1
00:00:47,480 --> 00:00:49,436
~ Bass drummer beats intro

2
00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:54,070
(Band plays hymn)

3
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:24,229
Revolutions are not made by fate, but by men.

4
00:01:24,320 --> 00:01:27,551
Sometimes they are solitary men of genius.

5
00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:30,200
But the great revolutions in the 18th century

6
00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:34,114
were made by many lesser men
banded together.

7
00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:40,275
What drove them was the conviction
that every man is master of his own salvation.

8
00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:03,635
We take it for granted now
that science has a social responsibility.

9
00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,273
That idea would not have occurred
to Newton or to Galileo.

10
00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:13,677
They thought of science as an account
of the world as it is,

11
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:18,276
and the only responsibility that
they acknowledge was to tell the truth.

12
00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:23,990
The idea that science is a social enterprise
is modern.

13
00:02:24,080 --> 00:02:26,833
It begins at the Industrial Revolution.

14
00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:36,752
The Industrial Revolution
is a long train of changes, starting about 1760.

15
00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:39,756
It is not alone.

16
00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:42,638
It forms one of a triad of revolutions,

17
00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:49,238
of which the other two are
the American Revolution, that started in 1775,

18
00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:54,110
and the French Revolution that started in 1789.

19
00:02:55,400 --> 00:03:00,599
It may seem strange to put into the same packet
an industrial revolution

20
00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:02,636
and two political revolutions,

21
00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:07,228
but the fact is
that they were all social revolutions.

22
00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:13,877
The Industrial Revolution is simply
the English way of making those social changes.

23
00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:16,713
I think of it as the English Revolution.

24
00:03:18,640 --> 00:03:21,712
What makes it especially English?

25
00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:24,268
Obviously, it began in England.

26
00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:29,672
England was already
the leading manufacturing nation.

27
00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:33,799
But the manufacture was cottage industry

28
00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:37,509
and the Industrial Revolution
begins in the villages.

29
00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:39,955
The men who make it are craftsmen:

30
00:03:40,040 --> 00:03:46,149
The millwright, the watchmaker,
the canal builder, the blacksmith.

31
00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:50,951
What makes the Industrial Revolution
so peculiarly English

32
00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:53,679
is that it's rooted in the countryside.

33
00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:07,833
We dream that the country was idyllic
in the 18th century,

34
00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:12,994
a lost paradise,
like Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

35
00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:14,752
That's a fable.

36
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:22,552
The country was a place
where men worked from dawn to dusk

37
00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:28,033
and the labourer lived not in the sun,
but in poverty and darkness.

38
00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:36,558
What aids there were to lighten labour
were immemorial,

39
00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:40,792
like the mill, which was already ancient
in Chaucer's time.

40
00:04:45,160 --> 00:04:48,869
The Industrial Revolution began
with such machines.

41
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,956
The millwrights were the engineers
of the coming age.

42
00:04:56,040 --> 00:05:02,229
James Brindley of Staffordshire started
his self-made career in 1733

43
00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:04,276
by working at millwheels.

44
00:05:05,280 --> 00:05:07,999
Brindley's improvements were practical

45
00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:12,995
to sharpen and step up the performance
of the water wheel as a machine.

46
00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:18,119
It was the first multi-purpose machine
for the new industries.

47
00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:22,318
Brindley worked, for example,
to improve the grinding of flints,

48
00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:25,198
which were used in the rising pottery industry.

49
00:05:32,920 --> 00:05:37,072
Yet there was a bigger movement in the air
by 1750.

50
00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:40,470
Water had become the engineers' element,

51
00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:44,075
and men like Brindley were possessed by it.

52
00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:56,590
Water was gushing and fanning out
over the countryside.

53
00:05:56,680 --> 00:06:01,595
It was not simply a source of power,
it was a new wave of movement.

54
00:06:06,800 --> 00:06:10,679
James Brindley was a pioneer
in the art of building canals,

55
00:06:10,760 --> 00:06:13,752
or, as it was then called, "navigation".

