1950s: A New World Order

Chandra Devi Renganayar  

Britain's Greatest Machines with Chris Barrie

The 1950s was a great time for Britain. It was an era of inventions which gave the country the muchneeded economic boost after World War 2 and secured it a place in a new world order.

Today, many British machines of the ’50s like the AEC Routemaster bus, Napier Deltic diesel locomotive, Lovell radio telescope, the Vulcan bomber, the de Havilland Comet aircraft and the Land Rover are well-known the world over.

The nation’s creative forte was in developing machines that stood thetest of time.

The AEC Routemaster is Britain’s most popular public transport. This bus ruled the streets of London for nearly 50 years.

It all began with London Transport chief engineer Albert Durrant, who was asked to build a bus that would carry more people for less fuel than existing buses.

Having seen the mass production of the fast, strong and light Halifax bombers in the London Transport bus factory during the war, Durrant decided to build the new bus based on this design.

The Routemaster, with a rigid lightweight frame and which could carry15 per cent more passengers than the existing buses, hit the streets of London in February 1956.

The buses serviced Londoners until 2005 and remain on two heritage routes in central London.

For more then a 100 years, Britain had boasted the finest railway system. It had the fastest steam locomotives in the world, the A4 Gresley.

In the early ’50s, however, the British Transport Commission decided to do away with the old-fashioned steam to introduce clean, efficient electric trains.

Although electrification was seen as a solution, the high cost of developing such a system saw the introduction of a cheaper alternative: the diesel engine.

Britain’s best plan to replace steam was to build a locomotive with a boat engine.

The engine was the Napier Deltic, originally designed for the navy’s fast attack craft. The Deltic gave Britain its first regular 100mph diesel passenger service.

Even today, 60 per cent of Britain’s railway network uses diesel locomotives The Lovell Telescope is another great invention that continues to probe the depths of space to help mankind better understand the universe.

The man behind this invention was Bernard Lovell, who gained experience with radio waves during the war and later used them to focus on astronomy.

The telescope located at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, England, was once a vital tool in Britain’s Cold War defences, and in more peaceful times has made hundreds of astronomical discoveries.

The Vulcan, Britain’s Cold War bomber, was considered as one of the most extraordinary aircraft the world had ever seen.

It was developed in response to the growing nuclear threat by the Soviet Union. Its design was based on another great invention during World War 2, the jet engine.

Although the Vulcans were kept on constant alert from 1956 to 1969, they never saw action until the 1982 Falklands War.

The Vulcans, despite being nearly three decades old, carried out what was at the time, the longest bombing mission in history, covering 8,000 nautical miles over 16 hours.

The 1950s was also an era where the British revolutionised international air travel. Geoffrey de Havilland was one of Britain’s greatest aviation pioneers who gave his country a head start with the Comet, the world’s first jet airliner.

On the road, the Land Rover is considered as the greatest British workhorse ever built.

Car maker Rover needed something more than its prestige cars to survive.

And when its technical director Maurice Wilks came out out with this idea for a four-wheel drive for use on rough terrain, it was taken up quickly. Within months of its release, the Land Rover outsold the company’s other cars in Britain and Commonwealth countries.

Join TV personality and vintage machine enthusiast Chris Barrie on a journey through time as he experiences the great machines that shaped modern Britain on Britain’s Greatest Machines with Chris Barrie: 1950s A New World Order on the National Geographic Channel (Astro Channel 553) on Oct 12 at 9pm.