1 00:00:00,433 --> 00:00:04,231 [gear noises] 2 00:00:55,226 --> 00:00:58,561 This is many people's vision of the world of the future. 3 00:00:59,595 --> 00:01:02,261 In many ways, it represents the world we already live in: 4 00:01:02,684 --> 00:01:06,667 massive, complex, the end product of everything technology can do. 5 00:01:06,807 --> 00:01:09,330 A structure that depends for its existence 6 00:01:09,330 --> 00:01:10,992 on the production line, 7 00:01:11,127 --> 00:01:13,445 and the world the production line has generated. 8 00:01:14,477 --> 00:01:16,955 That production line has done many things to us 9 00:01:16,955 --> 00:01:19,290 by giving everybody everything everybody else has: 10 00:01:19,837 --> 00:01:22,582 the same houses, the same daily routine of work, 11 00:01:22,582 --> 00:01:24,696 the same cars go to that work, 12 00:01:24,696 --> 00:01:26,058 the same dependence on the clock, 13 00:01:26,058 --> 00:01:29,316 the same cities, crisscrossed by roads that fill up twice a day, 14 00:01:29,316 --> 00:01:32,931 the same view of the world from the same television set, 15 00:01:32,931 --> 00:01:35,793 the same hopes, dreams, ambitions. 16 00:01:35,936 --> 00:01:37,784 Because of the production line, 17 00:01:37,784 --> 00:01:40,309 the world we live in has two faces. 18 00:01:40,309 --> 00:01:42,309 One is of immense variety. 19 00:01:42,787 --> 00:01:44,342 Travel anywhere fast. 20 00:01:44,478 --> 00:01:46,230 Eat food from the other side of the world. 21 00:01:46,371 --> 00:01:48,569 See the world from the confort of your own living room. 22 00:01:48,719 --> 00:01:49,849 Dress like a peacock. 23 00:01:49,988 --> 00:01:51,342 All you need is money. 24 00:01:52,298 --> 00:01:55,067 The other face to our life isn't varied at all, 25 00:01:55,198 --> 00:01:59,210 because all this only works if you have the energy you need. 26 00:01:59,348 --> 00:02:03,417 And everybody's energy comes from the same limited source: 27 00:02:06,088 --> 00:02:07,716 this planet. 28 00:02:10,126 --> 00:02:13,408 That energy is the common fire that warms us all. 29 00:02:13,556 --> 00:02:16,964 But, as the world has become more and more interdependent, 30 00:02:16,964 --> 00:02:19,886 more people rely on the same fire; 31 00:02:20,030 --> 00:02:22,974 from the same oil well, the same electricity grid, 32 00:02:23,124 --> 00:02:25,130 the same boiler in the basement. 33 00:02:25,278 --> 00:02:28,444 We take it for granted, and we use it 34 00:02:28,444 --> 00:02:32,400 as if it were unlimited, because we like to be warm. 35 00:02:33,168 --> 00:02:35,191 But what'll happen to us if it runs out? 36 00:02:35,323 --> 00:02:38,932 How will we manage if the cold comes again, 37 00:02:40,237 --> 00:02:41,659 as it did once before? 38 00:02:49,081 --> 00:03:01,587 [in foreign language] 39 00:03:03,877 --> 00:03:07,717 Take yourself back 1.000 years to another common fire 40 00:03:07,717 --> 00:03:10,329 burning in the isolated farmsteads of northern Europe. 41 00:03:10,750 --> 00:03:13,791 In their manor houses, the saxons ate together, 42 00:03:13,791 --> 00:03:16,279 and at night, everybody, including the animals, 43 00:03:16,279 --> 00:03:18,748 slept together, huddled round that fire. 44 00:03:19,644 --> 00:03:20,802 The population was small, 45 00:03:20,802 --> 00:03:23,042 scattered in lonely communities across the land, 46 00:03:23,042 --> 00:03:27,255 each manor making its own clothing, tools, food; 47 00:03:27,427 --> 00:03:29,557 sharing what little there was. 48 00:03:30,535 --> 00:03:35,413 [foreign language] 49 00:03:35,424 --> 00:03:37,440 That guy may sound a bit weird to you, 50 00:03:37,440 --> 00:03:40,311 but the traveling poet was a kind of wandering newspaper, 51 00:03:40,311 --> 00:03:43,272 bringing stories of the outside world into their lives. 52 00:03:43,272 --> 00:03:45,961 Few people ventured out past the local fields. 53 00:03:45,961 --> 00:03:49,876 Beyond those fields, lay nothing but forests, full of bogeymen. 54 00:03:50,482 --> 00:03:53,931 You knee that, because the storyteller told you so. 55 00:03:55,346 --> 00:03:56,482 [man speaking in foreign language] 56 00:03:56,673 --> 00:04:01,740 No houses - no companionship - no people. 57 00:04:04,168 --> 00:04:08,391 Above all, no kinsmen to share work, and food, and the fire with. 58 00:04:08,766 --> 00:04:11,833 One of the reasons these tiny communities went on existing at all 59 00:04:11,833 --> 00:04:13,714 was because they had plenty to eat, 60 00:04:13,714 --> 00:04:16,244 because the weather was warmer then than now, 61 00:04:16,244 --> 00:04:17,660 so the growing season was longer. 62 00:04:19,197 --> 00:04:23,974 It didn't last, thanks to something extraordinary that happened outside. 63 00:04:41,892 --> 00:04:45,368 And the incredible thing is, it started here, 64 00:04:46,116 --> 00:04:47,135 in the frozen north. 65 00:04:47,135 --> 00:04:49,220 [engine running] 66 00:04:54,492 --> 00:04:58,427 Another one of those totally unforeseeable events that causes things to change. 67 00:04:58,585 --> 00:05:01,912 In this case, the trigger was either something that happened 68 00:05:01,912 --> 00:05:04,275 on the surface of the sun, or deep in the earth. 69 00:05:04,797 --> 00:05:10,839 Because it was either lack of sunspots, or a lot of volcanic activity 70 00:05:10,839 --> 00:05:12,289 that caused the weather to change, 71 00:05:12,930 --> 00:05:15,430 and when that happened, everything changed. 72 00:05:17,666 --> 00:05:20,696 See, nobody knows for sure, but there appears to be 73 00:05:20,696 --> 00:05:23,166 a connection between sunspots and the weather: 74 00:05:23,166 --> 00:05:25,080 less spots, less heat. 75 00:05:25,998 --> 00:05:29,843 And, volcanic eruptions spew out vast veils of dust that hang, 76 00:05:29,843 --> 00:05:32,155 oh, about 30 miles up in the atmosphere, 77 00:05:32,156 --> 00:05:34,675 and effectively screen out the sun's heat. 78 00:05:34,675 --> 00:05:40,306 Whichever it was, there was suddenly white Christmas time where there hadn't been before. 79 00:05:43,568 --> 00:05:45,975 Let me give you a small meteorology lesson. 80 00:05:46,400 --> 00:05:50,492 The temperature drops. That makes more ice up here, 81 00:05:50,492 --> 00:05:52,522 in the frozen land north of the arctic circle. 82 00:05:52,808 --> 00:05:56,140 And when that happens, glaciers like this one I'm on now, 83 00:05:56,140 --> 00:05:58,810 starts expanding and start to move south. 84 00:06:00,592 --> 00:06:02,696 That's what happened in the 13th century. 85 00:06:02,958 --> 00:06:05,406 And, as these cold regions expanded, 86 00:06:05,406 --> 00:06:08,234 so too did the pack ice out at sea, 87 00:06:08,234 --> 00:06:10,129 growing, moving south. 88 00:06:10,568 --> 00:06:13,816 By 1250, there were icebergs in the Atlantic 89 00:06:13,816 --> 00:06:15,323 where none had ever been seen before, 90 00:06:15,878 --> 00:06:19,094 and land that had been fertile froze solid. 91 00:06:19,524 --> 00:06:21,714 That's when greenland stopped being green, 92 00:06:21,714 --> 00:06:25,167 and start being the color it is today: this color. 93 00:06:32,519 --> 00:06:35,024 Now, all this ice and snow, 94 00:06:35,024 --> 00:06:36,953 and stuff up here in the frozen north 95 00:06:36,953 --> 00:06:41,024 caused the track of the Atlantic depressions to swing south, 96 00:06:41,549 --> 00:06:43,866 and that's when the rest of Europe got it - 97 00:06:43,866 --> 00:06:45,486 and did they get it! 98 00:06:45,929 --> 00:06:49,929 All those monastic chroniclers stopped spreading rumors about what the avid was up to, 99 00:06:49,929 --> 00:06:53,375 and started writing things like, "by god, it's cold". 100 00:06:53,868 --> 00:06:58,335 By 1300, if you had buttons, you'd have buttoned up. 101 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:00,963 The rivers and lakes froze solid. 102 00:07:00,963 --> 00:07:03,662 Everywhere, it was like you were suddenly living 103 00:07:03,662 --> 00:07:05,680 500 feet higher up than you had been. 104 00:07:11,090 --> 00:07:14,577 Worst of all, the bad weather hit the food supply. 