56
00:06:14,880 --> 00:06:18,555
It was because Brindley could not spell
the word "navigator"

57
00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:23,236
that workmen who dig trenches
or canals are still called "navvies".

58
00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:31,588
Two things are outstanding in the creation
of the English system of canals,

59
00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:35,116
and they characterise
all the Industrial Revolution.

60
00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:40,149
One is that the men who made the revolution
were practical men.

61
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:43,357
Like Brindley, they often had little education,

62
00:06:43,440 --> 00:06:49,959
and, in fact, school education as it was then
could only dull an inventive mind.

63
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:56,438
The other outstanding feature is
that the new inventions were for everyday use.

64
00:06:56,520 --> 00:06:59,717
The canals were arteries of communication.

65
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:04,191
They were not made to carry pleasure boats,
but barges.

66
00:07:04,280 --> 00:07:09,070
And the barges were not made to carry luxuries,
but pots and pans

67
00:07:09,160 --> 00:07:11,958
and bales of cloth, boxes of ribbon,

68
00:07:12,040 --> 00:07:16,113
and all the common things
that people buy by the pennyworth.

69
00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:33,399
Technology in England was for use up
and down the country far from the capital,

70
00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:39,828
and that's exactly what technology was not
in the dark confines of the courts of Europe.

71
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:48,160
For example, the French and the Swiss
were quite as clever as the English,

72
00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:52,631
and much more ingenious
in making scientific playthings.

73
00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:54,676
(Birds twitter)

74
00:08:00,720 --> 00:08:08,593
But they lavished that clockwork brilliance
on making toys for rich or royal patrons.

75
00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:16,278
(Miniature organ music)

76
00:08:37,320 --> 00:08:39,754
The French were the inventors of automation,

77
00:08:39,840 --> 00:08:45,472
that is, making each step in a sequence
of movements control the next.

78
00:08:45,560 --> 00:08:47,516
(Machinery whirrs)

79
00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:54,676
(Music resumes)

80
00:09:04,880 --> 00:09:09,032
Fine skill of this kind
could advance a man in France.

81
00:09:09,120 --> 00:09:16,515
A watchmaker, Pierre Caron, who pleased
the Queen became Count Beaumarchais.

82
00:09:17,800 --> 00:09:21,634
He later wrote the play
on which Mozart based his opera -

83
00:09:21,720 --> 00:09:23,676
The Marriage Of Figaro.

84
00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:28,959
~ Se Vuol Ballare from The Marriage Of Figaro

85
00:09:57,040 --> 00:10:00,874
At first sight, The Marriage Of Figaro
looks like a French puppet play,

86
00:10:00,960 --> 00:10:04,111
humming with secret machinations.

87
00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:09,557
But the fact is that it's an early storm signal
of the revolution.

88
00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:12,074
~ Aria continues

89
00:11:03,400 --> 00:11:08,997
Beaumarchais, in fact, was involved in a secret
arms deal with the American revolutionaries.

90
00:11:10,080 --> 00:11:14,710
The message he put into the character
of Figaro the servant is revolutionary.

91
00:11:14,800 --> 00:11:17,712
The famous aria is a challenge:

92
00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,360
Count, little Count

93
00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:23,432
You may go dancing, but <i>I'll</i> play the tune

94
00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:25,954
~ Se Vuol Ballare

95
00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:56,799
That was what was going on under
the courtly pattern of French society.

96
00:11:57,720 --> 00:12:01,793
As formal as the garden
of the Chateau at Villandry.

97
00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:09,918
It seems inconceivable that the garden scene
in The Marriage Of Figaro,

98
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:15,870
the aria that you've heard, should in their time
have been thought revolutionary.

99
00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:18,910
But consider when they were written.

100
00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:26,438
Beaumarchais finished the play
of The Marriage Of Figaro about 1780.

101
00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:31,719
It took him fours years of struggle
against a host of censors,

102
00:12:31,800 --> 00:12:35,952
above all Louis XVI himself,
to get a performance.

103
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:40,310
When it was performed,
it was a scandal over Europe.

104
00:12:42,360 --> 00:12:50,995
Mozart was able to show it in Vienna
by turning it into an opera.

