Furneaux Jordan

“Man invents a machine; he is its master and it is his pride. It is all part of Man's ambition and vanity, part of his pride in the creative skill that distinguishes him from the beasts, an elaboration of that primitive tool-making without which he would be living in a cave. Then suddenly, one morning - as with motor cars or nuclear bombs - he wakes up to find that he hates the damned things. It is too late. He has made them, he would be without them, but by their mere existence they enslave him. He has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; he can never go back. Heath Robinson's drawings produced tremendous laughter, but it was often the laughter of men who - whether they knew it or not - were laughing at themselves because they date not weep. The process whereby Man, the Master of the Machine, gradually changes into its slave is something that we can see actually happening, through the years, in Heath Robinson's work. Some of his earlier mechanisms, apart from their delicious complexity, really might be useful gadgets. The big machines of his later work, drawn in the grand manner, are part of a world where Man is no longer in control.””