ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the visual articulation of scientific and technical modernity was integral to endeavours to unify science and society. Neurath also had a strong commitment to using visual communication techniques to promote scientific planning to the general public. Specifically, he developed Isotype, the universal picture language, which he used to convey scientific and statistical information in publications and exhibitions. The chapter presentshow Rotha became an advocate of scientific planning, demonstrate a broader thesis that Neurath's views fell on prepared ground in Britain. Rotha intended this film as a self-conscious document of the state of the nation in the mid-1930s. He described it as 'a film of the natural and scientific planning of Britain with reference to the respective power of coal and electricity'. Ivor Montagu's preface to the English edition of Vsevolod Pudovkin's Film Technique compared its impact on film to that of Mendel's genetics on plant breeding.
