Ooh!
Ha-ha!
Ooh!
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Mmm-mmm...
ALARM CLOCK Ah...ah...!
Ooh!
Ooh-ooh-ooh!
Hello, viewers, and welcome to my World Of Invention,
the show that takes the mystery out of chemistry,
and puts the fizz back into physics.
My old gran used to say, "Wallace, you've got no sense, you daft ha'p'orth."
Well, I don't know what she was on about, bless her, because I have.
Five, to be precise.
So today's programme is all about
some extraordinary inventions to do with the senses.
We'll be sniffing out some incredible insects
who can detect explosives by their sense of smell...
If you can get the bees trained up,
then what you'll have is a biological bomb detector.
...and getting a taste for some special specs that help blind people
to see with their tongue.
I'm getting like a popping-candy sensation on my tongue all over
and I can tell that it's quite tall.
And with so much human communication depending on our hearing,
my science correspondent, Mr Jem,
will be testing out a mobile phone that's over 100 years old!
I should be able to combine these ingredients
with a field in Kentucky and make a mobile phone.
But first, why don't we take a look at an amazing invisibility cloak?
Why don't we?
Because it's invisible, of course. HE CHUCKLES
Over to you, Ashley, m'dear!
Why, thank you! Now, watch carefully, Wallace.
You might think invisibility is just a bit of TV trickery
or movie special-effects magic,
but a top British scientist may be able to "Fix It" for real!
How about that?!
APPLAUSE
Making things invisible depends on fooling our sight,
a sense most of us place complete faith in.
After all, seeing is believing, isn't it?
There are two types of invisibility. The first one
is camouflage, where you actually colour yourself
to blend in with your background. But then there is
what I'd call real invisibility, where you actually take light waves
and bend them round an object,
so someone behind me will see the light coming from over there,
but they won't see me, so I'll effectively be invisible.
Bending light sounds impossible.
After all, it travels in straight lines, doesn't it?
Well, actually, we've all seen instances where light is bent.
You can see it when a straight stick is put into water.
Suddenly, the stick looks crooked
and that effect is caused by the light from the stick refracting,
which means the light changes direction as it comes out of the water.
And according to our next amazing inventor,
if you can control refraction,
it should be possible to make something invisible.
We've done some mathematics
for controlling light in a very precise and powerful way
and I wanted to shock people
and actually build an invisibility cloak.
Build an invisibility cloak?!
Surely you'd stitch a cloak together, or sew it?
Oh, well, I'm sure Sir John knows what he's doing.
You need to do something rather extraordinary to bend the light -
you must return it to exactly the straight line it was travelling in
before it encountered your hidden object.
Sir John's plan for making a cloak revolved around a special material.
Not black velvet, apparently, but this -
a complicated man-made material that can be
specially engineered to bend light as much or as little as you like.
Sounds difficult, but as long as it's comfortable and nicely fitted, who cares?
And here it is...
Oh, not quite the cloak I had in mind!
But Sir John assures me that this is a working invisibility cloak
capable of hiding objects, not from sight, but from radar.
Radar was originally used to spot enemy aircraft well before they came in sight
and these days it's also used for air-traffic control and to track shipping.
But Sir John's invisibility cloak
might make radar's military use redundant.
The central region here
is hidden from view, so you can put anything in that you want to hide.
If I were an alien, a Martian, with radar-wave vision,
then an object in the middle would be completely invisible
and also the cloak itself would be invisible.
So it would be as if this was thin air.
This unique footage from one of the cloak's early tests
shows the yellow and blue radar waves
bending around the cloak before returning to their original path.
Since the waves aren't changed or bounced away,
the radar can't detect the circular object in the centre.
It's effectively invisible.
The device is still in the experimental stage,
but the military are, unsurprisingly, very excited
about the possibility of making aircraft invisible to radar.
Meanwhile, Sir John is looking to the future.
