Geograph - photograph every grid square

A plaque on the west side of bridge 11 commemorating Russell's observation on this canal of a water wave set off by a horse-drawn boat that stopped suddenly. The wave carried on without appreciable loss and Russell followed it on horseback '... for a chase of one or two miles ...' Russell, a naval engineer, recognised it as an unusual phenomenon and reported it to the British Association. The introduction to his 1845 paper can be seen at Link.
Nowadays, solitary waves or 'solitons' are of great interest in fibre optics, where their equivalent in light form can propagate great distances in fibre with much less degradation than more conventional light pulses.
See also the Scott Russell aqueduct NT1870 : Scott Russell aqueduct, Hermiston that carries the canal over the Edinburgh City By-Pass.