Backing into the limelight

The traditional boffin, as is well known, wore round specs and a white coat, tended to be rather bald, and was soft of speech and mild of manner whilst devising the destruction of thousands. Hammed up, he became the figure of Q, indispensable component of James Bond films; older black and whites show the genuine article. Alas, he is gone, his devices scrapped or obsolete, along with the concept of the Britain that he served.

Francis Spufford has, and gives, a lot of fun arguing that a neo-boffin has appeared to take his place, following the painful demise of the manufacturing economy and the rise of what he tactfully calls ‘something else’. The new Backroom Boys thus demonstrate the invincible strain of ingenuity in British culture, flourishing best, to the point of genius, in tiny cells untrammelled by collective pressures.

He takes six examples to make his point, the first two from the old world of making things.