BEEPING
We have this technology to hide things from radar waves,
but if we're talking about an optical cloak, that is more difficult
and it will certainly take at least ten years to do that,
but I believe it's possible if we devote enough resources to it.
Well, I don't see those catching on! HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
Anyway, say I want a word with Gromit over there,
but he's got his headphones on. He can't hear me.
I simply spell out, "Cup of tea, lad."
Oh! Oh, dear!
Gromit, me flannelette's on fire!
You'd better roll me Contraption Countdown, lad!
WALLACE COUGHS
And dial 999 while you're at it!
Let's join my archive librarian Goronwy.
Thank you, Mr Wallace, and in this week's Countdown
we've got five amazing gadgets to do with the senses.
And at number five,
it's taste and the electric tongue.
We'll convert the taste of this apple into sound
coming from this loudspeaker...
That's right, he's turning taste into sound.
LOW-PITCHED BUZZING
The orange is a more acid fruit and will probably sing soprano.
HIGH-PITCHED BUZZING
Mmm, not Katherine Jenkins, though, is it?
Here's a piece of strong cheese.
Cheese has a sound probably all of its own.
TRUMPETING MECHANICAL RUMBLE
Oh, never eat cheese again!
And at number four, it's sight and glasses
for short-sighted cats! Why not? They work for humans!
Mind you, I'm not that surprised
he couldn't read the optician's eye chart - he is a cat, after all!
Pretty cool cat, mind.
And number three of our sense-related gadgets works on smell
and it's a crime-fighting invention from 1961 called Operation Skunk.
Yes, old Mr Jones there has just picked up his pension,
but on the way home, two more pensioners
are lying in wait, hoping to get their hands on his cash.
Fortunately, Mr Jones's van has got an anti-theft device,
which sprays foul-smelling smoke
over the two elderly blaggers. Yeah, see you in chokey, Granddad.
OLD MAN COUGHS
And in second place... What? Herd of elephants?
Of course I've heard of elephants! What are you on about?
Yes, at number two, it's hearing, and do you remember
when you listened to music on a Walkman,
well, elephants listen to it
on an Elephantman... What?
Oh, that's wrong, is it?
Oh, these are actually acoustic earmuffs for elephants
at Windsor Safari Park near Heathrow Airport.
Oh, very good! Let's hear it for the earmuffs!
ELEPHANT TRUMPETS
Now, our number-one sense-inspired gadget is something for
the sense of touch.
Yes, if you are one of those people
who likes having the top of your head sucked,
then this is the gadget for you.
It was invented by a Mr Tony Wacheski
to massage the scalp and stimulate hair growth.
Sadly, it only ever did one of those things.
Thank you, Goronwy!
Maybe I should stick to more traditional communications
like the early submariners.
Gromit?
WALLACE ON SPEAKER: Gromit?
WHISTLE BLOWS LOUDLY
Cup of tea, please, lad! And while I wait,
here's some other ways to make yourself heard,
which Never Got Off The Drawing Board.
Oh!
WALLACE COUGHS AND SPLUTTERS
Over to my science correspondent,
who's tracing a call from 100 years ago.
# I put a nickel in the telephone
# And dialled my baby's number
# Got a brr-brr-brr-brr busy line... #
Sorry, Wallace,
er, just on the phone there. Anyway, I'm looking at the sense of hearing,
and I've travelled to a small town in Kentucky
to hear about one of the earliest experiments with a mobile phone,
a full 80 years before the first modern one was put on sale.
# ...Brr-brr-brr-brr busy line... #
On the first of January, 1902, on this very spot,
the people of Murray, Kentucky, watched in amazement
as a local melon farmer demonstrated his own wireless telephone system.
His name was Nathan Stubblefield.
Nathan Stubblefield was a farmer
who got interested in electrical inventions
when he was in his mid twenties.
He started reading about the telephone system,
which was the newest and hottest technology.
Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a working telephone system
using wires in 1876.
