Second only to God, engineers hold key to our future, says Philip
ENGINEERS hold the key to the future of humanity and its ability to thrive on the planet, Prince Philip has said.
Praising their vital work, the Duke of Edinburgh said: “The whole of our infrastructure, from sewers to power supplies and communication, everything that wasn’t invented by God is invented by an engineer.”
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme engineers could play a key role in solving problems caused by population growth. “The human population of the world is growing and is occupying more space,” he said. “It’s got to be accommodated somehow or another and I think most people would like to see that it accommodates a certain amount of the natural world as well as the human world and everything we require to keep it going.
“But somehow or other that balance, to try and fit as many people on to this globe as comfortably as possible without doing too much damage, ultimately it’s going to be engineers that decide that.” The Duke, senior fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a long-time advocate of the profession, said his interest in the field began when he carried out basic engineering tasks as a naval cadet during the war.
However, the realisation that engineers could play a central role in society came to him after the war, when he saw that recovery would come though manufacturing, “which was always dependent on engineering”.
The Duke of Edinburgh hit the nail on the head when he said yesterday: “Everything not invented by God is invented by an engineer.” The Duke, who chairs the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, added that engineering had lifted Britain out of poverty after the Second World War, and offers hope for the future on an increasingly crowded planet.
The British have a particular talent for engineering. Filled with intensely practical people, the nation has poured its energies into infrastructure and invention. John Logie Baird gave the world colour television; Robert WatsonWatt was a radar pioneer; and Richard Trevithick is credited with building the first railway steam locomotive. The British landscape is dotted with engineering wonders. The Forth Bridge in Scotland, opened in 1890, looks like the work of a giant spider – an intricate red web, spun and stretched across the chilly Firth of Forth. And contemporary London, a palimpsest of historic architectural styles, showcases the nation’s continuing accomplishment. The Shard looks spectacular inside and out. On New Year’s Eve, the London Eye resembled a giant Catherine wheel.
Prince Philip has played a crucial role in fostering British engineering talent. In 1976, he helped establish the Fellowship of Engineering, which later became the Royal Academy of Engineering – and he remains a senior fellow. The men and women who the academy sponsors and mentors will be central in the next few decades to Britain’s predicted emergence as the world’s fourth-largest economy. Be it hi-tech manufacturing or old-fashioned bricks and mortar, Britain is crafting an exciting future.