases, one held on the servers of the law firm soliciting claims for lung disease against the UK government and the other from the UK government itself. The databases were of miners' claims for those who have contracted Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) since 1952 and those miners that have died in mining accidents since 1700.