105
00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:55,551
Mozart was 30 then. That was in 1786.

106
00:12:57,760 --> 00:13:02,151
And three years later, in 1789,
the French Revolution.

107
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:12,236
Was Louis XVI toppled from his throne and
beheaded because of The Marriage Of Figaro?

108
00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:13,992
Of course not.

109
00:13:14,080 --> 00:13:20,679
Satire is not a social dynamite,
but it is a social indicator.

110
00:13:20,760 --> 00:13:24,639
It shows that new men are knocking at the door.

111
00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:31,751
What made Napoleon call the last act
of the play "The Revolution In Action"?

112
00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:38,075
It was Beaumarchais himself in the person
of Figaro pointing to the Count and saying,

113
00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:42,278
"Because you are a great nobleman,
you think you are a great genius.

114
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:47,070
You have taken trouble with nothing
except to be born."

115
00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:54,588
Beaumarchais represented
a different aristocracy of working talent:

116
00:13:54,680 --> 00:13:59,356
The watchmakers in his age,
the masons in the past, the printers.

117
00:14:00,680 --> 00:14:04,434
What excited Mozart about the play?

118
00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:07,830
The revolutionary ardour,
which to him was represented

119
00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:09,990
by the movement of freemasons.

120
00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:16,792
Or think of the greatest freemason of them all
in that age - the printer Benjamin Franklin.

121
00:14:17,880 --> 00:14:26,595
He was American emissary here in France
at the court of Louis XVI in 1784

122
00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:29,592
when The Marriage Of Figaro
was first performed.

123
00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:32,752
And he, more than anyone else, represents

124
00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:41,669
those forward-looking, forceful, confident,
thrusting, marching men,

125
00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:43,990
who made the new age.

126
00:14:48,280 --> 00:14:52,637
For one thing,
Benjamin Franklin had such marvellous luck.

127
00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:56,599
When he went to present his credentials
to the French court,

128
00:14:56,680 --> 00:15:02,789
it turned out at the last moment that the wig
and the formal clothes were too small for him.

129
00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:06,956
So he boldly went in his own hair

130
00:15:07,040 --> 00:15:12,114
and was instantly hailed
as the child of nature from the backwoods.

131
00:15:25,720 --> 00:15:29,998
All his actions have the stamp of a man
who knows his mind

132
00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:32,514
and knows the words to speak it.

133
00:15:38,720 --> 00:15:43,396
He published an almanac, which is full
of the raw material for future proverbs.

134
00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:46,552
"Hunger never saw bad bread."

135
00:15:46,640 --> 00:15:50,838
"If you want to know the value of money,
try to borrow some."

136
00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:56,719
And to those who doubted the use
of new inventions:

137
00:15:56,800 --> 00:15:59,519
"What is the use of a newborn baby?"

138
00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:03,399
He was alive to how things were said.

139
00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:09,396
He made the first pair of bifocal spectacles
for himself by sawing his lenses in half,

140
00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:16,352
because he could not follow French at court
unless he could watch the speaker's expression.

141
00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:18,396
~ MOZART: Symphony No.36 "The Linz"

142
00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:28,871
Men like Franklin had a passion
for rational knowledge.

143
00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:34,273
Looking at the mountain of neat achievements
scattered through his life,

144
00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,717
the pamphlets, the cartoons,
the printers' stamps,

145
00:16:38,800 --> 00:16:44,079
we are struck by the spread and richness
of his inventive mind.

146
00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,677
The scientific entertainment of the day
was electricity.

147
00:16:56,720 --> 00:17:02,078
Franklin loved fun. He was a rather
improper man, but he took it seriously.

148
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:05,835
He recognised electricity as a force in nature.

149
00:17:05,920 --> 00:17:09,674
He proposed that lightning is electric

150
00:17:09,760 --> 00:17:13,150
and in 1752 he proved it.

151
00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:20,154
How would a man like Franklin prove it?

152
00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:23,038
By hanging a key from a kite
in a thunderstorm.

153
00:17:24,120 --> 00:17:28,671
Being Franklin, his luck held.
The experiment did not kill him.

