What’s On

Amid the horrors of trench warfare in the First World War, survival often depended on ingenuity and technical advancements.  In this talk, historian of technology and former museum curator Dr Elizabeth Bruton explores how the First World War became a crucible for technical and scientific innovation.  Drawing on her extensive research and museum work, she reveals how the pressures of ‘total war’ spurred rapid technological and scientific advances on land, in the air and at sea. 

From the literal life-and-death importance of secure telecommunications in the trenches to pioneering aviation, the emergence of tanks, and the devastating use of chemical weapons and efforts to combat this, this talk will uncover the human stories behind these innovations and how wartime invention transformed both conflict and the modern world.