'Cutting edge' science then and now

A 1960s lecture series set takes to the road

The Faraday science lecture is being relaunched and expanded in its 80th year, to reach an even wider audience.

Instead of a series of illustrated talks 2008 will see a year-long programme of activities including challenges, films, teaching resources, school visits, online games and events around the UK.

Named after the scientist and populist speaker Michael Faraday, the annual lecture series is organised by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET, formerly IEE).

Its archives in London contain a record of what was regarded as the "cutting edge" of technology during the past eight decades.

Women's work

Electricity - for which Michael Faraday himself is probably best known - has featured in one form or another in many of the annual lectures.

He simply could not understand why women did not avail themselves of the many means of easing their burdensome conditions Report of the 1932 lecture

It was the theme of the 1932 series, delivered by Prof J K Catterson-Smith.

He proposed that electrical toys be used in the home to accustom youngsters to handling things electrically.

A report of his talk says he had thought it would be a good thing if he "apprenticed himself in the kitchen of his home, to discover what happened there".

For 18 months he lit the coal fires.

"He simply could not understand why women did not avail themselves of the many means of easing their burdensome conditions.

"Some enterprising manufacturer should market apparatus to enable the ordinary kitchen kettle to be heated electrically."

As the electric kettle had been around for a few years by then, he was presumably advocating the conversion of existing kettles rather than their replacement with plug-in models.

Prof Catterson-Smith proceeded to demonstrate one heated by an element he had constructed beneath it.

'Suitable talent'

In 1965 the institution wrote to its local centres asking them to "provide two girls" - meaning women - as subjects for a live demonstration of "the practical possibility" of colour television.

A cutting from the institution's newsletter shows two of the "girls"

The liaison officer wrote: "I have been asked to pass the word round that in selecting these girls the accent should be on glamour, that is attractive nicely made-up girls who are not camera shy".

He added: "They must not be wearing spectacles. One should be a redhead and the other a brunette ...".

He suggested that "suitable talent might be found among the demonstrators in the local electricity showrooms".

This "delightfully phrased letter" elicited the response from the institution's Sheffield centre that the (male) honorary secretary there had indeed chosen two "girls".

His (female) secretary added, "and I know that although he had some pleasure in doing this, it also caused him a lot of worry".

Those lectures played to packed houses. The one in Portsmouth's Guildhall, for example, had 3,000 applications for the 2,000 tickets.

Atom smashed

Some of the most significant or newsworthy events and developments of the 20th Century are evoked by the archives.

In 1946, Dr T E Allibone's lecture on Atoms, Electrons and Engineers charted the way Rutherford had made a "masterly attack on the nucleus" of an atom and how the lithium atom was smashed in the Cavendish Laboratory.

This had "set in motion a decade of nuclear physics, which culminated in Hiroshima".

He predicted: "The enormous energy stored in the nucleus may well have been harnessed before the middle of the 20th Century."

P D Hall in 1966 felt it was rash to make predictions in the field of Computers Control and Automation.

But he said: "I believe that at some date in the future we shall see a national data grid linking giant computers with a distribution network feeding not only large organisations, but also small companies."

This was at a time when an electric typewriter was regarded as "a very interesting piece of peripheral equipment" where computers were concerned.

"Not only does it provide a means of direct input to the computer by normal typing, but also the computer can type back in reply.

"In this was it is possible to have a conversation or a dialogue with the computer."

At the time the brake on progress was that "we are desperately short of men to program and use intelligently the machines we are already producing".

Fainting children

In 1973, Dr A Stratton's lecture on Navigational Systems looked forward to the advent of the GPS system.

"There are many proposals, but as yet satellites are not playing a major role in navigation," he said.

A piezo electric crystal demonstrated in the 1963 lecture

"Their future ... depends as much on economics as on technical performance."

Two years later, Desmond H Pitcher said in his talk on The Social Computer that we all needed computers for the "simple but compelling reason" that they save time.

"They make the best use of time. And they give us back time," he said.

With some "unique and dramatic film sequences" he also showed how computers "and only computers" had been able to bring back the ill-fated Apollo 13 Moon mission.

On occasion the lectures themselves made the news.

Newspapers recorded in 1968 how children fainted during the demonstration of Electricity and Electronics in medicine by Dr Dennis Hill of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Others "became ill before rushing out" of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

Smelling salts and cups of water were doled out to them.

A spokesman for the organisers said: "It is impossible to give the lecture without illustrations of operations where electronics were used."

Power cuts

Electricity featured again the following year in talks by a Dr Churchman of the Electricity Council.

The IET considered cancelling them - because of power cuts caused by industrial action by coal miners and electricity workers.

Internal memos wondered whether proceeding would not "invite criticism from members, the press and from the general public" and, even if they did go ahead, anyone would come.

A further point was that the title - Electricity in the Service of Man - might in the circumstances be "regarded with irony".

The archive shows that, as it turned out, 40,000 members of the public in total saw him on 29 occasions in 13 cities. No irony was reported.

Angling for claps

The expansion of the Faraday Lecture tour next year to make ideas even more widely accessible would have had the wholehearted approval of Michael Faraday himself.

As an apprentice bookbinder in London at the start of the 19th Century, he became fascinated by the science he read about in the books he was working on.

He became a lab assistant at the Royal Institution, became a chemist, and later discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction - the way electricity can be generated in a wire by the electromagnetic effect of a current in another wire.

Being self-educated, he felt very strongly about informing the general public of new scientific discoveries.

He also taught himself the technique of lecturing - then wrote a pamphlet of advice for others.

He frowned on any lecturer who "descends so low as to angle for claps and ask for commendation".

But he was not averse to a bit of bluffing.

"In lectures, and more particularly experimental ones, it will at times happen that accidents or other incommoding circumstances will take place.

"On these occasions an apology is sometimes necessary, but not always," he wrote.

"I have several times seen the attention of by far the greater part of an audience called to an error by the apology which followed it."