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Walking through the narrow streets around the centre of York it's easy to appreciate how steeped in history York is. You're never far from the Minster and every corner you turn reveals a view which highlights York's links with the past.

Amy Parkinson and Ian Stuart

It's less easy to see York as a place which has helped push back the boundaries of science. To do this you need to know a little more about some of the people who have helped make York the place it is, which is where the walking trail comes in.

It takes you on a journey of discovery, never far from the Minster, which goes back to the earliest days of the city. The trail is the work of 'Science City York' - a partnership between the City of York Council and the University of York which promotes the creation and growth of technological based business.

To help me delve into the city's past I was joined by tour guide Ian Stuart and Amy Parkinson who helped put the trail together.

The Romans

We start at Monk Bar, one of the four famous medieval gateways to the city - the others being Bootham Bar, Micklegate Bar and Walmgate Bar.

Although built in the 13th century, Monk Bar is on the line of the wall of the old Roman fortress. It's believed the Roman gateway was further to the west, probably in line with Chapter House Street. The Roman Via Decumana was the main entrance to the fortress from the north-east.

The Roman Legionnaires, who arrived in 71AD were the first to put science to good use in York.

They used a 'groma' - a wooden cross on a pole on which lead weights were hung - to measure angles and make sure their fortress had straight walls and was built on mainly level ground.

Astronomy

The Treasurer's House, close to York Minster, was the home of 18th century astronomer John Goodricke. Although Goodricke died at the age of 21 and was only active as an astronomer for 18 months, he made a series of ground breaking discoveries which still influence astronomers today.

The Railways

The industrial revolution threatened York's position as an economic centre. George Hudson was the man who changed that with his vow to 'mek all t'railways cum to York'.

In the late 1820s Hudson invested what was then a huge inheritance (拢30,000) in the fledgling North Midland Railway company. By 1837 he was Lord Mayor of York,听 controlled more than a thousand miles of track and had been nicknamed 'The Railway King'.

Hudson was one of the early driving forces of the railway industry and responsible for establishing York as a railway centre, a legacy which lasted a century and half and which still continues, to a lesser extent, today.

York Minster

Undoubtedly York's most iconic building, the Minster is an enduring testament to the medieval engineers who designed it. Although it took 250 years to build, the designs for the cathedral were set out using just three simple geometric instruments - a compass, a set square and a straight edge!

The Minster also embodies York's long association with the glaziers who've听 filled York's churches with colour for the last 850 years. Through medieval and middle age England, glaziers must have been akin to alchemists, using metalic oxides to create coloured glass.

The Minster's Great East Window, which is the size of a tennis court, is the largest medieval stained glass window in the world.

Stonegate - Telescopes & Printing

Now right at the heart of York's tourism industry, Stonegate was once the heart of the city's printing industry. It was also the base for a world beating telescope maker and home to a leading vulcanologist!

Printing has been described as the technology which has done most to transform the world over the last 1,000 years. York's very first printer set up business in Stonegate in 1480.

Over the years the street was also home to a number of bookshops, many of which had their own printing presses. No 35 Stonegate, with its Golden Bible hanging above the doorway, was where John Hinxman published the first two volumes of Laurence Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy' in 1759.

One constant reminder of Stonegate's association with printing is Red Devil on the corner of the shopfront of No 33 Stonegate.

Stonegate is where spectacle maker Thomas Cooke set up business. Cooke went on to make all manner of optical instruments. In the 19th century Cooke made some of the best and biggest telescopes in the world and was responsible for huge advances in the size and accuracy of telescopes and in the way lenses were ground.

Stonegate was also the home of opthalmic surgeon Tempest Anderson who was a leading Victorian amateur vulcanologist and photographer. Anderson's name lives on in York, the lecture theatre at the Yorkshire Museum is named after him. His family home on Stonegate (No 23) is where the York Medical Society has its meeting rooms.

Museum Gardens

The Museum Gardens were created by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, an organisation which was set up in 1822 to pursue the study of natural sciences. As well as the gardens, the society also created the Yorkshire Museum (1829) to house the natural history collections of its members. It was instrumental in the creation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its inaugural meeting in the Museum Gardens in 1831.

The observatory in the Museum Gardens is the oldest working observatory in Yorkshire. It contains a refractor telescope built by Thomas Cooke and a clock, built in 1811, which tells the time according to the position of the stars.

The clock was created before the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time and as a result shows the time four minutes and twenty seconds behind GMT. In the mid 19th century people in York used this clock to set their pocket watches, they would come to the observatory and pay sixpence for the right to use this clock to set their watches.