26 years later, Stubblefield was ready to demonstrate
his own telephone system without wires.
Much more suitable for rural Kentucky, he thought.
What Nathan did was drive two metal rods into the ground.
He then connected them to the output of a microphone
amplified by a bank of batteries.
A listener could then use a similar setup, two metal rods in the ground,
but this time connected to a speaker.
Now, according to Nathan's theory,
the electrical signals he was sending into the ground
could be picked up anywhere in the local area
by a listener putting in two metal rods of their own.
The electrical signal would
literally be conducted through the earth itself.
It's like a wireless mobile telephone.
It was on the first of January, 1902,
in Murray town square that Stubblefield had his big breakthrough.
In front of the whole town, he proudly demonstrated
his natural conduction system,
broadcasting music and speech
to five different receivers four blocks away.
The demonstration was a huge success
and word began to spread of the Murray miracle.
The thing is, what Stubblefield did seemed so incredible, it's hard to believe,
so I'm going to try and do it myself.
I've got some batteries, an amplifier and a microphone
in order to cobble together, in true Stubblefield style, my transmitter.
To make the receiver,
I've got several speakers, some from a karaoke set,
one in an old laptop, and some wires.
And, of course, I've got the all-important metal rods to complete the circuit.
I should be able to somehow combine these ingredients
with a field in Kentucky and make a mobile phone.
With twelve and a half volunteers from Murray State University,
one shaggy dog and Bob, I'm good to go.
Bob and I are going to set up here and this is going to be
like a kind of broadcasting side of our mobile phone.
I want you guys to go out into the field there,
and stick your rods in the ground,
maybe 15 feet apart, something like that.
You think it's going to work? Maybe.
It worked once before and we can figure out how to make it work again.
I don't see how sound can travel through soil like this, this far.
Everything's connected, go ahead and flip the switch.
Can anybody out there hear me?
Wow!
There it is, there it is!
If you can hear me,
can you just raise your hands? Yeah.
Look at that!
How about all the way out there?
Can you guys, like right out in the field...?
Like the guys with the laptop?
Yeah, this... Laptop?
Every single one of these is working!
It's amazing, it works so well.
There was massive interest in Stubblefield's mobile phone
and he travelled the country giving large-scale demonstrations
to attract rich investors.
It was a huge success
until one fateful day in Battery Park, New York City.
A successful demonstration in the world's financial capital
would secure his future...
In front of excited onlookers,
Stubblefield set up his system exactly as he'd done before...
CRACKLING
But the receivers never picked up his transmissions.
It was a complete failure.
I speculate that it was a combination of poor soil conductivity
and also the fact electricity was running through the ground there.
The southern tip of Manhattan Island, every house has light and power
and all of a sudden you've got interference,
you'd never hear that here in Murray, Kentucky.
Stubblefield's investors abandoned him.
His natural conduction, mobile telephone system
never went into production, and he returned to Murray a broken man.
Sadly, Nathan Stubblefield didn't achieve his dreams.
But next time you make a mobile phone call,
you might want to remember a melon farmer from Kentucky
who wanted to change the world with his inventions.
Quite a ground-breaking idea, I suppose.
Oh...tea cakes, lad! I'm touched.
And speaking of touch, let's give a warm...
Ooh-ooh-ow! ..hand to this week's Inventor... Ooh! Ow! ...of the Week.
Ouch!
Now, as you know, Wallace, inventors are by nature,
pretty determined people.
But Mark Lesek is more determined than most.
Seven years ago, he had a car accident in his native Tasmania.
He was so badly injured he had to have his right arm amputated.
I don't remember, really, what happened,
except waking up in hospital,
obviously in pain, distressed, and with my arm missing.
Modern prosthetic arms typically use sensitive electronics
to turn nerve impulses in the amputee's remaining limb
into movements in the new arm.
And you might have thought they'd be ideal for Mark.
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
Because his amputation was so close to his shoulder,
most of these sophisticated prosthetics wouldn't fit him.