154
00:17:28,760 --> 00:17:30,557
Only those who copied it.

155
00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:36,189
Of course, he turned the experiment into
a practical invention - the lightning conductor.

156
00:17:36,280 --> 00:17:39,272
And made it illuminate
the theory of electricity too.

157
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:43,154
Franklin and his friends lived science.

158
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:45,515
It was constantly in their thoughts

159
00:17:45,600 --> 00:17:48,319
and just as constantly in their hands.

160
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:53,599
The understanding of nature to them
was an intensely practical pleasure.

161
00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:56,790
These were men in society.

162
00:17:56,880 --> 00:17:58,836
Franklin was a political man,

163
00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:03,596
whether he printed paper money
or his endless, racy pamphlets.

164
00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:07,070
His politics were as downright
as his experiments.

165
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:11,551
Franklin changed the florid opening
of The Declaration Of Independence

166
00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:14,632
to read with simple confidence:

167
00:18:14,720 --> 00:18:21,239
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal."

168
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:29,111
When war between England
and the American revolutionaries broke out,

169
00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:34,035
he wrote openly to an English politician
who had been his friend,

170
00:18:34,120 --> 00:18:38,238
"You have begun to burn our towns.
Look upon your hands.

171
00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:41,596
They are stained
with the blood of your relations."

172
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:43,716
~ BEETHOVEN: Symphony No.3 "Eroica"

173
00:18:56,680 --> 00:19:00,673
The red glow has become the picture
of the new age in England.

174
00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:07,074
In the sermons of John Wesley and in
the furnace sky of the Industrial Revolution.

175
00:19:28,760 --> 00:19:30,716
(Hammering)

176
00:19:32,080 --> 00:19:34,389
This is Abbeydale in Yorkshire,

177
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,314
an early centre for new processes
in making iron and steel.

178
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:11,834
The masters of industry
were the ironmasters,

179
00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:15,754
powerful, more than life-size, demonic figures,

180
00:20:15,840 --> 00:20:22,359
whom governments suspected, rightly, of really
believing that all men are created equal.

181
00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:27,514
The working men in the north and the west
were no longer farm labourers.

182
00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:30,512
They were now an industrial community.

183
00:20:30,600 --> 00:20:33,433
They had to be paid in coin, not in kind.

184
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:39,793
Governments in London
were remote from all this.

185
00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:42,110
They failed to mint enough small change,

186
00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:46,955
so ironmasters like John Wilkinson
minted their own wage tokens

187
00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:50,271
with their own unroyal faces on them.

188
00:20:50,360 --> 00:20:52,191
Alarm in London.

189
00:20:52,280 --> 00:20:54,396
Was this a Republican plot?

190
00:20:57,880 --> 00:20:59,791
No, it was not a plot,

191
00:20:59,880 --> 00:21:04,874
but it's true that radical inventions
came out of radical brains.

192
00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:11,631
The first model of an iron bridge to be exhibited
in London was proposed by Tom Paine,

193
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:17,477
a firebrand in America and in England,
protagonist of The Rights Of Man.

194
00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:30,990
Meanwhile, cast iron was already being used
in revolutionary ways

195
00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:34,152
by the ironmasters like John Wilkinson.

196
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:38,074
He built the first iron boat in 1787,

197
00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:42,073
and boasted that it would carry his coffin
when he died.

198
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,869
And he was buried in an iron coffin in 1805.

199
00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:51,638
Of course, the boat sailed under an iron bridge.

200
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:58,274
Wilkinson had helped to build that in 1779

201
00:21:58,360 --> 00:22:02,751
at a nearby Shropshire town
that is still called Ironbridge.

202
00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:04,876
~ BEETHOVEN: Symphony No.3 "Eroica"

203
00:22:59,880 --> 00:23:04,635
Did the architecture of iron
really rival the cathedrals?

204
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:06,517
It did.

205
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:09,239
This was a heroic age.

206
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:14,030
Thomas Telford felt that,
spanning the landscape with iron.

