The British Machine guides the viewer through industrial sites in Wales, England, and Scotland—from mines, quarries, and chemical factories, to steel mills, factories, and futuristic electrified cityscapes—and demonstrates, as a 1920s news release affirmed, “the poetry of iron and steel.” Hoppé challenged the idea that “with the coming of the machine age beauty has departed from the world,” and instead embraced the aesthetics of industrial architecture. “It will remain,” he wrote, “for later generations to see in proper perspective the glorious combination of art and service for which this present age maybe so justly praised.”