Even when he found one that did, the arm wasn't strong enough
to cope with his job as an engineer.
'The electric limb broke down all the time,
'maybe because of my occupation, it simply was too fragile.
'It became apparent to me'
that I had to get a very robust limb and no-one even had one.
Some people would have given up
and settled for a simple cosmetic arm.
But not Mark.
If there was no suitable prosthetic available then he'd invent his own.
I used to muck about with Meccano sets and pulling apart
clocks and umbrellas and all sorts of things as a child.
I'm just a fiddler, I can't help myself.
Researching prosthetics on the internet,
one particular design caught his eye -
the Carnes arm from 1902.
Like this one, the Carnes arm used
straps attached to the wearer's shoulder
to transfer muscle movements
via a system of gears, springs and cogs
to flex the arm, rotate the wrist and grip items with the hand.
It was way ahead of its time.
I managed to buy a Carnes artificial arm
and having the blueprints, which were available on the internet,
enabled me to improve on it.
He started out building a new robust arm
from lightweight steel and plastic,
sharing his developments with other prosthetic users via the internet.
This is the new articulated finger that we've built in our shop.
It's got a lot of range and motion, more than the original Carnes.
But Mark's arm still shared some of the flaws of early prosthetics,
which were so heavy you needed to be Superman
to use them for more than about five minutes.
So he's now moving to a super-lightweight carbon-fibre design.
And there's always a moment of excitement when he gets his new arm
back from the specialist craftsmen with its latest modifications.
This the first time I've had it with the hand on.
This is the mechanism for the elbow.
The fingers will move with a cord.
They'll move in like that, but the cord's not connected up at the moment.
There we go.
'The vision is to make a robust prosthetic limb.'
The sort of thing you could work in the garden or work in the workshop.
To do what I'm doing is the coolest thing in the world.
Mark's now working with scientists at the University of Tasmania
to improve his prosthetic further.
The Carnes arm is just a magical piece of technology.
Mark's brought that back to life and the fantastic key elements of it
are going to come back into use.
While his new prosthetic is still being refined,
it's attracting interest from potential investors, like the US military.
If they can bring some financial muscle to bear,
then Mark's arm may soon be helping people like him all over the world.
# Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom Curiosity Corner... #
Oh, welcome to Curiosity Corner.
You've heard of spelling bees -
well, these curious creatures are smelling bees!
Ah, yes, very good, Wallace!
Now, smell is the most under-appreciated of our senses.
Imagine a world without the smell of roses,
bacon butties, and...
Sorry, Wallace, mouldy cheese?
Urgh! THE RODENT SNIFFS
But compared to most animals, our sense of smell stinks.
IT SNIFFS
Dogs are ten times better at smelling than we are,
and so, interestingly, are honey bees.
And they don't even have noses!
Dr Adam Hart is an expert of bee-haviour,
and he knows how they do it.
Bees smell through their antennae.
They use the antennae to detect chemicals in the air which is
what the sense of smell is.
They can detect some compounds as low as a few parts per trillion,
which is a tiny amount of chemical in the air.
ASHLEY: So now we know that bees have an amazing sense of smell,
but how can this help us?
Incredibly, Dr Hart can show us that it's possible to train bees
to sniff out chemicals in the same way as sniffer dogs.
If I touch the antennae with this sucrose solution
which is the normal feeding stimulation,
she'll put her proboscis out, like that, which is the proboscis extension reflex.
What you can do is pair sucrose with a chemical you want them to detect,
so like an explosive, so that they start to very quickly associate
the smell of the explosive with being fed.
And after only a few trials, they'll start putting their tongue out,
the proboscis extension reflex,
in response to the explosive rather than the sugar.
ASHLEY: It takes just a few hours of training
before the bee automatically sticks its proboscis out
when it smells an explosive, because it associates the explosive with food.
