REMEMBRANCE Sunday – a Country File Special. Helen Skelton accompanied a large group of cyclists on a pilgrimage to pay tribute to members of cycling clubs who died on the Somme.

Their visit to the war graves and the Thiepval Memorial, which bears the names of 72,000 dead with no known grave – 18,000 more than on the Menin Gate, incidentally - was deeply moving.

Slotted into film of this mission was a celebratory piece by John Craven on the development of the tank, a British innovation, which made its debut at the Somme. Disastrously since, though terrifying friend and foe alike when the first 18 were sent into battle, many soon toppled over and became sitting ducks.

But British boffins persevered, and what had begun as an armour plated tractor (the ‘country’ link), with caterpillar traction re-emerged just a year later as a battle-winning weapon. Officially christened the Landship Centipede it gained the name ‘tank’ because it had been passed off as a mobile water-tank during its development on the fields of Lincolnshire.

Fascinating – but how, exactly, should we regard this fearsome new instrument of war? Country File had no doubt. John Craven declared that the story of how “the staple of the farmyard was transformed into a terrifying weapon of war” was “a remarkable tale of innovation and vision,” which “changed the face of warfare”.

It certainly did that – but thereby, perhaps, demonstrated something a little less uplifting than “a tale of innovation and vision”. It illustrated our human race’s endless inventiveness in finding new ways to kill people.

Caterpillar traction was actually one of the many inventions of that still-insufficiently-lauded genius, Sir George Cayley, of Brompton, near Scarborough. The bicycle wheel – strength with lightness – was another of his, and so was the prosthetic arm, which he created for a local farm worker. It was Cayley who also thought up the safety curtain, and the sloping floor, for theatres.

But of course his chief invention was the aeroplane. His glider of 1852 possessed all the key features of a plane, half a century before powered flight became possible. His aim was benign. Recognising space as “an uninterrupted navigable ocean,” he anticipated that a larger version of his glider “would be a better and safer conveyance down the Alps than even the sure-footed mule”.

That came clearly into sight when the Wright Brothers achieved powered flight in 1903. But what’s this? Within 13 years aeroplanes were spitting bullets – flight adapted for warfare.

As John Craven pointed out, the Germans started that. Since then, splitting the atom has brought bombs of apocalyptic power. Thomas Hardy highlighted this self-destructive urge more than a century ago. Awakened by naval gunnery practice, a group of corpses is told by God: “The world is as it used to be. All nations striving strong to make red war yet redder.”

Contemplating the atom bomb, the war poet Siegfried Sassoon lamented: “nobody knows whither our delirium of invention goes.” And the “delirium” continues. We now have unmanned warplanes – drones. And cyber warfare – the militarisation of cyberspace – is a real prospect.