207
00:23:14,120 --> 00:23:20,229
This is his aqueduct which carries
the Llangollen canal across the River Dee.

208
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:57,395
The monuments of the Industrial Revolution
have a Roman grandeur,

209
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,358
the grandeur of Republican men.

210
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:22,789
The men who made the Industrial Revolution
are usually pictured as hard-faced businessmen

211
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:25,638
with no other motive than self-interest.

212
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:27,631
That's certainly wrong.

213
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:34,750
For one thing, many of them were inventors
who had come into the business that way.

214
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:40,789
And for another, nearly all of them were
not members of the Church of England,

215
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:45,829
but belonged to a Puritan tradition
in the Unitarian and similar movements.

216
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:52,159
John Wilkinson was much under the influence
of his brother-in -law Joseph Priestley,

217
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:56,950
who later became famous as a chemist,
but who was a Unitarian minister,

218
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:03,275
who was probably the originator of the phrase
"the greatest happiness of the greatest number".

219
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:08,950
Priestley in turn was scientific advisor
to Josiah Wedgwood.

220
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:15,275
Now, Wedgwood we usually think of as a man
who made marvellous tableware

221
00:25:15,360 --> 00:25:17,669
for aristocracy and royalty.

222
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:22,030
And so he did on rare occasions
when he got the commission.

223
00:25:23,120 --> 00:25:28,911
For example, in 1774 he made a service
of nearly 1,000 pieces

224
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:35,394
for Catherine the Great of Russia,
highly decorated, which cost well over £2,000.

225
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,552
A great deal of money in the coin of that day.

226
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:46,870
But the base of that tableware
was his own pottery - creamware.

227
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:54,469
And, in fact, all the 1,000 pieces undecorated
cost less than £50,

228
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:56,516
and looked like that.

229
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:02,712
That's what the man in the street could buy
at about a shilling a time.

230
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:09,319
That's what transformed the kitchens of
the working classes in the Industrial Revolution.

231
00:26:10,360 --> 00:26:13,557
Wedgwood was an extraordinary man.
Inventive, of course.

232
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:18,111
He invented a way of measuring
the high temperatures in the kiln

233
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:25,629
by means of a sort of sliding scale of expansion,
for which he went into the Royal Society.

234
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:31,350
Josiah Wedgwood was no exception.

235
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:33,396
There were dozens of men like him.

236
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:39,112
Indeed, he belonged to a group of about a
dozen men - The Lunar Society Of Birmingham.

237
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:45,035
They were called The Lunar Society
because they met near the full moon,

238
00:26:45,120 --> 00:26:47,714
exactly in order that people like Wedgwood,

239
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:51,554
who came from a distance to Birmingham,
should be able to arrive.

240
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:55,433
But he was not
the most important industrialist there.

241
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:01,072
That was Matthew Boulton,
who brought James Watt to Birmingham

242
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,118
because there
they could build the steam engine.

243
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:07,591
Medicine was important in that group.

244
00:27:09,360 --> 00:27:14,878
So, one of the doctors who has remained
famous, who belonged to The Lunar Society,

245
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:18,236
was Erasmus Darwin,
the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

246
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,312
The other grandfather - Josiah Wedgwood.

247
00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:29,948
Societies like The Lunar Society represent
the sense of the makers of that revolution,

248
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:35,068
that very English sense
that they had a social responsibility.

249
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:41,034
I call it an English sense, though, in fact,
that's not quite fair.

250
00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:43,190
The Lunar Society was much influenced

251
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:47,273
by Benjamin Franklin
and by other Americans associated with it.

252
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:53,429
What ran through it was a simple faith.

253
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:59,633
The good life is more than material decency.

254
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,037
But the good life must be based
on material decency.

255
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:18,078
It took 100 years before the ideal
of The Lunar Society became reality

256
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:19,878
in Victorian England.

257
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:25,317
(Band plays Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus)

258
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:38,317
When it did come, the reality
seemed commonplace, even comic,

259
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,914
like a Victorian picture postcard.

260
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:42,956
It's comic to think

261
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:48,831
that cotton underwear and soap could work
a transformation in the lives of the poor.

