The TGV can fairly claim to be the most technologically and aesthetically innovative design of the Seventies. For the French, it conjures up a time when the blithe optimism of the "thirty glorious years" of rapid economic growth had not yet evaporated.
It was the brainchild of two designers, Roger Tallon and Jack Cooper, recruited to help modernise Europe's railways. From design to production, the TGV took over twenty-five years to develop. Cooper and Tallon had to use new materials, rethink the shape of the train and revolutionise people's attitudes to rail travel. When the TGV was finally launched in 1981, at the same time as the Paris-Lyons route was inaugurated, it was a sensation. It combined new shapes and colours with technical innovations resulting in improvements in speed, comfort, safety, stability, sound-proofing and so on. The angular profile of the front carriage - its streamlined, aerodynamic "nose" - lowered the train's centre of gravity and allowed it to travel faster.
