The city that was the first industrialised city in the world, was home to the first ever railway station, the place where the atom was first split and was home to one of the first computers is developing a scientific hub that could become as important as Silicon Valley in California is now.

A substance that has been tipped to replace silicon and plastics as the key material of the future was discovered here in Manchester in 2004 and the scientists at Manchester University who discovered it were awarded the biggest prize in science, the Nobel Prize, in 2010.

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