105 00:07:15,463 --> 00:07:20,553 This - wheat; it was either too wet for you to sow it, 106 00:07:20,553 --> 00:07:22,834 or, you had to harvest it in pelting rain. 107 00:07:23,219 --> 00:07:25,038 And then, without adequate drying systems, 108 00:07:25,038 --> 00:07:26,921 the wheat went moldy on you. 109 00:07:27,260 --> 00:07:31,705 Now, why that was bad news was because this, bread, 110 00:07:31,705 --> 00:07:33,051 was king of the diet. 111 00:07:33,051 --> 00:07:36,264 Everything else you ate was quite literally known as, 112 00:07:36,264 --> 00:07:38,302 only something that goes with bread. 113 00:07:40,620 --> 00:07:44,743 But for my money, what was infinitely worse was this. 114 00:07:46,156 --> 00:07:53,218 It got too cold to grow vines north of France. 115 00:07:53,612 --> 00:07:55,136 And that was the end of the Chateau Bottled, 116 00:07:55,136 --> 00:07:56,533 fruity little numbers from England. 117 00:08:02,026 --> 00:08:04,404 I said the change in the weather had a widespread effect, 118 00:08:04,829 --> 00:08:06,532 but not because of the food and the drink. 119 00:08:06,532 --> 00:08:10,259 Because it got too damned cold to stay alive in winter, 120 00:08:10,259 --> 00:08:13,306 unless something pretty serious was done pretty quick, 121 00:08:13,664 --> 00:08:16,945 that something may well be in your home today. 122 00:08:16,945 --> 00:08:20,398 But when it originally appeared, the first thing it did 123 00:08:20,398 --> 00:08:22,906 was to change the shape of the old manor house, remember? 124 00:08:23,293 --> 00:08:23,951 For good. 125 00:08:28,415 --> 00:08:30,211 Thanks to the weather in this part of the world 126 00:08:30,211 --> 00:08:32,644 that kicked off the medieval ice age. 127 00:08:33,769 --> 00:08:35,163 [engine running] 128 00:08:37,762 --> 00:08:41,919 Only about six generations after the mini ice age had set in, 129 00:08:42,487 --> 00:08:44,830 the upper classes in England were living in places like this, 130 00:08:45,388 --> 00:08:47,871 Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, 131 00:08:48,631 --> 00:08:50,256 built for the countess of Shrewsbury, 132 00:08:50,555 --> 00:08:54,604 on money from her three husbands, in 1597. 133 00:08:56,307 --> 00:08:57,571 Nice little place, isn't it? 134 00:08:57,968 --> 00:08:59,118 Amazingly modern! 135 00:08:59,264 --> 00:09:01,742 I mean, buildings hardly changed since this. 136 00:09:01,995 --> 00:09:05,045 And yet, it's very different from that manor house you just saw. 137 00:09:05,918 --> 00:09:07,922 You could probably pick up a place like this 138 00:09:07,922 --> 00:09:10,060 for about a million - bargain, really. 139 00:09:12,716 --> 00:09:14,854 Let me show you what you'll get for your money; 140 00:09:14,992 --> 00:09:19,542 most of it, because of that big freeze-up back in the 14th century. 141 00:09:20,027 --> 00:09:22,367 The very first thing they did when it started raining a lot 142 00:09:22,367 --> 00:09:25,254 was to lay paving to save themselves from, 143 00:09:25,254 --> 00:09:27,678 you know, walking in a sea of mud outside the houses. 144 00:09:30,731 --> 00:09:32,395 Next, we come to the great hall, 145 00:09:32,395 --> 00:09:35,246 featuring an invention which you probably take for granted, 146 00:09:35,246 --> 00:09:36,894 but which, back in the 12th century, 147 00:09:36,894 --> 00:09:38,378 was the very latest improvement. 148 00:09:38,994 --> 00:09:39,921 Think about it. 149 00:09:39,921 --> 00:09:41,585 It's snowing a blizzard outside. 150 00:09:41,585 --> 00:09:42,854 You've got to keep warm. 151 00:09:43,431 --> 00:09:45,891 But how do you fix the fire so that it has its own draft, 152 00:09:45,891 --> 00:09:48,267 so that you don't have to keep the doors open all the time, 153 00:09:48,267 --> 00:09:49,417 and freeze to death? 154 00:09:49,844 --> 00:09:53,050 What do you give a fire so that it has its own draft? 155 00:09:53,638 --> 00:09:55,779 Yes, a chimney. 156 00:09:56,391 --> 00:09:59,699 Nobody knows where they got the theory from, to build the chimney - 157 00:09:59,699 --> 00:10:01,622 from metalworkers, or smithies - 158 00:10:01,622 --> 00:10:03,186 but what a difference it made. 159 00:10:03,737 --> 00:10:04,447 Look at this. 160 00:10:04,816 --> 00:10:08,312 That's the plan of the old manor hall you saw just now, 161 00:10:08,845 --> 00:10:12,030 and this is the plan of this house. 162 00:10:12,030 --> 00:10:13,063 Look at all those rooms. 163 00:10:13,063 --> 00:10:14,902 Now, you don't build those rooms, 164 00:10:14,902 --> 00:10:15,919 unless you can heat them. 165 00:10:16,802 --> 00:10:19,768 The idea was that if you put a fire up against the wall like that, 166 00:10:19,768 --> 00:10:21,632 why not put a fire on the other side of the wall? 167 00:10:21,632 --> 00:10:23,280 They could both use the same flue. 168 00:10:23,280 --> 00:10:25,322 You'd get two fires for the price of one. 169 00:10:26,418 --> 00:10:29,423 Well, the first major change the chimney caused 170 00:10:30,365 --> 00:10:31,628 was the separations of the classes. 171 00:10:32,210 --> 00:10:34,001 The lords and ladies left the bedding, 172 00:10:34,001 --> 00:10:34,978 down here in the great hall, 173 00:10:34,978 --> 00:10:37,991 to the dogs and the servants and passing strangers, 174 00:10:37,991 --> 00:10:40,290 and cleared off to live in their own private apartments. 175 00:10:41,261 --> 00:10:44,619 And the upper and lower classes never came that close again. 176 00:10:46,820 --> 00:10:47,889 [dog howling] 177 00:10:51,537 --> 00:10:53,181 Cozy little offices, don't you think? 178 00:10:53,800 --> 00:10:56,250 This was the next kind of room they put a fireplace into, 179 00:10:56,250 --> 00:10:58,699 so that the scribes could do all their work 180 00:10:58,699 --> 00:11:01,884 right through the winter, without the ink freezing in their inkwells, 181 00:11:01,884 --> 00:11:03,415 which it had done before. 182 00:11:04,708 --> 00:11:07,318 That did the european economy a real favor, you know, 183 00:11:07,318 --> 00:11:09,192 I mean, being able to conduct your business, 184 00:11:09,192 --> 00:11:10,873 writing away through the year. 185 00:11:16,918 --> 00:11:21,213 Oh, like the staircase? What's new about that? 186 00:11:21,213 --> 00:11:24,275 It is. See, with fires in every room, 187 00:11:24,275 --> 00:11:25,989 you could build up just as well as you could build out - 188 00:11:25,989 --> 00:11:27,859 servants downstairs, of course. 189 00:11:27,859 --> 00:11:28,921 Upstairs was warmer. 190 00:11:28,921 --> 00:11:32,641 It was getting so cold that even the painters noticed it. 191 00:11:32,641 --> 00:11:34,506 I mean, take a look at this Bruegel. 192 00:11:35,471 --> 00:11:37,251 Frozen ponds, snow everywhere, 193 00:11:37,251 --> 00:11:40,102 little village with the chimney pots working, see? 194 00:11:40,655 --> 00:11:42,205 Now, that was only worth painting, 195 00:11:42,205 --> 00:11:44,982 because it was a totally new experience being that cold. 196 00:11:46,835 --> 00:11:50,203 Indoors, they hung cloth on the wall to keep out the draft, 197 00:11:50,203 --> 00:11:52,317 and later on, they turned into these fancy tapestries. 198 00:11:52,317 --> 00:11:54,985 And, they put rugs everywhere, even on the tables. 199 00:11:55,921 --> 00:12:00,150 They kept their bodies warm with two major 13th century inventions. 200 00:12:00,906 --> 00:12:02,454 Here's a bit of 13th century art. 201 00:12:02,606 --> 00:12:04,117 Very nice, too. 202 00:12:04,926 --> 00:12:07,746 But look what the virgin's doing. See? 203 00:12:07,886 --> 00:12:10,943 One of those two inventions: knitting. 204 00:12:12,715 --> 00:12:15,499 The second invention: also kept people pretty snug: 205 00:12:15,633 --> 00:12:16,558 buttons. 206 00:12:17,309 --> 00:12:18,599 And a lot less people died of cold. 207 00:12:19,864 --> 00:12:23,026 And now, we come to the high great chamber. 208 00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:25,745 Not bad for a living room, is it? 209 00:12:25,780 --> 00:12:27,331 And everything, again, done for warmth. 210 00:12:27,331 --> 00:12:28,811 The woven matting on the floor. 211 00:12:28,811 --> 00:12:30,498 Oh, and look here under the tapestry. 212 00:12:30,498 --> 00:12:32,423 Wooden wainscotifts, good against drafts. 213 00:12:33,013 --> 00:12:35,186 And admire, if you will, this very beautiful plasterwork. 214 00:12:35,186 --> 00:12:37,725 That originally was a mini ice age idea. 215 00:12:38,219 --> 00:12:40,919 And the first they put it, around the chimney, because it was fireproof. 216 00:12:41,190 --> 00:12:43,904 Then, they put it on the walls to block out the drafty cracks. 