This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. This lecture in the series

The Triumph of Technology, given by Lord Breweres, was originally broadcast in 2005.

Good evening and welcome to the magnificent Waterloo Chamber of Windsor Castle, hung with the portraits

of emperors, kings and prime ministers of the early 19th century,

men who stood at the dawning of a great new age.

Here tonight, in the presence of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, the senior fellow

of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the president of that academy, Lord Browers, is about to deliver

the final lecture of his series entitled The Triumph of Technology, Lord Browers, is about to deliver the final lecture of his series entitled

The Triumph of Technology, the dawning of Our New Age.

Alec Brose began five weeks ago by citing his dismay that the public asked to rank Britain's

greatest inventions, have chosen in first place not the jet engine or electricity, not vaccination or the discovery of the structure of DNA, but the invention of the bicycle.

Such an unimaginative choice, he's been the first to admit, is as much a failure of the scientific community as of public ignorance.

He's been telling us throughout that technology can provide

intelligent solutions to many of the world's greatest problems, traffic congestion in the air

and on the road, pollution, poverty, disease and the possible destruction of the planet itself

through global warming. Tonight, he will argue that solutions won't be possible

unless all of us, scientists, engineers and non-scientists,

all of us alike, are prepared to engage together

and require the political will to bring about change.

Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome our Reith Lecturer,

2005, Alec Broers.

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