I have long felt that engineering and science can change the world for the better – and it turns out the Royal Institution of Great Britain have had the same idea for the past 200-odd years.

Professor Brian Cox sent me the Royal Institution’s prospectus, written in 1799, which details their plans for applying science to the common purposes of life.

He said: “The whole document is full of optimism and the conviction that science and engineering will transform the world.” I wholeheartedly agree.

The opening paragraph, while not exactly full of plain speaking, serves as a fine introduction to their aims: “It is an undoubted truth, that the successive improvements in the condition of man, from a state of ignorance and barbarism to that of the highest cultivation and refinement, are usually effaced by the aid of machinery in procuring the necessaries, the comforts, the elegancies of life; and that the pre-eminence of any people in civilization, is, and ought ever to be estimated by the state of industry and mechanical improvement among them.”

The Royal Institution is the oldest independent research body in the world and still does lots of wonderful scientific work today. Head over to their website to find some more scientific inspiration.

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group