217 00:12:43,904 --> 00:12:46,140 Then, finally, they molded it and painted it like that. 218 00:12:47,092 --> 00:12:48,941 And as people's indoor lives got warmer, 219 00:12:48,941 --> 00:12:50,216 their habits changed. 220 00:12:50,216 --> 00:12:52,241 They started playing more games like, oh, 221 00:12:52,241 --> 00:12:55,269 backgammon, drafts, shuffleboard. 222 00:12:55,269 --> 00:12:58,434 There was a lot more music, a lot more reading, 223 00:12:58,434 --> 00:13:01,101 a lot more intellectual, activity, in general. 224 00:13:01,687 --> 00:13:03,187 Oh, and a lot more furniture. 225 00:13:04,178 --> 00:13:06,697 But the place where the biggest change took place 226 00:13:06,697 --> 00:13:08,457 was here in the bedroom. 227 00:13:10,260 --> 00:13:11,828 Private little place, isn't it? 228 00:13:11,979 --> 00:13:12,976 Never used to be like that. 229 00:13:12,976 --> 00:13:14,610 Everybody used to sleep in the hall. 230 00:13:15,097 --> 00:13:19,426 But with separate fireplaces, sleep, and undressing, and sex 231 00:13:19,426 --> 00:13:22,120 became things you only did in private. 232 00:13:22,605 --> 00:13:27,261 Our modern preoccupation with privacy - starts here. 233 00:13:29,427 --> 00:13:34,853 So does cleanliness, hot fires, hot water - hot baths. 234 00:13:35,969 --> 00:13:37,791 And if you got too cold to go to the toilet outside, 235 00:13:37,791 --> 00:13:40,688 well, you could always try one of these indoor portable varieties. 236 00:13:40,688 --> 00:13:42,500 Note the padded seat for winter use. 237 00:13:43,184 --> 00:13:45,125 Or, you could build yourself one of those rather rude 238 00:13:45,125 --> 00:13:48,285 half inside, half outside affairs like that. 239 00:13:48,949 --> 00:13:50,091 Another Bruegel. 240 00:13:51,610 --> 00:13:55,470 In the 14th century, you could eat in your private dining room by the fire. 241 00:13:56,201 --> 00:13:58,737 and hygiene began to affect table manners. 242 00:13:58,737 --> 00:14:01,090 You washed your hands before dinner. 243 00:14:01,090 --> 00:14:02,234 You used a fork. 244 00:14:02,615 --> 00:14:04,455 There were separate table settings, 245 00:14:04,455 --> 00:14:06,572 and there were separate chairs, instead of benches, 246 00:14:06,572 --> 00:14:08,761 and, they used table linen. 247 00:14:09,369 --> 00:14:10,985 Already, it's remarkably modern. 248 00:14:13,044 --> 00:14:19,349 And, of course, the kitchen; again, thanks to the fireplace, a separate room. 249 00:14:21,513 --> 00:14:25,402 By the 15th century, they knew enough about hot air going up the flue 250 00:14:25,402 --> 00:14:27,456 to put turbines in chimneys, 251 00:14:28,021 --> 00:14:30,001 and run roasting spits for them, via gear, 252 00:14:30,001 --> 00:14:31,561 and a drive train like on a bicycle. 253 00:14:32,077 --> 00:14:35,291 And, hotter the fire, faster the turbine spins, 254 00:14:35,291 --> 00:14:37,818 quicker the meat turns, doesn't get burned. 255 00:14:38,275 --> 00:14:39,479 Clever, huh? 256 00:14:43,386 --> 00:14:45,678 You must admit, it is a very nice piece of property. 257 00:14:46,719 --> 00:14:49,165 But why it matters so much to our story 258 00:14:49,165 --> 00:14:53,137 is that in every single one of its heated rooms, it had this: 259 00:14:53,550 --> 00:14:54,360 a glass window. 260 00:14:54,876 --> 00:14:58,834 But, it had so many more glass windows than anybody else, 261 00:14:58,834 --> 00:15:01,258 that at the time, this place was known as 262 00:15:01,258 --> 00:15:04,181 Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall. 263 00:15:26,072 --> 00:15:27,731 Now, this is just one of the places 264 00:15:27,766 --> 00:15:30,649 that got build in the great 16th century property boom. 265 00:15:31,137 --> 00:15:34,068 And as the houses went up, the forests came down. 266 00:15:39,610 --> 00:15:41,656 And these guys were the villains of the peace. 267 00:15:41,656 --> 00:15:43,241 The people cutting down trees, 268 00:15:43,241 --> 00:15:44,706 to make charcoal for fuel, 269 00:15:44,706 --> 00:15:46,472 for their glass-making furnaces, 270 00:15:46,472 --> 00:15:48,490 to make the windows everybody wanted. 271 00:15:49,015 --> 00:15:50,616 So much wood was going up in smoke; 272 00:15:50,616 --> 00:15:53,307 the goverment passed laws to try and save the forests, 273 00:15:53,307 --> 00:15:56,005 for the people who'd be really sunk without wood, 274 00:15:56,005 --> 00:15:57,490 the navy. 275 00:15:58,164 --> 00:16:01,557 But, by the beginning of the 17th century, things had got desperate. 276 00:16:01,557 --> 00:16:05,884 There had to be somewhere else the glassmakers could go and chop their firewood. 277 00:16:10,623 --> 00:16:12,966 And then, they found the ideal place. 278 00:16:14,474 --> 00:16:21,089 [birds chirping] 279 00:16:29,331 --> 00:16:32,344 See, glass making needs sand and wood mainly, 280 00:16:32,739 --> 00:16:34,833 and that's just what there was tons of here. 281 00:16:35,305 --> 00:16:38,245 And, in 1608, it was all absolutely free. 282 00:16:39,137 --> 00:16:42,259 The one-year-old colony at Jamestown, Virginia, 283 00:16:42,259 --> 00:16:43,157 was built on sand; 284 00:16:43,157 --> 00:16:46,454 and as for forests, you couldn't see the wood for the trees. 285 00:16:46,454 --> 00:16:51,692 So, the master plan was to send glassmakers over here 286 00:16:51,692 --> 00:16:54,084 to get on with it - by the boatload. 287 00:17:04,735 --> 00:17:07,980 If you think about it, things must have been pretty far gone 288 00:17:07,980 --> 00:17:09,733 to try a hair brained scheme like this. 289 00:17:09,733 --> 00:17:14,022 I mean, 4.000 miles in a leaky boat to make glass, 290 00:17:14,022 --> 00:17:16,261 surrounded by indians and wild animals? 291 00:17:16,851 --> 00:17:20,414 Well, they managed to talk a grand total of eight idiots 292 00:17:20,414 --> 00:17:22,684 into coming to blow bubbles in America. 293 00:17:22,684 --> 00:17:26,913 But, one hard winter, and they all gave up. 294 00:17:45,197 --> 00:17:47,675 The plot now shifts from glass to iron, 295 00:17:47,675 --> 00:17:49,716 for one of the oldest reasons in the world. 296 00:17:50,572 --> 00:17:53,763 We come now to one of those deeply meaningful moments in history 297 00:17:53,763 --> 00:17:56,951 when things changed because of the basic drives in mankind. 298 00:17:57,085 --> 00:17:58,444 You know, a belief in progress, 299 00:17:58,444 --> 00:18:00,958 fundamental insight into the nature of things, 300 00:18:01,408 --> 00:18:03,476 a dogged persistence in making ideas work, 301 00:18:03,623 --> 00:18:05,241 the joy of discovery that sort of thing. 302 00:18:05,369 --> 00:18:08,084 The extraordinary change that was to happen, 303 00:18:08,084 --> 00:18:11,388 because of the failure to bring boatloads of glassmakers here to Jamestown, 304 00:18:11,520 --> 00:18:14,214 was the result of one of those visions people have. 305 00:18:14,606 --> 00:18:18,418 In this case, the desire to make as much as possible, 306 00:18:18,418 --> 00:18:24,287 as fast as possible of this stuff - money! 307 00:18:25,604 --> 00:18:30,997 So, if you're ready for a devious tale of the upper crust on the make, here goes. 308 00:18:30,997 --> 00:18:33,332 About 50 years before Jamestown, 309 00:18:33,332 --> 00:18:39,452 queen Elizabeth was desperate to make - bronze cannon: 310 00:18:39,630 --> 00:18:42,223 a) for the defense of the realm, and 311 00:18:42,223 --> 00:18:44,490 b) because she got a cut in the profits. 312 00:18:44,490 --> 00:18:46,809 Now, you need copper to make brass, 313 00:18:46,809 --> 00:18:48,963 and we in England didn't have very much of that, 314 00:18:48,963 --> 00:18:52,914 so some german miners, with an eye to what they might make out of it, 315 00:18:52,914 --> 00:18:55,883 came over, and in 1566, found copper. 316 00:18:56,556 --> 00:18:58,254 Now, the other thing Elizabeth wanted to do 317 00:18:58,254 --> 00:19:02,529 was to get the woll market back on its feet, so she could tax it. 318 00:19:03,636 --> 00:19:04,939 But she didn't have enough brass 319 00:19:04,939 --> 00:19:09,430 to make these carding combs essential in the production of wool. 320 00:19:09,874 --> 00:19:13,862 So, some more german miners, with an eye to financial gain, 321 00:19:14,162 --> 00:19:19,250 came over, and in 1566, they found - calamine, 322 00:19:19,250 --> 00:19:21,673 one of the essential ingredients in making brass, 323 00:19:21,673 --> 00:19:22,789 near Bristol. 