Photos: The Birth of Hi-Tech Britain

In post-war times technology was having an impact with code-cracking vacuum computers and jet engines. Curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum Ben Russell said: "After WWII there is an enormous rush to capitalise on the technological developments during the wartime.

"Computers were necessary for areas like aerospace research where they did computer modelling of a very new area."

Here is the General Purpose Analogue Computer, built by the Elliott Brothers in 1965.

The brothers were commissioned to build the machine by the Ministry of Supply to make a small and inexpensive analogue computer for commercial use.

Its early number-crunching abilities were used to design military aircraft and guided weapons.

Photo credit: Nick Heath