Discoveries: Thurston’s diagrams of tests on a Bristol Monoplane, 1917.
This diagram is detailing a test that took place in 1917, on the Bristol Monoplane. These tests and developments of planes were integral to the safety of those flying for Britain in World War I.
He is an example of an inventor who is beyond his time, and particularly his technologies. In 1919, he wrote a report, part of which detailed potential future inventions.
‘The possibility of revolutionary inventions should always be kept in mind. Thus a new form of motor utilising the radioactive energy of the earth, or the internal energy of the atom, might be evolved at any moment as our knowledge of matter and ether progress.’
By June 1956, when giving a speech on this subject to the Newcomen Society, these predictions had come true.
All scientists and engineers think about the future and strive for development, as shown in 1967’s Enterprise magazine. An article predicted that 40 years from then (2007) ‘On the farm all the work of ploughing and driving machines in the fields will be done by robots, while the farmer can keep in touch with their operations by closed circuit television either in his office or as he looks around the farm himself.’