324 00:19:22,789 --> 00:19:25,707 Now, the metal-making boom that followed, 325 00:19:25,707 --> 00:19:27,867 used wood for furnace fuel, 326 00:19:27,867 --> 00:19:29,435 just as fast as the glassmakers had. 327 00:19:29,791 --> 00:19:33,628 And then, in 1611, enter sir Edward Zouch, 328 00:19:33,628 --> 00:19:37,415 a crafty courtier with an eye for a fast buck, 329 00:19:37,415 --> 00:19:41,922 who says. "Me and my partners have come up with an absolutely brilliant solution. 330 00:19:42,722 --> 00:19:45,639 Let's use coal to make glass." 331 00:19:46,035 --> 00:19:49,270 So, Zouch gives the king 1.000 pounds, 332 00:19:49,270 --> 00:19:51,628 and in return, the king gives Zouch a monopoly 333 00:19:51,628 --> 00:19:53,785 to use his new coal furnace to make glass. 334 00:19:54,414 --> 00:19:56,731 Well then, Zouch runs out of money, 335 00:19:56,731 --> 00:19:59,755 and along comes a certain sir Robert Mansell, 336 00:19:59,755 --> 00:20:01,228 who, guess what, owns coal mines, 337 00:20:01,228 --> 00:20:03,547 who gives Zouch some more money 338 00:20:03,547 --> 00:20:05,483 to pay off his debts, and buys him out. 339 00:20:06,183 --> 00:20:08,682 One year later, Mansell gets the king, 340 00:20:08,682 --> 00:20:10,651 amidst rumors of bribery, 341 00:20:12,019 --> 00:20:15,910 to make it illegal to make glass with anything but coal; 342 00:20:15,910 --> 00:20:18,309 and then, he really starts coining it. 343 00:20:18,948 --> 00:20:22,025 Well, in 1622, Mansell gets hauled up before a court 344 00:20:22,025 --> 00:20:23,127 by his competitors, 345 00:20:23,127 --> 00:20:25,209 and listening to him on the jury 346 00:20:25,209 --> 00:20:28,447 is a certain Viscount Grandison, who hearing all about these things, 347 00:20:28,447 --> 00:20:32,500 immediately goes into the lucrative business of coal furnaces. 348 00:20:32,500 --> 00:20:36,238 Well, his grandson eventually sets up using coal 349 00:20:36,238 --> 00:20:38,174 to smelt lead near Bristol. 350 00:20:38,174 --> 00:20:41,612 And then, one day, when he doesn't pay his partners what he owes them, 351 00:20:41,612 --> 00:20:43,778 one of them leaves him and goes off, 352 00:20:43,778 --> 00:20:46,173 and starts smelting copper, also near Bristol. 353 00:20:47,489 --> 00:20:51,839 So, by now in Bristol, there's a great deal of copper and calamine, 354 00:20:51,839 --> 00:20:54,299 and brass begins to look very profitable. 355 00:20:54,843 --> 00:20:58,664 So, in 1699, a young quaker called Abraham Darby turns up. 356 00:20:58,664 --> 00:21:01,360 Now, he knows about brass, because he's been making 357 00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:05,036 malt bills for the people who make beer. 358 00:21:05,345 --> 00:21:07,641 So, he decides there's a lot of money to be made 359 00:21:07,641 --> 00:21:10,414 in brass household utensils, which he makes, 360 00:21:10,414 --> 00:21:14,853 until he notices the dutch making a great deal more out of iron pots. 361 00:21:15,434 --> 00:21:16,776 So, he goes into that. 362 00:21:16,935 --> 00:21:20,525 In 1709, he moves to nearby Coalbrookdale, 363 00:21:20,664 --> 00:21:23,838 where he's heard there's a lot of good coal to be had, for not very much money. 364 00:21:24,603 --> 00:21:27,141 Now, because his old mates in the brewing business 365 00:21:27,141 --> 00:21:31,554 used coke to dry their malt, he tries coke in his furnace. 366 00:21:31,554 --> 00:21:32,914 And, because the coke is pure, 367 00:21:32,914 --> 00:21:35,854 he makes iron without impurities in it, 368 00:21:35,854 --> 00:21:39,703 and everybody, but everybody, wants to buy it. 369 00:21:40,183 --> 00:21:43,598 So, here we are at a totally new way of making iron, 370 00:21:43,598 --> 00:21:47,208 thanks to inventive genius; and, of course, 371 00:21:47,208 --> 00:21:51,101 that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, and a lot of that. 372 00:21:51,248 --> 00:21:53,275 Still, on with the story; 373 00:21:54,054 --> 00:21:58,068 All this money activity in England had created a totally new kind of problem, 374 00:21:58,198 --> 00:22:04,673 and Abraham Darby, clever, resourceful and rich, was just the man to solve it. 375 00:22:07,892 --> 00:22:09,674 The problem Darby eventually solved, 376 00:22:09,674 --> 00:22:12,262 first appeared here, off the Cornish coast. 377 00:22:16,590 --> 00:22:18,587 Most of the mines southwest of Bristol 378 00:22:18,587 --> 00:22:21,156 went out under the sea so they flooded. 379 00:22:28,089 --> 00:22:32,694 By 1700, the flooding was so bad, the mining industry here was in a state of crisis. 380 00:22:34,940 --> 00:22:37,823 The crisis was resolved by a couple of fellas living in Dartmouth, 381 00:22:37,823 --> 00:22:39,767 whose livelihood depended on the mines. 382 00:22:39,932 --> 00:22:42,783 One was an ironmonger called Thomas Newcomen, 383 00:22:42,783 --> 00:22:44,776 and the other one was his partner, John Calley, 384 00:22:44,776 --> 00:22:45,565 who was a plumber. 385 00:22:45,661 --> 00:22:48,530 Now, Newcomen knew about the flooding in the mines, 386 00:22:48,530 --> 00:22:50,057 because he did business with them. 387 00:22:50,584 --> 00:22:54,435 So, what he did was to put together few ideas thats, 388 00:22:54,435 --> 00:22:57,693 oh, a dozen people had tried before him and failed with, 389 00:22:57,693 --> 00:23:03,479 introduced one new major component, and had himself a disastrous accident, 390 00:23:03,479 --> 00:23:05,620 that showed him exactly how to make the thing work properly. 391 00:23:11,294 --> 00:23:13,807 Part of why it worked was because of the brewers. 392 00:23:14,195 --> 00:23:16,968 They were boiling up their malt in boilers made of copper, 393 00:23:16,968 --> 00:23:18,954 which would take plenty of heat and pressure. 394 00:23:18,954 --> 00:23:23,037 So, Newcomen grabbed that idea to help him with his idea. 395 00:23:26,570 --> 00:23:29,974 This was the result: the Newcomen engine. 396 00:23:32,298 --> 00:23:36,320 What Newcomen did was to build a cylinder with a piston inside it, 397 00:23:36,456 --> 00:23:38,431 and then underneath it he put a boiler, 398 00:23:38,563 --> 00:23:40,382 of the kind that the local brewers were using. 399 00:23:41,539 --> 00:23:45,749 His new component was that: fixing the top of the pistom to a chain, 400 00:23:45,749 --> 00:23:48,372 and fixing the chain to the great beam, 401 00:23:48,561 --> 00:23:50,601 so that as it see-sawed up and down, 402 00:23:50,601 --> 00:23:52,855 the other end worked the pumps 403 00:23:52,855 --> 00:23:54,550 that lifted the water up from the mine. 404 00:23:54,985 --> 00:23:57,146 How he made it work was like this. 405 00:23:57,146 --> 00:24:02,022 Around the cylinder, he built a jacket with cold water inside it 406 00:24:02,022 --> 00:24:04,882 to keep the temperature of the cylinder down, right. 407 00:24:05,482 --> 00:24:06,966 The steam comes up from the boiler 408 00:24:06,966 --> 00:24:09,376 into the cold cylinder, where it condenses. 409 00:24:09,534 --> 00:24:13,676 That makes a vacuum, and the atmospheric pressure on top of the piston 410 00:24:13,676 --> 00:24:15,797 then pushes the piston down into the vacuum. 411 00:24:16,271 --> 00:24:17,761 When it's right at the bottom, 412 00:24:17,761 --> 00:24:21,907 the weight on the other end of the beam lift the piston back up again. 413 00:24:22,039 --> 00:24:24,820 More steam comes in, and the cycle continues. 414 00:24:24,961 --> 00:24:26,518 Now, it didn't work all that well. 415 00:24:27,417 --> 00:24:29,515 And then, one day, the cylinder developed a leak, 416 00:24:29,655 --> 00:24:32,426 and the water in the jacket went through the leak 417 00:24:32,557 --> 00:24:34,965 into the cylinder, at the precise moment it was full of steam. 418 00:24:35,101 --> 00:24:37,797 It caused the steam to condense instantaneously, 419 00:24:37,797 --> 00:24:41,343 and made such a good vacuum that the piston came roaring down the cylinder, 420 00:24:41,343 --> 00:24:43,852 went through the bottom of the cylinder, and buried itself in the boiler. 