Home Smart Home - Gareth Roberts's 1988 Christmas Lectures 4/5

In his fourth lecture, Professor Gareth Roberts turns to the inventions that have made our homes 'smarter', including the telephone, and looks ahead to a future of things like remotely operated central heating!

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This lecture was filmed at the Ri on Thursday 29th December 1988.

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An excerpt from the 1988 programme: British scientists played a significant role in the three important communications inventions of the nineteenth century, the telegraph, the telephone and the radio telegraph. During a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution in 1880, not long after the telegraph system was taken over by the state, the Chief Engineer of the Post Office stated "I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that our telegraphic apparatus (thanks to Wheatstone) is at the head of the world, and my own impression is that the time is not too far distant when even America will take advantage of the inventions we are now using."

The telephone, like the telegraph, started as a novelty but is now regarded as an essential item in the home. Dramatic technological changes have taken place since the early discoveries of Bell and Edison; witness, for example, the recent introduction of the cordless telephone. A number of facilities in modern homes form application-specific networks. These include the central-heating boilers with programmable thermostat. In the future the householder will be able to communicate with, and control functions in the home even when based miles away. There is no doubt that when home automation is mature, it will have a considerable impact on people's lives.

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Professor Gareth Roberts (1940-2007), then of Thorn EMI plc and the University of Oxford, and later Sir Gareth, presents the 1988 CHRISTMAS LECTURES titled 'The Home of the Future'. The impact of modern developments in electronics, materials and communications technology is becoming increasingly apparent in the home. There are numerous examples of innovative products that have arisen due to a combination of scientific progress and market demands. Many other exciting ideas are now emerging from industrial and academic laboratories and will play a significant role in homes during the next decade. These will be discussed in this series of lectures together with classic discoveries and inventions in related areas.

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