Inventions
That Changed The World - programme synopses
The
gun
The
computer
The jet
The
telephone
The television
The
gun
The
first invention covered in the series has generally had a negative
press – the gun.
The
need for a more accurate cannon led James Wilkinson, in 1774, to
invent a tube boring machine.
This
was then used by James Watt to make more efficient steam engines,
which in turn powered the industrial revolution.
Gun
maker Sam Colt was not only the inventor of the first reliable revolver,
which helped early settlers to defeat the Indians and led to the
myth of the cowboy, but also invented a new method of manufacturing
guns – the production line.
Henry
Ford made his Model T car affordable by copying, 'the Colt method'.
Even
the car exhaust pipe was a spin-off of the gun silencer.
Street
lighting was introduced to deter armed highway robbers whilst trauma
medicine and the control of infections were initially developed
to deal with gun injuries.
In
the course of showing how the gun developed from a simple tube to
a device capable of firing a million rounds a minute, Jeremy builds
his own gun, goes FISHing (Fighting In Someone else's House) with
British squaddies and tests the limits of the bullet proof vest.
The
computer
In
Victorian times 'computers' were people who added up rows of figures.
Now
they are mechanical wonders - without them we couldn't fly planes,
drive cars or even run our dishwashers.
We
need them, but will they ever get smart enough to take over?
Jeremy
tells the remarkable story of the computer's evolution from man
with pencil to android with sub-machine gun.
It's
an epic spanning three centuries, a tale of passion, espionage and
suicide – and it's far from over.
Jeremy
discovers that the threat from computers lies not with Schwarzenegger's
Terminator but from a much more devastating computer - Armageddon.
The
computer might yet change the world in a way that none of us are
expecting.
The
jet
In 1929 a young pilot named Frank Whittle described his idea for
a plane without propellers, a plane that could fly at more than
500mph and 30,000 feet above the ground.
His
invention, the jet, would change our world, yet for over a decade
he struggled to get financial backing.
In
this programme Jeremy tells the all too British story of how Frank
Whittle pioneered and yet lost this extraordinary invention.
Jeremy
also heads off on a five day trip around the globe to explore the
impact of Whittle's brainchild on the modern world.
He
explores how the jet has encouraged a range of developments from
tourism to the spread of SARS, from air crashes to jetlag.
Jeremy
offers his own very opinionated take on the benefits of the jet.
The
telephone
The
telephone was invented by mistake by a man trying to make a humming
telegraph.
Elisha
Gray, who made the breakthrough, ended up with nothing while the
person who 'borrowed' his idea and who is widely credited with having
invented it - Alexander Graham Bell - would end up with the most
valuable patent in history.
Jeremy
tells an epic tale of money, greed, opportunism and blind chance.
As
the telephone has evolved so has its applications: it has been used
as an anonymous confessional and a tool of assassination; it has
changed the way business is done and has allowed for the development
of the internet.
Arguably,
more than any other invention it has actually changed us and the
ways we relate to each other.
And
Jeremy discovers, to his horror, that it has also created a new
breed of expert: the telephone anthropologist.
The television
In
Europe we have more television sets than children and spend an average
of nine years of our lives watching them.
Yet
its inventors, two men with wildly different visions, died unrewarded.
This
is the remarkable story of John Logie Baird, a Scotsman whose only
previous successful invention was the thermal under-sock, and Philo
T Farnsworth, a Mormon boy who at the age of 14 drew on a blackboard
the outlines of an electronic television camera.
The
first public television broadcaster was the Nazi party, not the
91Èȱ¬, but though Hitler recognised its propaganda potential, he missed
its real value: television would help win the Battle of Britain,
not because of what was on it but what was in it.
From
terrorist outrages to soap operas, from obesity to politics, Jeremy
gives his own unique take on how television has changed our world.
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