421 00:24:43,852 --> 00:24:44,327 [explosion] 422 00:24:44,826 --> 00:24:47,278 And the minute Newcomen saw that, he knew he'd got it made. 423 00:24:47,405 --> 00:24:48,895 So he built himself another cylinder, 424 00:24:48,895 --> 00:24:50,056 no jacket this time, 425 00:24:50,254 --> 00:24:53,645 but with a system that permitted a controlled jet of cold water 426 00:24:53,645 --> 00:24:58,367 to go into the cylinder each time it filled with steam, so that on each cycle, 427 00:24:58,367 --> 00:25:00,731 he got a good vacuum and a faster stroke. 428 00:25:02,263 --> 00:25:05,236 The engine went into the mines for the first time in 1712, 429 00:25:05,236 --> 00:25:06,872 and it was an instant and total success. 430 00:25:06,872 --> 00:25:07,824 Everybody wanted one. 431 00:25:07,824 --> 00:25:10,799 And, that gave Newcomen a really big headache, 432 00:25:10,799 --> 00:25:13,885 because he'd been making the cylinders out of brass; 433 00:25:13,885 --> 00:25:16,169 and in those days, brass was way too expensive. 434 00:25:16,169 --> 00:25:20,564 So somehow, somewhere, a cheaper cylinder had to be found. 435 00:25:33,922 --> 00:25:36,233 You remember the fellow I told you about, 436 00:25:36,233 --> 00:25:40,534 Abraham Darby, who'd gone off to make iron pot at Coalbrookdale near Bristol? 437 00:25:40,534 --> 00:25:45,334 Well, this is where he comes back into the story, because this is Coalbrookdale. 438 00:25:45,707 --> 00:25:50,060 By the time Newcomen was looking for a cheaper metal than brass for his cylinders, 439 00:25:50,060 --> 00:25:53,132 Darby's crowd here had come up with the answer. 440 00:25:53,633 --> 00:25:56,872 Do you remember Darby used coke fires to melt his iron? 441 00:25:57,195 --> 00:25:58,954 Coke's clean, so the coke's fumes 442 00:25:58,954 --> 00:26:00,825 don't dirty the melting iron in the furnace, 443 00:26:00,825 --> 00:26:03,428 so it comes out pure, and strong enough 444 00:26:03,428 --> 00:26:06,424 to make cheap cylinders for Newcomen's engine. 445 00:26:17,061 --> 00:26:18,735 Well, you can guess where we go next - 446 00:26:18,905 --> 00:26:21,305 or, for a minute or two anyway; the steam engine. 447 00:26:22,075 --> 00:26:24,588 But to get there took two coincidences. 448 00:26:25,281 --> 00:26:28,895 The first one happened when the Newcomen engine had been working happily 449 00:26:28,895 --> 00:26:30,720 all over the place, for about 50 years. 450 00:26:30,887 --> 00:26:35,088 In 1763, there was a model of the Newcomen engine 451 00:26:35,088 --> 00:26:36,847 like this one in Glasgow University, 452 00:26:36,847 --> 00:26:40,605 and it broke down; so they asked the University repairman to fix it. 453 00:26:41,142 --> 00:26:42,689 And while he was fixing it, he realized 454 00:26:42,689 --> 00:26:45,489 that the Newcomen engine was really not as efficient as it could have been, 455 00:26:45,489 --> 00:26:46,733 for this reason. 456 00:26:47,991 --> 00:26:53,095 As the jet of water came into the main cylinder to condense the steam, 457 00:26:53,095 --> 00:26:54,610 it also cooled the cylinder down, 458 00:26:54,610 --> 00:26:57,337 so that the next time the steam came into the cylinder, 459 00:26:57,337 --> 00:26:58,948 it began to condense a little bit early, 460 00:26:58,948 --> 00:27:01,748 and that repeated each time the cycle occured, 461 00:27:01,748 --> 00:27:03,076 and the cylinder got colder and colder. 462 00:27:04,028 --> 00:27:05,406 He realize that what you had to have 463 00:27:05,406 --> 00:27:07,337 was a cylinder that would do two jobs at once. 464 00:27:07,496 --> 00:27:11,001 It had to be boiling hot so that the steam wouldn't start to condense early, 465 00:27:11,001 --> 00:27:15,005 and it had to be could enough, when necessary, to condense the steam. 466 00:27:15,460 --> 00:27:16,764 Now, you can't do that with one cylinder, 467 00:27:16,764 --> 00:27:18,536 so he build another one, 468 00:27:18,561 --> 00:27:20,573 connected to the main cylinder with a tube. 469 00:27:21,301 --> 00:27:24,016 Around that second cylinder, he ran cold water 470 00:27:24,016 --> 00:27:26,757 to keep the temperature down, and he had a pump there 471 00:27:26,757 --> 00:27:29,346 in order to get a vacuum in that cylinder, okay. 472 00:27:29,785 --> 00:27:31,705 The steam comes into the main cylinder, 473 00:27:31,844 --> 00:27:34,349 and it's sucked immediately into the second cylinder, 474 00:27:34,495 --> 00:27:36,179 where it condenses instantaneously. 475 00:27:36,564 --> 00:27:38,744 The vacuum then forms through the whole system, 476 00:27:38,892 --> 00:27:40,533 and the main piston comes down. 477 00:27:40,667 --> 00:27:45,523 The man who developed that separate condenser was called James Watt, 478 00:27:45,660 --> 00:27:48,153 and he now had a machine that was so efficient 479 00:27:48,284 --> 00:27:50,590 that the precision with which the cylinder were made 480 00:27:50,590 --> 00:27:51,804 just wasn't up to it. 481 00:27:51,952 --> 00:27:54,965 The pistons didn't have a good fit; they wobbled around. 482 00:27:55,691 --> 00:27:58,660 It took one more step before Watt could say 483 00:27:58,660 --> 00:28:00,591 that he had a full-blooded efficient steam engine, 484 00:28:00,591 --> 00:28:04,221 and that next step happened because of some trouble 485 00:28:04,221 --> 00:28:06,494 artillery regiments were having in France. 486 00:28:07,706 --> 00:28:09,874 [sounds of battle] 487 00:28:12,904 --> 00:28:17,480 In 1773, the french army asked an english ironmaker called John Wilkinson 488 00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:18,593 if he could solve a problem. 489 00:28:19,111 --> 00:28:22,950 See, instead of firing, their cannons kept on doing this. 490 00:28:22,950 --> 00:28:27,116 Not too good for morale. 491 00:28:28,995 --> 00:28:30,759 It was probably the french connection 492 00:28:30,759 --> 00:28:33,372 that spurred Wilkinson to develop this: 493 00:28:34,230 --> 00:28:36,498 a new way of boring cannon barrels. 494 00:28:36,498 --> 00:28:38,318 And he did it in 1774, 495 00:28:38,462 --> 00:28:40,742 in his ironworks in Staffordshire back in England. 496 00:28:40,877 --> 00:28:43,480 Now, much of what he did wasn't new. 497 00:28:44,095 --> 00:28:46,763 He took a solid cast iron cannon, 498 00:28:46,763 --> 00:28:49,628 on the grounds that if you make a cannon in one piece, 499 00:28:49,628 --> 00:28:51,219 it's less likely to blow up when you fire it, 500 00:28:51,219 --> 00:28:53,947 and he mounted it horizontally, and then, 501 00:28:53,947 --> 00:28:57,107 using horse power or water power, he spun it. 502 00:28:57,107 --> 00:28:59,135 Now, that wasn't new eigther. 503 00:29:00,203 --> 00:29:03,628 What was new was this: a screw and cog system 504 00:29:03,628 --> 00:29:08,850 for advancing a bar very slowly towards the cannon, 505 00:29:08,850 --> 00:29:10,981 so that the cutting head on the end of the bar 506 00:29:10,981 --> 00:29:14,286 enters the cannon, dead center, 507 00:29:15,079 --> 00:29:17,590 and the, bores it out with extreme accuracy. 508 00:29:19,154 --> 00:29:22,617 Now, if you could do that to a cannon, 509 00:29:22,617 --> 00:29:24,316 you could do it to a cylinder. 510 00:29:24,756 --> 00:29:25,764 And, by this time, 511 00:29:25,764 --> 00:29:29,442 that was just what James Watt had been waiting 12 long years for. 512 00:29:29,918 --> 00:29:33,521 In 1775, Wilkinson delivered the first cylinders 513 00:29:33,521 --> 00:29:35,495 to Birmingham to Watt's works, 514 00:29:35,495 --> 00:29:38,638 and the age of steam power had arrived. 515 00:29:40,876 --> 00:29:43,626 You know, the steam engine is a beautiful example 516 00:29:43,626 --> 00:29:45,873 of how innovation happens bit by bit. 517 00:29:46,011 --> 00:29:48,544 There's the mine draining problem, 518 00:29:48,544 --> 00:29:51,694 Newcomen's engine, the brewer's boiler, 519 00:29:51,694 --> 00:29:54,644 Watt's condenser, Wilkinson's cannon borer. 520 00:29:55,062 --> 00:29:56,352 No one man does it all. 521 00:29:56,885 --> 00:30:00,619 In spite of the myth, James Watt did not invent the steam engine. 522 00:30:01,107 --> 00:30:02,616 He only invented a micro bit of it. 523 00:30:02,616 --> 00:30:04,986 And it's only when all the bits come together 524 00:30:05,131 --> 00:30:08,807 that the final form of the steam engine, comes into existence. 525 00:30:08,807 --> 00:30:13,768 And when it does, that's when it causes widespread change to occur; 526 00:30:13,768 --> 00:30:16,901 in this case, the industrial revolution. 