262
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:58,116
Yet, these simple things,

263
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:03,638
coal in an iron range, glass in the windows,
a choice of food,

264
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:08,840
were a wonderful rise
in the standard of life and health.

265
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:12,959
By our standards,
the industrial towns were slums,

266
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:16,828
but to the people who had come
from the cottage,

267
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:23,314
a house in a terrace was a liberation
from hunger, from dirt and from disease.

268
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,119
It offered a new wealth of choice.

269
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:35,994
The bedroom with a text on the wall
seems funny and pathetic to us,

270
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:42,030
but for the working-class wife,
it was the first experience of private decency.

271
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:51,998
Probably the iron bedstead saved more women
from childbed fever than the doctor's black bag.

272
00:29:55,440 --> 00:30:00,434
These benefits came from
mass production in factories,

273
00:30:00,520 --> 00:30:03,671
and the factory system was ghastly.

274
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,513
The school books are right about that.

275
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,036
But it was ghastly in the old, traditional way.

276
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:15,353
Mines and workshops had been dank,
crowded and tyrannical

277
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:17,670
long before the Industrial Revolution.

278
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:28,872
The factories simply carried on,
as village industry had always done,

279
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,669
with a heartless contempt for those who worked.

280
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,269
Pollution from the factories was not new either.

281
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:45,830
Again, it was the tradition of the mine
and the workshop

282
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:48,718
which had always fouled their environment.

283
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,913
We think of pollution as a modern blight,
but it's not.

284
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:04,791
It's another expression of the squalid
indifference to health and decency

285
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:09,510
that for centuries had made the plague
a yearly visitation.

286
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,879
The new evil that made the factory ghastly
was different.

287
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:19,317
It was the domination of men
by the pace of the machines.

288
00:31:23,800 --> 00:31:28,237
The workers for the first time
were driven by an inhuman clockwork.

289
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,790
The power, first of water, and then of steam.

290
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:44,551
It seems insane to us.

291
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:46,471
It was insane

292
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:51,759
that manufacturers should be intoxicated
by the gush of power

293
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:55,594
that spurted from the factory boiler
without a stop.

294
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:12,718
Even the Sunday schools warned children

295
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:17,920
that "Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do."

296
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:35,718
The change in the scale of time in the factories
was ghastly and destructive.

297
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:40,316
But the change in the scale of power
opened the future.

298
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:47,833
Matthew Boulton of The Lunar Society, for
example, built a factory which was a show place

299
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:53,358
because Boulton 's kind of metalwork
depended on the skill of craftsmen.

300
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,719
Here, James Watt came to build
the spectacular symbol,

301
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,270
the sun -god of all power - the steam engine.

302
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:30,275
In 1776, Matthew Boulton in Birmingham
was very excited

303
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:34,638
about his new partnership with James Watt
to build the steam engine.

304
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:40,151
When Boswell came to see him that year,
he said to him grandly,

305
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:46,713
"We sell here, sir,
what all the world desires to have - power."

306
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,475
It's a lovely phrase, but it's also true.

307
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:58,596
Power is a new preoccupation,
in a sense, a new idea in science.

308
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:00,591
The Industrial Revolution,

309
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:05,310
the English Revolution turned out to be
the great discoverer of power.

310
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,398
Sources of energy were sought in nature.

311
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:15,032
Wind, sun, water, steam, coal.

312
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:20,240
The question suddenly came up,
why are they all one?

313
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:22,959
What relation exists between them?

314
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:24,758
That had never been asked before.

315
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:30,517
Until then, science had been entirely concerned
with exploring nature as she is.

316
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:38,312
But now the modern conception
of transforming nature had come up.

317
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:48,356
Sadi Carnot, a French engineer,
looking at steam engines like this, old engines,

318
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:56,317
founded, in essence, the science of
thermal dynamics, the dynamics of heat.

319
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:03,393
Energy had become the central concept
in science,

320
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:11,551
and its main concern was the unity of nature,
of which energy is the core.

321
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:14,995
And not only in science.

322
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:21,155
You see, the surprise is that while this
is going on, what is going on in literature?

