rties of electrons and photons, an understanding that became crucial to the development of the telecommunications industry throughout the twentieth century. In 1876 the German physicist Ferdinand Braun demonstrated a rectification effect that could be recreated at the point of contact between metals and certain crystal materials, in effect a semiconductor device. Just over 70 years later in 1947 John Bardeen and Walter Brattain built the first transistor, a device with a gate that could be used to control electron flow. Eleven years later in 1958 Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit and in 1961 Fairchild Semiconductor produced the first planar transistor in which components could be etched directly onto a semiconductor substrate. This would suggest that every fifty years or SO a fundamental discovery is made at materials level that has a truly transformative effect on the telecommunications industry. Rather like a dormant volcano it must be nearly time for the next big discovery or more likely the discovery has already been made but we have not yet recognised its significance. And actually it may be a process of rediscovery rather than discovery as we begin to realise that the behaviour of common-place materials can change fundamentally when assembled at the molecular level. 4 http://www.ipodhistory.com/ Making Telecoms Work Graphene was identified as a possible candidate, a form of carbon constructed as a flat layer of carbon atoms packed into a two-dimensional honeycomb arrangement, practically transparent due to its thinness. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper at a fraction of the cost. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other materials. At the molecular scale graphene could potentially enable a new generation of ultrafast transistors and may enable a new generation of supercapacitors and related energy-storage solutions. We also highlighted the transformative effect of transforms tracing a historical path from the Babylonians via Pythagoras, Plato and Euclid, Archimedes, 