527 00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:33,798 This is the standard view of the industrial revolution; 528 00:30:33,928 --> 00:30:35,800 black, satanic machines. 529 00:30:42,385 --> 00:30:45,917 But although these machines slammed the world into the industrial age - 530 00:30:46,057 --> 00:30:47,361 didn't they just - 531 00:30:47,361 --> 00:30:50,402 they did something else, too, something genetic. 532 00:30:56,681 --> 00:30:59,978 Steam power began by changing the shape of the countryside 533 00:30:59,978 --> 00:31:01,176 with the mines and the factories. 534 00:31:01,304 --> 00:31:04,774 It went on to change the people themselves genetically - 535 00:31:04,905 --> 00:31:09,235 because when it was used for transportation on the new railways, 536 00:31:09,364 --> 00:31:11,628 people started marrying much further afield, 537 00:31:11,756 --> 00:31:13,247 not just the girl next door. 538 00:31:13,385 --> 00:31:16,333 The travel bug hit everybody. 539 00:31:25,900 --> 00:31:27,733 Thanks to John Wilkinson's cylinders, 540 00:31:27,733 --> 00:31:30,307 steam power was to take people all over the world, 541 00:31:30,884 --> 00:31:33,383 and now, it would no longer matter to a ship's captain 542 00:31:33,383 --> 00:31:34,701 which way the wind was blowing, 543 00:31:34,701 --> 00:31:38,525 with steamships like these still running on the italian lakes. 544 00:31:39,227 --> 00:31:40,605 Why are we on an italian lake? 545 00:31:40,756 --> 00:31:43,773 Well, that's something else that has to do with Wilkinson. 546 00:31:48,196 --> 00:31:51,165 Now, the dynamic world of iron and steam 547 00:31:51,411 --> 00:31:52,934 made a lot of people a lot of money, 548 00:31:53,345 --> 00:31:55,233 including, of course, John Wilkinson, 549 00:31:55,362 --> 00:31:59,134 the man from whom everybody bought their steam engine cylinders, 550 00:31:59,994 --> 00:32:01,671 which is just as well, because he needed the cash. 551 00:32:01,798 --> 00:32:04,858 Well, he didn't; his brother-in-law did. 552 00:32:04,988 --> 00:32:07,688 You see, at the impressionable age of 18, 553 00:32:08,394 --> 00:32:10,634 his sister Mary married a man called Joseph Priestly, 554 00:32:10,764 --> 00:32:13,314 a protestant minister who failed in the pulpit, 555 00:32:13,349 --> 00:32:14,312 because he had a stammer. 556 00:32:14,445 --> 00:32:17,183 A bit of an amateur scientist, he discovered oxygen; 557 00:32:17,679 --> 00:32:23,127 and, to judge by his letters, a real creep, 558 00:32:24,008 --> 00:32:25,539 because he married Mary for her money, 559 00:32:25,672 --> 00:32:29,206 and when he discovered she didn't have any, he sponged off her brother. 560 00:32:32,778 --> 00:32:40,165 Well, in 1767, he and Mary found themselves living in Leeds next door to a brewery, 561 00:32:40,316 --> 00:32:45,391 where Priestly divided his time between preaching badly and sniffing, 562 00:32:45,544 --> 00:32:47,612 though scientifically, around the place next door. 563 00:32:47,740 --> 00:32:49,815 Now, during this scientific sniffing, 564 00:32:50,253 --> 00:32:53,426 he discovered that there was a nine-inch layer of gas 565 00:32:53,426 --> 00:32:55,206 floating above the beer in the vats, 566 00:32:55,354 --> 00:32:57,150 he it did very mysterious things like, 567 00:32:57,150 --> 00:32:59,893 candles went out of it, and mice dies in it. 568 00:33:00,017 --> 00:33:02,497 Ether didn't seem to do very much at all, 569 00:33:02,497 --> 00:33:04,569 but, before he had a chance to find out why, 570 00:33:04,569 --> 00:33:06,433 he dropped a load of it into the beer, 571 00:33:06,433 --> 00:33:07,617 and the brewers slung him out. 572 00:33:07,617 --> 00:33:10,405 But, not before he had also discovered 573 00:33:10,405 --> 00:33:14,806 that if you poured water from one glass into another, back and forth in the gas, 574 00:33:15,299 --> 00:33:18,318 the gas went into the water and made fizzy bubbles. 575 00:33:27,242 --> 00:33:28,815 Mmm, tasted great. 576 00:33:28,950 --> 00:33:31,416 Priestly had invented soda water. 577 00:33:32,404 --> 00:33:35,656 The fact that the navy refused to try it out 578 00:33:35,656 --> 00:33:37,031 as a possible cure for scurvy, 579 00:33:37,031 --> 00:33:39,181 only whetted Priestly's appetite. 580 00:33:40,170 --> 00:33:44,501 By 1770, he was using gun barrels made by his brother-in-law John - 581 00:33:44,501 --> 00:33:48,107 free of charge, of course - and heating substances up in them, 582 00:33:48,262 --> 00:33:50,169 and exploding the gases that came off, 583 00:33:50,325 --> 00:33:53,266 using the new electric spark that was around at the time. 584 00:33:53,411 --> 00:33:56,355 Well, he got so excited about these bangs he was making 585 00:33:56,479 --> 00:33:58,563 that he wrote to a fellow investigator. 586 00:33:59,684 --> 00:34:01,797 The letter begins: "Really just received your two letters, 587 00:34:01,797 --> 00:34:03,626 because apparently, they were sent with an italian singer 588 00:34:03,626 --> 00:34:04,781 who's only just got here." 589 00:34:04,901 --> 00:34:07,978 And then, goes on to detail the rest of his new discoveries. 590 00:34:09,210 --> 00:34:12,836 And this letter is why we are on a lake in northern Italy, 591 00:34:12,965 --> 00:34:15,675 because it was sent ot a man called Alexander Volta, 592 00:34:16,275 --> 00:34:17,756 who lived here, in Como. 593 00:34:18,262 --> 00:34:22,072 And, quite by accident, the letter arrived 594 00:34:22,566 --> 00:34:25,383 in just the right place at just the right time. 595 00:34:26,202 --> 00:34:28,221 [boat hooting] 596 00:34:33,295 --> 00:34:36,780 It was the right place, because Como was surrounded by marshland. 597 00:34:36,913 --> 00:34:40,109 And what happened next has to do with the fact 598 00:34:40,109 --> 00:34:41,855 that the marshland could be very unhealthy. 599 00:34:43,339 --> 00:34:45,179 It was just the right time, 600 00:34:45,179 --> 00:34:47,635 because when Priestly's letter arrived, 601 00:34:47,757 --> 00:34:52,217 Volta had just finished in making a new of making the spark 602 00:34:52,217 --> 00:34:54,577 that Priestly was using to explode his gases with. 603 00:34:54,717 --> 00:34:57,757 It was a kind of portable electricity generator, 604 00:34:57,898 --> 00:34:59,949 and it was to turn out to be absolutely vital 605 00:34:59,949 --> 00:35:02,604 in the business of identifying bad smels. 606 00:35:02,751 --> 00:35:04,405 Let me explain. 607 00:35:04,934 --> 00:35:07,918 Priestly's letter sent Volta off on a trail 608 00:35:07,918 --> 00:35:09,299 that everybody else was on at the time, 609 00:35:09,749 --> 00:35:12,699 investigating what kind of gases were mixed up in air. 610 00:35:12,827 --> 00:35:16,152 Now some people like Priestly got substances, burned them, 611 00:35:16,152 --> 00:35:17,497 and exploded the gases that came off; 612 00:35:18,011 --> 00:35:21,237 other people put acid on metal, and looked at the fumes. 613 00:35:21,381 --> 00:35:22,620 Volta? 614 00:35:22,810 --> 00:35:23,984 Well, he went fishing. 615 00:35:24,492 --> 00:35:28,900 In 1776, his boat was in an area of Reeds 616 00:35:28,900 --> 00:35:30,574 in a marshy part of lake Marjorie, 617 00:35:30,574 --> 00:35:32,312 where he couldn't help noticing 618 00:35:32,312 --> 00:35:34,058 that some bubbles were coming up from the marsh. 619 00:35:36,875 --> 00:35:39,315 I say, he couldn't help noticing it, 620 00:35:39,315 --> 00:35:41,600 because the smell practically made him throw up. 621 00:35:41,894 --> 00:35:43,948 But, in true investigative style, 622 00:35:43,948 --> 00:35:46,837 he approached the mysterious stuff with a lighted taper. 623 00:35:48,508 --> 00:35:52,798 Marsh gas, methane; only Volta called it 'inflammable air'. 624 00:35:55,508 --> 00:35:58,969 At this point, he got out his portable electricity machine. 625 00:35:59,607 --> 00:36:02,977 Pretty musch all that was known about electricity at the time 626 00:36:02,977 --> 00:36:05,121 was that if you rubbed certain substances, 627 00:36:05,121 --> 00:36:06,102 they gave off sparks. 628 00:36:06,102 --> 00:36:09,000 Now, Volta chose this substance. 