[Audio from original newsreels]
The range of man's creative genius is infinite.
In every scientific field he performs what
might once have been termed miracles.
"As if I were able to cross your threshold
"and speak to you
"myself.
"For the second time in the lives of most of us,
"we are
"at war."
The history of antibiotics goes back to 1928
when Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin,
although it wasn't developed until 1941.
"When the first War came, we worked together in Bologne,
"and we saw thousands of septic wounds that we could do very little for
"and it made me especially interested in substances that cured microbes.
"So I noticed something that perhaps others had missed
"and that observation 25 years ago has brought us all together today."
Antibiotics are produced commercially by fermentation which in principle is the same as brewing.
We bet this is one place in England where they know how to make good coffee.
Ten years ago when this atom bomb was exploded, men had just found the key
to nature's mightiest secret.
In those ten years all the world's great powers
have developed nuclear science both for peace and for war.
President Eisenhower signs the pact enrolling the US as a member of the International
Atoms for Peace Agency agency to advance peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
"It is with pride that I now open Calder Hall, Britain's first Atomic Power Station."
And Calder Hall is only the beginning of a great program of nuclear power stations which will in
time give us all the electricity we need without the use of coal or oil.
When the Atomic Age opened in the fires Hiroshima, many believed it would bring nothing but evil.
But there were men of vision who had faith in its peaceful promise and worked to fulfill it.
"Louis Braille, whose invention of embossed type has given a new sense to blind people
"all over the world."
Slowly, painstakingly the earliest Braille was punched by hand.
Steadily, machines speeded the work.
"Punching in the light" is what some have called it.
Each dot with a message for sensitive fingers. The plea of the blind has been
for more and more such light and the answer more and more specialized machinery.
The kinescope tube it is fitted into the receiver. This is the instrument
that receives the electrical impulses and recreates the image. In other words, it
takes the transmission and turns it into pictures - about 10,000 lines of
light per second.
From the top of the Empire State Building, television transmissions
are made over a short wave to metropolitan areas.
The waves do not follow the Earth's curve, but are transmitted only to the horizon.
And so a new industry steps out of the laboratory into the limelight as television makes its bow to the
American public. Where it will go from here is any man's guess. But no matter what its
future may be, it brings to us today the realisation that a milestone in progress
has been past.
The transistor has made many of these feats possible.
This is the invention that has begun to replace a wonder of yesterday - the electronic valve.
By its new principal of controlling electrons, today the transistor is
playing a vital part in revolutionising the home as well as industry.
"What we owe to the men of science through the ages.
"Inventors, you know, are not always quite mad."