For years the alarming reports of engineer Johan van Veen disappeared unread in a drawer, until the flood disaster of 1953. He then became the father of the Delta Plan. Van Veen is one of the eleven ‘pioneers’ portrayed by Ad van Liempt in De roaring fifties – The innovators of the fifties. A time that has the image of dullness and sluggishness, but in which many innovations were set in motion. In order to do that, according to Van Liempt, innovators were needed, people who ‘went through the cracks’ when necessary.
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