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Photos: The Birth of Hi-Tech Britain
Dan Dare, early computers and prototype missiles

By Nick Heath

Published: Thursday 01 May 2008

The gleaming, primary colours of 1950s sci-fi icon Dan Dare met the vacuum tubes, dials and buttons of post-World War II computing at the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain exhibition at the Science Museum in London.

Historian professor Peter Hennessy said the exhibition of post-war tech embodied public opinion of technology at the time, torn between optimism and terror.

He said: "This is what living through the Cold War was like, growing material comfort and the understanding that it could all end in the blinding thermonuclear flash."

Here Peter Hampson, the son of Dan Dare's creator Frank Hampson, stands in front of the Dan Dare-themed murals his father painted.

Photo credit: Nick Heath