629 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:13,102 It's a cake made of three parts turpentine and one part wax. 630 00:36:13,389 --> 00:36:18,137 And, if you rub it with a cat skin, briskly like this - 631 00:36:20,822 --> 00:36:22,699 and then, put this lid on the top of it, 632 00:36:23,164 --> 00:36:26,883 and then, make contact between the lid and the metal base like that, 633 00:36:27,023 --> 00:36:31,177 that lid now has a fairly stiff charge of static electricity in it, 634 00:36:31,177 --> 00:36:33,812 and it will retain that charge almost permaenetly, 635 00:36:33,812 --> 00:36:35,239 which is why Volta called this 636 00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:37,647 his eternal electricity machine. 637 00:36:37,794 --> 00:36:42,660 Now, Volta used to carry this charged lid around 638 00:36:42,660 --> 00:36:44,908 as a power source for his next invention, 639 00:36:44,908 --> 00:36:50,186 which was based on Priestly's idea of using an electric spark to explode gases; 640 00:36:50,336 --> 00:36:52,017 only, Volta did it with style. 641 00:36:52,017 --> 00:36:54,946 He had himself a glass pistol made. 642 00:36:55,369 --> 00:36:56,712 See? 643 00:36:56,712 --> 00:37:00,961 Two wires from the outside run in to the inside, where they almost meet. 644 00:37:01,397 --> 00:37:04,054 What you do is, you fill the pistol up with inflammable air, 645 00:37:04,054 --> 00:37:05,497 put a cork in the end of it, 646 00:37:05,497 --> 00:37:08,037 then, very carefully earth that wire, 647 00:37:08,037 --> 00:37:11,768 and bring the lid over until it touches the other wire, 648 00:37:11,768 --> 00:37:14,040 at which point the current runs down the wire, 649 00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:16,060 jumps across the gap, forms a spark, 650 00:37:16,060 --> 00:37:18,449 ignites the inflammable air, and... 651 00:37:25,139 --> 00:37:27,562 Volta had two great ideas immediately. 652 00:37:27,562 --> 00:37:30,055 The first was to turn this into the new terror weapon: 653 00:37:30,055 --> 00:37:31,675 the electric glass bomb. 654 00:37:31,675 --> 00:37:33,428 Never got anywhere, of course. 655 00:37:33,428 --> 00:37:38,079 But the second was that this was an excellent instrument for finding bad air, 656 00:37:38,079 --> 00:37:40,579 because he'd already proved that bad air exploded. 657 00:37:41,281 --> 00:37:44,987 At the time, everybody thought that malaria came from bad air. 658 00:37:44,987 --> 00:37:47,479 'Mala aria' is italian for 'bad air'. 659 00:37:47,479 --> 00:37:50,331 So, for the next 30 years, people went around 660 00:37:50,331 --> 00:37:52,869 poking the new instrument set over cess pits, 661 00:37:52,869 --> 00:37:56,827 bogs, dung heaps, sewers; you name it. 662 00:37:56,827 --> 00:37:59,575 If it was indescribably awful, they'd sniff it. 663 00:37:59,702 --> 00:38:02,939 Now, the bad air brigade became really rather fashionable. 664 00:38:02,939 --> 00:38:06,085 Napoleon, in his north african campaign, 665 00:38:06,085 --> 00:38:08,856 ordered a bad smell map of Egypt to be made. 666 00:38:09,204 --> 00:38:10,302 Now, there's a thought. 667 00:38:10,607 --> 00:38:12,293 Of course, they were all on the wrong trail. 668 00:38:12,707 --> 00:38:14,912 Malaria had nothing at all to do with bad air. 669 00:38:15,333 --> 00:38:18,181 So, in the long run, the electric pistol was a bit of a flop. 670 00:38:18,595 --> 00:38:20,114 And there it might have ended, 671 00:38:20,114 --> 00:38:24,924 except for what happened about 1850 in the arctic ocean. 672 00:38:30,738 --> 00:38:33,721 By then, these yankee whaling ships were having to go 673 00:38:33,721 --> 00:38:35,453 up to the north Pacific to find whales. 674 00:38:35,453 --> 00:38:37,338 The Atlantic was almost fished out, 675 00:38:37,338 --> 00:38:40,626 so the price of whale oil for lamps was rocketing. 676 00:38:41,740 --> 00:38:44,371 In 1859, a bogus army colonel 677 00:38:44,371 --> 00:38:49,430 dug a hole in Pennsylvania, and found the answer: oil. 678 00:38:49,430 --> 00:38:52,354 Our hero's name was Edwin Drake. 679 00:38:52,354 --> 00:38:55,091 and thanks to him, there'd be oil lamps forever. 680 00:38:55,091 --> 00:38:57,047 Well, what else could you do with it? 681 00:39:07,647 --> 00:39:09,465 Now, i'm sorry to do this to you, 682 00:39:09,465 --> 00:39:11,796 but, do you remember Priestly and his soda water? 683 00:39:17,831 --> 00:39:20,718 Well, guess where his soda water went over very big? 684 00:39:20,961 --> 00:39:21,717 Germany. 685 00:39:21,884 --> 00:39:24,554 In the health resorts full of the people taking their punishment - 686 00:39:24,554 --> 00:39:26,874 I mean cures - with teutonic thoroughness, 687 00:39:26,874 --> 00:39:30,445 gallons of sulfur water forced down with every mouthful of lettuce; 688 00:39:30,445 --> 00:39:32,437 no wonder they went for Priestly's fizz. 689 00:39:32,874 --> 00:39:34,539 You ever tried straight sulphur water? 690 00:39:35,257 --> 00:39:37,396 Anyway, it was at one of these spas 691 00:39:37,396 --> 00:39:40,979 that something got done to that oil they discovered in America, 692 00:39:41,157 --> 00:39:44,040 something that involved Priestly yet again. 693 00:39:52,899 --> 00:39:55,669 This funny little workshop in a garden 694 00:39:55,669 --> 00:40:00,171 is in a spa town in Germany. It's called Baddeckenstedt, 695 00:40:00,171 --> 00:40:03,285 and and it was here now a suburb of modert Stuttgart. 696 00:40:05,373 --> 00:40:07,181 And it was here that a couple of men, 697 00:40:07,181 --> 00:40:11,097 called Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, 698 00:40:11,922 --> 00:40:15,150 found another use for oil that was to produce 699 00:40:15,150 --> 00:40:17,251 one of out modern world's most vital, 700 00:40:17,251 --> 00:40:18,901 and most commonplace, inventions. 701 00:40:19,642 --> 00:40:21,967 Both men, up until 1882, 702 00:40:21,967 --> 00:40:24,681 had worked for the company that made Otto engines. 703 00:40:25,087 --> 00:40:26,566 They were used to power everything 704 00:40:26,566 --> 00:40:28,186 from sewing machines to saws. 705 00:40:28,833 --> 00:40:35,246 As the piston went down, it sucked in a mixture of town gas and air. 706 00:40:35,952 --> 00:40:37,583 then, the piston came back up again, 707 00:40:37,583 --> 00:40:38,686 and compressed the mixture. 708 00:40:38,686 --> 00:40:41,673 You lit the mixture, it exploded, it pushed the piston down again. 709 00:40:42,031 --> 00:40:43,498 The piston came back up yet again, 710 00:40:43,498 --> 00:40:45,717 this time pushing the exhaust fumes out, 711 00:40:45,717 --> 00:40:49,417 and then, when it went down again, it brought in a new fresh mixture, 712 00:40:49,901 --> 00:40:50,939 and the cycle continued. 713 00:40:51,402 --> 00:40:53,176 There were two things wrong with that. 714 00:40:53,176 --> 00:40:58,427 One, it weighed a ton; and two, you couldn't go anywhere with it, 715 00:40:58,427 --> 00:41:00,630 because you had to stay connected to a supply of town gas. 716 00:41:00,959 --> 00:41:03,655 What Daimler and Maybach did 717 00:41:03,655 --> 00:41:06,245 was to replace the town gas air mixture 718 00:41:06,245 --> 00:41:09,278 with a byproduct of oil called gasoline, 719 00:41:09,819 --> 00:41:12,553 which explodes easily -- too easily. 720 00:41:15,921 --> 00:41:17,734 This was their first attempt here. 721 00:41:18,014 --> 00:41:22,278 In 1883, Maybach designd a system to pass hot air 722 00:41:22,278 --> 00:41:25,285 which came in here over the top of gasoline, 723 00:41:25,285 --> 00:41:28,057 which was being pumped up from a little reservoir down here. 724 00:41:28,057 --> 00:41:29,756 And as the hot air passed over it, 725 00:41:29,756 --> 00:41:33,689 it picked up the gasoline fumes, and the misture went on around and into the engine cylinder. 726 00:41:33,689 --> 00:41:37,333 Now, the other end of that hot tube there 727 00:41:37,333 --> 00:41:38,454 sticks into the cylinder, 728 00:41:38,454 --> 00:41:40,084 and it's the other end of that hot tube 729 00:41:40,084 --> 00:41:41,357 that causes the mixture to explode. 730 00:41:41,977 --> 00:41:44,167 Now, the strength of the explosion depends on the mixture. 731 00:41:44,167 --> 00:41:47,008 And you set that pretty well once and for all 732 00:41:47,008 --> 00:41:48,086 with this air valve here, 733 00:41:48,086 --> 00:41:50,795 and then, you trundle off at your one and only speed. 734 00:41:51,504 --> 00:41:56,262 It was in 1892 that Maybact made his really great invention, 735 00:41:56,262 --> 00:41:58,990 and this is where Priestly comes back into the story. 