The machines that built the modern world.
Fifty years ago there was no 'plant', there were just machines. Fifty years before that, machines were only steam-driven. Since the turn of the century, the scale of new housing projects, warehouse and factory developments, roads, motorways and ship building has been phenomenal. The growth of our cities (upwards as well as outwards) and the increasing need for all forms of mass-production has also exploded. None of it could have taken place without mechanical means: tractors, combine harvesters, threshers, excavators, diggers, rollers, cranes, dump trcuks, fork-lift trucks. Since the Second World War, these machines have been developed from embryonic systems into Britain's huge mechanical plant industry which has transformed the face of the modern world.
