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Technology is the basis of our society, and it is often thought of as applied science. Indeed it is because of their real or supposed utility that the sciences get the funding from government which nowadays they need, since sealing-wax and string will not get you very far in physics. The relationship is often described as one in which discoveries are made by scientists who have no end in view except the knowledge of nature; they are simply devotees of truth, the modem equivalent of the medieval monk. Behind them may lurk pure mathematicians, even more remote from the real world as they work away absent-mindedly with pencil and paper. These discoveries are then applied to devices of all kinds by technologists, so that the last year’s mathematics becomes this year’s science and next year’s labour-saving gadget. The prophet of this era was Francis Bacon, who in the early seventeenth century perceived that knowledge is power.