Science And Spectacle ─ The Work Of Jodrell Bank In Postwar British Culture

In the late 1950s, crowds massed to see a new spectacular and expensive instrument for British science. The Jordell Bank Radio Telescope built on the Cheshire plains could be seen for miles around, but was equally visible displayed in documentary film, newspaper report and public lecture.
Science & Spectacle relates the construction of the telescope to the politics and culture of post-war Britain. From radar and atomic weapons to the Festival of Britain and, later, Harold Wilson's rhetoric of scientific revolution, science formed a cultural resource from which post-war careers and a national identity could be built. Radio astronomy, more visible than particle accelerators and less deadly than atomic bombs, assumed particular significance. The Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope was at once a symbol of British science and a much needed prestige project for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but it also raised questions regarding the proper role of universities as sites for scientific research.

Jon Agar lectures in the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester, UK, and manages the National Archive for the History of Computing.