1950s–1990sOften tested

British inventions after 1945

Story 2 of 7

Hovercraft
Cockerell · 1950s

Concorde
Britain and France · 1969

Structure of DNA
Crick · 1953

Cash machine
Goodfellow · 1960s

IVF ("test-tube" baby)
Edwards and Steptoe · 1978

Dolly the sheep
Wilmut and Campbell · 1996

MRI scanner
Mansfield

World Wide Web
Berners-Lee · 1990

The hovercraft: invented in the 1950s by Sir Christopher Cockerell.
The structure of DNA: worked out in 1953 by researchers at universities in London and Cambridge. Francis Crick was one of the people given the Nobel Prize for it. The discovery has been very important for medicine and for solving crimes.
The radio telescope: Sir Bernard Lovell moved from working on radar into astronomy. At Jodrell Bank in Cheshire he built a radio telescope that was the biggest in the world for many years, and it is still in use.
Concorde: built by Britain and France together. It first flew in 1969, started carrying passengers in 1976 and was taken out of service in 2003.
The Harrier jump jet: a military plane that can take off straight up, designed and developed in the UK.
The ATM (cash machine, or "cashpoint"): invented by James Goodfellow in the 1960s. Barclays Bank opened the first one in Enfield, north London, in 1967. The first person to take money out of it was the comedy actor Reg Varney.
IVF (in vitro fertilisation): pioneered in Britain by Sir Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. The world's first "test-tube baby" was born in Oldham, Lancashire, in 1978. She was Louise Brown, born on 25 July 1978.
Dolly the sheep: in 1996 a team led by Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell became the first to clone a mammal.
The MRI scanner (magnetic resonance imaging): Sir Peter Mansfield was one of its inventors. It lets doctors see inside the body without an operation.
The World Wide Web: invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The first information was sent over it on 25 December 1990.

Photo: the experimental SR.N1 hovercraft on a trial run — SR.N1, the first practical hovercraft, designed by Cockerell, photographed during Royal Navy trials around 1963. Cockerell's first experiment was much simpler: he put a cat-food tin inside a coffee tin and used a hairdryer (some say the blowing end of a vacuum cleaner) to blow air into the gap. With the tins upside down on a set of kitchen scales, he found that the moving air could push them up. In 1959 the SR.N1 crossed the English Channel. The National Archives UK, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The preserved body of Dolly the sheep on display at the National Museum of Scotland — Dolly the sheep, now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. She was born in July 1996 at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh. Because she was cloned from a cell taken from a mammary gland (the part of the body that makes milk), the researchers named her after the country singer Dolly Parton, famous for her large bust. Photo: Sgerbic, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Quiz

Who invented the hovercraft in the 1950s?

Quiz

Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE? In 1978 the world's first IVF ('test-tube') baby arrived in Oldham, Lancashire.

Quiz

Which TWO of the following statements are correct?

Quiz

In which year did a team led by Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell clone Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned?

Quiz

Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE? Concorde, the supersonic passenger aircraft, was developed jointly by Britain and the United States.

Era contents: 1950 – 2000