Witnessing Inventions
From the soft contact lens to TV, from the jet engine to the silicon chip
Marvellous inventions of the 20th Century.
Professor Otto Wichterle, the Czech chemist who invented the soft contact lens. Pavel Kratochvil remembers his late colleague and teacher.
David Miles is a communications engineer who supervised outside broadcasts for the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ. He tells us about how the transmission of television pictures has developed.
Ian Whittle talks about the achievements of his father Sir Frank Whittle - the pioneer of the jet engine - the technology that has turned the 20th Century into the century of international air travel.
James Dyson designer and engineer and inventor of a new kind of vacuum cleaner - describes the evolution of that machine during the 20th Century.
Executive editor of Wired magazine in the United States, Kevin Kelly. He gives his predictions for the future of the silicon chip - the basic component of all modern computers.