So a buzzy bomb squad can be ready for duty in a matter of hours,
whereas its doggie equivalent needs months of training.
With all these advantages, it should be no surprise
that the American Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico
is now training up bees to help with national defence.
Three trained bees are harnessed and placed in a portable box.
A camera will monitor their responses
as they are used to scan a woman for hidden explosives.
She's clean, and the bees rightly ignore her.
Next, they scan a car packed with explosives.
Will the bees sniff them out?
It's a result!
All three bees detect the explosives inside.
Unfortunately, bees can't survive away from the hive for very long,
so they must be returned within a couple of days,
and will have to be retrained if they're to be used again.
That means bee bomb-detecting,
for the time being, is limited to research.
But with several training programmes underway,
including a bee mine-detecting project in Croatia,
it may only be a matter of time before people,
instead of calling the A-Team, will be calling the Bee Team.
No wonder they've been causing a bit of a buzz, those bomb-le bees.
And so we come to the last of our senses - taste!
And how better to demonstrate this
than with a slice of my favourite cheese?
If you could do the honours, lad.
Mmm! I'm in for a real treat,
just as soon as we've sampled these rather tasteful glasses.
ASHLEY: Now, these revolutionary glasses
are combining the senses of sight, taste and touch
in order to transform life for blind people, like Craig here.
He lost his sight whilst serving in Iraq
and now relies on his guide dog, Hugo, to help him find his way around.
He's great, he's a great companion
and he helps me out massively getting about from A to B.
But when it comes to things like looking in the fridge
and picking out a cheese, Hugo has his limitations.
Well, not all dogs are like Gromit, you know.
That's where these experimental glasses come in.
A small video camera mounted on the glasses
sends a signal to the lollipop that Craig puts in his mouth.
The lollipop creates tingling sensations on his tongue
in a pattern that represents what the camera is seeing.
With some practice, Craig is learning to recognise that pattern as an image.
CRAIG: It's like champagne bubbles or popping candy on your tongue,
that's what it sort of feels like, and it's just sort of
drawing an image out on your tongue and you can just feel it.
It's like drawing on someone's back when you were a kid.
You'd draw the image of a house, just the lines on a back,
and you'd be able to go, "Oh, it's a house,"
or "It's a car" or "It's a letter A."
It's a bit like that on your tongue.
But the image is more imprinted,
so it's like a constant stream, constant image on your tongue.
ASHLEY: As part of his tests, Craig took us to the World Museum in Liverpool,
a place he'd never visited before.
He wanted to find out if this visual technology
would help him find his way around and allow him to see what's on display.
I can make out there's an object on the floor.
It seems like a circular shape, it's darker than the floor.
I can tell that it's quite tall, it's dark,
and then I'm getting that it's about that wide, like a column shape.
ASHLEY: Even though the images created are obviously crude,
the technology is clearly helping Craig to find his way around,
to recognise exhibits, and even find somewhere to rest his feet.
CRAIG: It's pretty good. It's got loads of potential.
Could be massive, could really be changing people's lives.
ASHLEY: So lots of potential,
but will it ever really compete with a dog like Hugo?
There's a lot of testing that still needs to be done,
so no, I don't think I'll be trading Huges in.
Man's best friend, isn't he?
I couldn't part with him, couldn't live without him.
Now that's what I call dogged devotion. (CLEARS THROAT)
Anyway, where would we be without our senses?
Unable to appreciate the true wonder of cheese, that's where.
You've heard of Stinking Bishop?
Well, feast your senses on...
Stinking Archbishop!
Phew!
Care for a slice, Gromit?
Oh, well, no accounting for taste.
Well, viewers, from me, from Gromit, from-age.
Au revoir, chucks!
WALLACE: If you've enjoyed our show,
grab your mouse and log on to our World Of Invention website -
bbc.co.uk/wallaceandgromit
You'll find a fantastic competition, details of our road show,
as well as lots of ways to get you inventing.
Pull your finger out and get clicking!