This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Wilderness and Plenty, given by Sir Frank Fraser Darling,

was originally broadcast in 1969.

I was talking last time of the impacts of man on his environment,

coming historically and prehistoricly as well, into the present day.

The ecological consequences of technology since the Industrial Revolution are still the burden of

what I want to say now, but it's difficult to avoid some reflection on what technology

is doing to the nature of man himself.

Man as distinct from woman, the family craft worker, likes steady work rather less, and brings his inventive mind to easing craft processes.

I'm sure man invented the potter's wheel and the lathe,

and then carried on patterns which woman had conceived in the first place.

As I've said before, the male of the human species has an innate tendency to streamline and must produce.

Leonardo's drawings

show us how far

man had got by the time of the Renaissance

in the way of transmitting power

by way of cogwheels

and directing it at right angles

by bevelling the cogs.

There was no dearth of ingenious engines

but the power was wanting. The 18th century was

already for an access of power beyond that of wind and falling water, when James Watt

...