Breaking Point (1966)
Breaking Point - A five-part serial by master thriller writer Victor Canning: Most people have heard the rumours of inventions suppressed by big business for financial reasons: the everlasting electric light-bulb, wear-proof rubber, and so on. Victor Canning, that old master of the thriller form, has taken just such a notion as the starting point for his new serial.
Professor Max Stevens is a metallurgist, brilliant but erratic, who has made a highly important breakthrough. He has discovered a form of steel which is immune to metal fatigue, and among its implications are cars which could endure for generations and bicycles which might easily last forever. Suddenly the principle of "built-in obsolescence" which keeps much of the industry solvent seems itself to be outdated; so Martin Kennedy of Group S, Internal Security, is ordered to contact Stevens in order that his discovery can be saved for the nation and from the international interests who would seek to stifle it.