323
00:35:21,240 --> 00:35:25,836
The up-rush of Romantic poetry
round about the year 1800.

324
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:30,519
How could the Romantic poets be interested
in industry?

325
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:32,192
Very simply.

326
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:38,150
The new concept of nature
as the carrier of energy took them by storm.

327
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:40,996
They loved the word "storm".

328
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:48,354
A young, German philosopher,
Friedrich von Schelling, exactly in 1799,

329
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,749
started a new form of philosophy,

330
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,308
which has remained powerful in Germany -

331
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,234
Naturphilosophie, philosophy of nature.

332
00:35:58,240 --> 00:36:01,357
From him, Coleridge brought it to England.

333
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:07,231
The late poets had it, and the young
Wedgwoods, who were friends of Coleridge's,

334
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:09,276
and, indeed, supported him.

335
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:19,879
All poets and painters were suddenly captured
by the idea that nature is the fountain of power,

336
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:28,072
all whose different forms are expressions
of the same central force, namely energy.

337
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:31,076
And not only nature.

338
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:35,153
Romantic poetry says in the plainest way

339
00:36:35,240 --> 00:36:42,749
that Man himself is the carrier of a divine,
at least a natural, energy.

340
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:51,639
The Industrial Revolution created
freedom in practice

341
00:36:51,720 --> 00:36:56,111
for men who wanted to fulfil
what they had in them,

342
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,953
a concept inconceivable 100 years earlier.

343
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:07,435
But hand in hand,
Romantic thought inspired those men

344
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:12,878
to make of their freedom
a new sense of personality in nature.

345
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:19,229
It was said best of all by the greatest
of the Romantic poets William Blake.

346
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:25,478
Very simply: "Energy is eternal delight."

347
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:28,353
~ Fairground music

348
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:43,674
The key word is "delight",
the key concept is liberation,

349
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:47,998
the sense of fun as human rights.

350
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:12,954
Naturally, the marching men of the age
expressed the impulse in invention,

351
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:18,398
so they produced a bottomless horn of plenty
of eccentric ideas

352
00:38:18,480 --> 00:38:21,631
to delight the Saturday evenings
of the working family.

353
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:24,435
(Bell rings)

354
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:26,476
~ Accordion music

355
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:38,672
To this day, most of the applications
that lumber the patent offices are slightly mad,

356
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:40,716
like the inventors themselves.

357
00:38:54,160 --> 00:39:00,030
We could build an avenue from here
to the moon lined with these lunacies,

358
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:06,719
and it would be just about as pointless
and as high-spirited as getting to the moon.

359
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:10,756
~ Can -can music

360
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:24,072
Consider, for example, the idea of the zoetrope,

361
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:27,755
which is quite as exciting
as an evening at the cinema

362
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:30,400
and comes to the point rather quicker.

363
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:37,717
Or the automatic orchestra, which has
the advantage of a very small repertoire.

364
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:40,876
~ Can -can music

365
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:52,430
All of it is packed with home-spun vigour,
which has not heard of good taste.

366
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:54,795
It's absolutely self-made.

367
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:06,557
For every pointless invention for the household,
like the mechanical vegetable chopper,

368
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:11,668
it comes up with one superb one,
like the telephone.

369
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,548
At the end of the avenue of pleasure,

370
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:29,509
we should certainly put the machine
that is the essence of machine-ness.

371
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:31,556
It does nothing at all.

372
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:40,316
~ Mechanical music

373
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,348
The men who made the wild inventions
and the grand ones came from the same mould.

374
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:02,753
Think of the invention that rounded out the
Industrial Revolution as the canals had begun it:

375
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,796
The railways.

376
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:08,509
They were made possible by Richard Trevithick,

377
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:13,037
who was a Cornish smith,
and a wrestler and a strongman.

378
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:17,874
He turned the steam engine
into a mobile power pack,

379
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:22,636
by changing Watt's beam engine
into a high-pressure engine.

380
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:29,476
It was a life-giving act, which opened
a bloodstream of communication for the world,

381
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:31,596
and made England the heart of it.

