Meredith Wooldridge Thring (17 December 1915 – 15 September 2006)[1] was a British inventor, engineer, futurologist, professor and author.
[1] In 1964, he took up the position of head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Queen Mary College of the University of London, where he remained until his retirement in 1981.
"[2] In the same book he describes domestic and gardening tools, Intermediate Technology for less developed countries and robots to take the place of people in dangerous situations.
[4] In 1969 he predicted a future in which factories would be largely automatic, controlled by a central computer, and supposed that this would reduce the human working week to 10 or 20 hours.
He was also known as a teacher, and for his belief that engineers had an ethical obligation to improve life for all, but notably the underprivileged and disabled.