736 00:41:59,609 --> 00:42:03,683 You see, Priestly's work on various kinds of air, and soda water, and so on, 737 00:42:03,683 --> 00:42:06,259 excited a great deal of interest among the medical circles, 738 00:42:06,259 --> 00:42:09,359 and they decided that bad air caused disease. 739 00:42:09,791 --> 00:42:11,563 And, in order to get rid of the bad air, 740 00:42:11,563 --> 00:42:15,842 they turned to scent sprays to fumigate places like hospital rooms. 741 00:42:16,260 --> 00:42:17,629 Now, the scent spray works very simply. 742 00:42:17,629 --> 00:42:21,809 You use this bulb here to puff air through a tiny nozzle. 743 00:42:21,809 --> 00:42:25,160 In the middle of that nozzle, it narrows for a moment. 744 00:42:25,160 --> 00:42:28,301 At that precise point, the air speeds up, 745 00:42:28,301 --> 00:42:30,036 and its pressure drops. 746 00:42:31,091 --> 00:42:33,144 At that point, you inject a jet of perfume. 747 00:42:33,144 --> 00:42:35,010 Now, because the air is at low pressure, 748 00:42:35,010 --> 00:42:38,337 the perfume atomizes into tiny droplets, 749 00:42:38,337 --> 00:42:40,905 and you get a spray - like that. 750 00:42:41,787 --> 00:42:45,128 And THAT is precisely what Maybach did 751 00:42:46,544 --> 00:42:48,448 with his invention with the gasoline. 752 00:42:49,530 --> 00:42:51,645 This is it. It's called a carburetor. 753 00:42:52,242 --> 00:42:53,447 Now, the great thing about the carburetor 754 00:42:53,447 --> 00:42:56,256 is that with it, you can regulate the mixture exactly. 755 00:42:56,256 --> 00:43:00,232 And since it's in a very fine spray, the explosion is very efficeint one. 756 00:43:00,232 --> 00:43:04,413 And that's why it was the carburetor that gave the Daimler Motor company 757 00:43:04,413 --> 00:43:06,488 its headstart over every other rival. 758 00:43:23,929 --> 00:43:25,330 I said Daimler got a headstart - 759 00:43:25,330 --> 00:43:28,955 well, in a manner of speaking, because that still left the customer 760 00:43:28,955 --> 00:43:31,729 with the problem of getting any kind of start. 761 00:43:42,015 --> 00:43:44,089 Still, if you persevered, hmm? 762 00:43:52,364 --> 00:43:54,740 By 1895, anybody who was anybody 763 00:43:54,740 --> 00:43:56,679 had one of the new horseless carriages. 764 00:44:00,183 --> 00:44:03,284 By 1896, in England, they even stopped making you 765 00:44:03,284 --> 00:44:04,890 have a guy walk in front with a flare. 766 00:44:21,679 --> 00:44:26,168 By 1899, it became obvious that igniting the mixture 767 00:44:26,168 --> 00:44:28,451 was a matter of great precision, 768 00:44:28,451 --> 00:44:31,001 especially when your piston was going up and down, 1.000 times a minute. 769 00:44:31,179 --> 00:44:34,105 And the old hot tube method just wasn't good enough. 770 00:44:34,483 --> 00:44:36,953 More often that not, it just stayed red hot, 771 00:44:36,953 --> 00:44:38,168 and it ignited the mixture prematurely 772 00:44:38,168 --> 00:44:39,797 when the piston was in the wrong position, 773 00:44:39,797 --> 00:44:41,495 and sometimes, it blew up the car. 774 00:44:41,937 --> 00:44:44,353 It was one of Daimler's distributors, 775 00:44:44,353 --> 00:44:45,287 a man called Jellinek, 776 00:44:45,785 --> 00:44:47,901 who pushed hard for a new form of ignition, 777 00:44:47,901 --> 00:44:50,627 and in 1899, Daimler adopted a system 778 00:44:50,627 --> 00:44:53,460 that was the direct descendant of Volta's pistol. 779 00:44:53,460 --> 00:44:57,512 Because, in this engine, the ignition happens because of an electric spark. 780 00:44:57,843 --> 00:44:59,635 In this engine, everything comes together. 781 00:44:59,635 --> 00:45:01,766 Newcomen's piston, Drake's oil, 782 00:45:01,766 --> 00:45:04,788 the scent spray, and Volta's pistol. 783 00:45:05,224 --> 00:45:07,148 And it was such an amazing success 784 00:45:07,148 --> 00:45:08,815 when they raced it on tracks like these, 785 00:45:08,815 --> 00:45:11,180 that the company was do pleased that they called it 786 00:45:11,180 --> 00:45:13,508 after the daugter of the distributor who had 787 00:45:14,865 --> 00:45:15,926 the idea in the first place, and her name was Mercedes. 788 00:45:16,498 --> 00:45:20,472 Now, Daimler's engines didn't just go into cars. 789 00:45:20,472 --> 00:45:23,365 He did an awful lot of demonstrations with the engine in boats. 790 00:45:23,365 --> 00:45:25,665 So, it didn't come as a surprise to the company 791 00:45:25,665 --> 00:45:28,994 when, in 1901, they got an order from a fellow 792 00:45:29,029 --> 00:45:31,042 who was living on the edge of a lake in Austria. 793 00:45:44,162 --> 00:45:47,074 This is the short story of one Wilhelm Kress - 794 00:45:47,074 --> 00:45:49,246 short because he didn't last long. 795 00:45:49,965 --> 00:45:52,317 He was a piano maker, who gave up tickling the ivories 796 00:45:52,317 --> 00:45:54,305 in favor of designing a new terror weapon 797 00:45:54,305 --> 00:45:55,211 for the austrian navy. 798 00:45:55,663 --> 00:45:58,009 Took the idea to Vienna and sold it to the emperor, 799 00:45:58,009 --> 00:46:02,328 in spite of the fact that Austria didn't actually have a navy at the time. 800 00:46:11,801 --> 00:46:13,850 Back home on his little lake outside town, 801 00:46:13,850 --> 00:46:16,202 Kress started assembling his infernal machine, 802 00:46:16,202 --> 00:46:20,047 and ordered a Daimler engine, which he said had to be 803 00:46:20,047 --> 00:46:22,435 of an absolutely exact power and exact weight. 804 00:46:23,024 --> 00:46:25,335 Unfortunately, somebody at the factory boobed, 805 00:46:25,335 --> 00:46:29,947 and sent him an engine twice as heavy as poor old Kress had asked for. 806 00:46:29,947 --> 00:46:34,135 [stalled engine noise] 807 00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:40,885 In 1901, Kress launched his contraption, 808 00:46:40,885 --> 00:46:43,568 and the massive engine - too massive - chugging, 809 00:46:43,568 --> 00:46:47,135 he spluttered along, far too slow to skip over some debris 810 00:46:47,135 --> 00:46:49,139 he suddenly saw floating in his path. 811 00:46:52,836 --> 00:46:54,591 Ah, the reward of genius. 812 00:46:55,265 --> 00:46:56,516 [explosions] 813 00:47:01,591 --> 00:47:04,326 Still, other people did take up the idea of using an engine 814 00:47:04,326 --> 00:47:06,301 the way Kress had - well, not quite. 815 00:47:07,454 --> 00:47:09,824 It was to be another 30 years or so 816 00:47:09,824 --> 00:47:13,365 before the gasoline motor car engine was dropped, in favor of another one. 817 00:47:13,365 --> 00:47:15,887 And even then, the new one still used 818 00:47:15,887 --> 00:47:19,064 Maybach's fuel system, and the scent spray idea. 819 00:47:19,635 --> 00:47:21,722 The latest versions of that engine 820 00:47:21,722 --> 00:47:24,223 cruise along, carrying hundreds of people, 821 00:47:24,223 --> 00:47:26,294 at speeds that Kress could never have thought possible. 822 00:47:26,876 --> 00:47:28,125 They crossed the oceans of the world 823 00:47:28,125 --> 00:47:29,937 without a thought for floating debris, 824 00:47:29,937 --> 00:47:33,237 turning holiday making into the world's fastest growing industry, 825 00:47:33,237 --> 00:47:35,822 with port of call in every country. 826 00:47:36,456 --> 00:47:39,401 So, that's where this trail of events has brought us, 827 00:47:39,401 --> 00:47:40,926 to a present day invention 828 00:47:40,926 --> 00:47:43,941 capable of annihilating distance or people; 829 00:47:45,225 --> 00:47:47,784 the direct modern descendant, the peaceful variety, 830 00:47:47,784 --> 00:47:52,960 of Wilhelm Kress' failure is this, the Concord, 831 00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:56,022 the modern jet aircraft, and all that that implies. 832 00:47:56,022 --> 00:47:58,389 Because what Wilhelm Kress was trying to do 833 00:47:58,389 --> 00:48:02,080 was to get a sea plane off the water of that lake in Austria. 834 00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:03,556 and had he done so, 835 00:48:03,556 --> 00:48:07,226 he would have beaten the Wright brothers' first flight by two years. 836 00:48:07,226 --> 00:48:10,339 and instead of a couple of american bicycle mechanics, 837 00:48:10,339 --> 00:48:12,367 all the glory, or the blame, 838 00:48:12,367 --> 00:48:17,033 would have gone to an austrian piano maker who dreamt he could fly. 839 00:48:19,446 --> 00:48:21,503 [End]