382
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:03,638
We're still in the middle
of the Industrial Revolution. We'd better be.

383
00:42:03,720 --> 00:42:06,553
We have many things to put right in it,

384
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:12,351
but it has made our world richer,
smaller and, for the first time...

385
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:14,112
ours.

386
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:18,557
I mean that, literally -
our world, everybody's world.

387
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:47,198
From its earliest beginnings,
when it was still dependent on water power,

388
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:50,431
the Industrial Revolution was terribly cruel

389
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:55,878
to those whose lives
and livelihoods it overturned.

390
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:58,871
Revolutions are.

391
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:02,509
Yet it became in time a social revolution.

392
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:11,312
It established that social equality,
the equality of rights,

393
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:16,633
above all intellectual equality,
on which we depend.

394
00:43:16,720 --> 00:43:22,955
Where would a man like me be, where would
you be, if we had been born before 1800?

395
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:28,431
We still live in the middle
of the Industrial Revolution

396
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:33,594
and find it hard to see its implications,
but the future will say of it

397
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:42,873
that in the ascent of man it is a step,
a stride, as powerful as the Renaissance.

398
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:48,153
The Renaissance established
the dignity of man.

399
00:43:49,240 --> 00:43:53,552
The Industrial Revolution established
the unity of nature.

400
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:58,031
That was done by scientists
and Romantic poets,

401
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:04,309
who saw that the wind and the sea
and the stream,

402
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:12,034
and the steam and the coal
are all created by the heat of the sun,

403
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:16,796
and that heat itself is a form of energy.

404
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:23,114
A good many men thought of that,
but it was established above all by one man -

405
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:26,909
James Prescott Joule of Manchester.

406
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,070
I must tell you a funny story about him.

407
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:39,159
In the summer of 1847,
the young William Thompson,

408
00:44:39,240 --> 00:44:44,553
later to be the great Lord Kelvin,
the panjandrum of British science, was walking.

409
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,791
Where does a British gentlemen
walk in the Alps?

410
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:50,838
From Chamonix to Mont Blanc.

411
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:52,672
And there he met...

412
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,320
Whom does a British gentlemen meet
in the Alps?

413
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:57,391
A British eccentric.

414
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,917
James Joule carrying an enormous thermometer

415
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:07,869
and accompanied at a little distance
by his wife in a carriage.

416
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:18,148
All his life he had wanted to demonstrate
that water,

417
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:23,598
when it falls through 778 feet,

418
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:27,313
rises one degree Fahrenheit in temperature.

419
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:34,838
And the waterfall here is the ideal.

420
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:40,078
It's not all of 778 feet,
but he would get half a degree Fahrenheit.

421
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:44,430
He didn 't, of course, actually succeed.

422
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:53,160
As you see, the waterfall is too broken by spray
for the experiment to work.

423
00:45:59,240 --> 00:46:05,236
The story of the British gentlemen
at their scientific eccentricities is not irrelevant.

424
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:11,434
It was such men who made nature Romantic.

425
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:17,588
The Romantic movement in poetry
came step by step with them.

426
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:22,913
We see it in poets like Goethe,
who was also a scientist,

427
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,719
in men like Beethoven.

428
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,315
We see it first of all in Wordsworth.

429
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:34,148
The sight of nature
as a new quickening of the spirit

430
00:46:34,240 --> 00:46:39,837
because the unity in it was immediate
to the heart and mind.

431
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:45,432
Wordsworth had come through here in 1790,

432
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,830
when he had been drawn to the continent
by the French Revolution.

433
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:57,152
In 1798, he said in Tintern Abbey
what could not be said better.

434
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,074
"Nature then to me was all in awe

435
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:06,476
I cannot paint what then I was

436
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:11,839
The sounding cataract haunted me
like a passion."

437
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,870
"Nature then to me was all in awe."

438
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:22,428
Joule never said it as well as that.

439
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:28,356
But he did say, "The grand agents of nature
are indestructible."

440
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:30,954
And he meant the same thing.

441
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:32,996
~ BEETHOVEN: Overture to Egmont