Re: Basement computer room
On similar lines, in BBC TV Centre in London the old VT (Video Tape) rooms were in the basement directly underneath the fountain in the courtyard.
After a few months of occupation the fountain was turned off because the sound of it echoing off the walls of the circular courtyard made some of the female staff members keep visiting the loo every 10 minutes.
This is not the point of the story, however. The point is that the fountain was also found to leak. When the Queen visited the site at some point in the 1970s the management decided to turn the fountain on to impress her, but in order to minimise the risk from the leak they decided to only turn it on whilst the Queen was outside. The Queen was seen to be approaching, so the fountain was turned on. She met the management, went inside and it was turned off. But then they had to turn it back on because the Duke of Edinburgh turned up in a land rover a few minutes later.
The upshot of the story is a large part of the expensive VT equipment underneath the fountain was ruined!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
