Master of the Universe is based on a famous drawing by William Blake, which shows the scientist Isaac Newton. Paolozzi used the same pose as in the Blake drawing, but has mechanised the figure. The sculpture was made by cutting up and reassembling a plaster model, as the artist frequently does in his later work. A similar but much larger sculpture can be seen in the courtyard of the British Library in London. However while the figure in this sculpture is blind, the London version was given the same eyes as Michelangelo's David.