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I suppose a detective catches a crook
because he follows a trail

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from one uniquely relevant event
or person to another,

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until he finds
a unique piece of evidence

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that points
to the only person in the world

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who could've done the deed.

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And strangely enough,
the story I'm about to tell you

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about why modern detectives
are able to do that at all

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follows exactly
the same kind of trail,

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from one unique character
to another, through history.

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Here's my first unique character:

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Steve Davis,

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one of the best snooker players
in the world.

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You should see him in action.

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In fact, why don't you?

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Mr. Davis is uniquely relevant
to this detective story

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not just for his
unbelievable skill at the table

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but to draw your attention
to one of the tools of his trade:

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This: to all modern detectives,

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probably the most unique
piece of evidence in history.

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But if I tell you any more,

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I'll give it away.

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Thank you very much, Steve.

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Thank you, and I've been asked
to give you this.

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Thank you.

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So now you're thoroughly mystified,

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here's a tale
of unique historical characters

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whose unique actions will lead us
back to that unique ball,

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in a show entitled:

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And speaking of individuals,

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I don't suppose
there's ever been an individual

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quite like the one
we call Renaissance Man--

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you know, those people
who once knew

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everything there was to know
about everything?

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Like this guy, George Bauer,

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the first character
in our historical detective story,

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and who was here in the
16th century at Bologna University.

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George Bauer was
really quite a guy.

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He taught Greek,
then Latin, then grammar.

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Then he went into physics,
then chemistry,

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then linguistics,
and then publishing.

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And then, in the middle
of the 16th century,

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he came here to northern Italy
to the best university in Europe,

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because he'd finally decided
what he really wanted to be...

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a doctor.

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This place had all the latest
anatomy techniques and stuff,

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and the classes were jammed.

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Anyway, George finishes the course

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and in time,
goes off to become a G.P.

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in a mining town in what would
now be the Czech Republic,

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where he promptly writes
a multi-volume reference book,

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but not about medicine,

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about mining, of course.

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After all, George is
a unique Renaissance Man,

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so mining is just
another string to his bow.

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The book covered everything
from surface operations

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all the way down
to the bottom of a mine

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and anything you might do
on the way--

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ore crushing, smelting,
tunneling, ventilating--

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the illustrated manual
of all a miner needed to know--

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or rather, anybody interested
in buying a mine needed to know:

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the first example in history
of a technological best-seller...

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and our second piece of evidence.

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Now, if you bought a mine

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that George's
assaying techniques showed

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was full of what
you particularly wanted--

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I mean, really valuable stuff
like copper--

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then, as a financial investor,
you would know in advance

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that things financial
were going to go with a bang.

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Copper was so valuable
because it helped to make

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the Renaissance equivalent

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of the gift for the man
who has everything:

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a bronze cannon.

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Because what you had to have
in the 16th century

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if you were a new nation,
an ambitious king,

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a bunch of world explorers,
or fighting the pope--

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which describes
the countries of Europe

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one way or another at the time--

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what you absolutely had to have
was firepower.

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Everybody was doing it.

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Hardly a 16th-century week went by
without a war somewhere,

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all made that bit easier,

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thanks to the unique talents
of George Bauer.

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Now, the only fly in the ointment
for cannon-firing princes and such

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was that fighting battles
back then wasn't like it is today.

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There was no such thing
as a regular army,

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which gave them a particularly
inconvenient problem.

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They couldn't get hold of money
when they needed it

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to pay their mercenary troops
when they wanted it,

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which was always yesterday,

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because there were no banks--

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well, not banks
we'd call banks.

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And even if you did find somebody
with a bit of cash to help you out,

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the interest rates could be 30%/ .

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But as one famous mercenary
said to Louis XIII,

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"To go to war,
you only need three things:

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money, money, and money."

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Buenos dias.

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Buenos dias.

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Kings, of course,
weren't stony broke.

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They just had cash-flow problems.

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By the time you'd collected

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your annual taxes, tithes,
rents, revenues, or whatever,

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your mercenaries
had high-tailed it

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to work for somebody who could
pay them regularly every Friday evening,

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and all armies were mercenaries.

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Which is why the royals back then
were up to here in hock

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to the next character
in our detective story:

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Anton Fugger.

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Because he lent money
to everybody

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from Russia to here in Hispaniola--

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in this case,
to the particular royal

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who owned that palace down there
at the end of the street.

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Nice piece of property, isn't it?

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Well, Hispaniola was
the Caribbean headquarters

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for the conquest of America.

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But not even that
would turn out to be enough

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to make up for the monetary
miscalculations

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of this royal borrower,

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because what was going on
between him and Anton Fugger

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needed more collateral
than even he had

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at the end of the day.

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Because nobody ever burnt
the financial candle at both ends

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quite like this chap:

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Charles V of Spain, Europe,
and the New World,

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who was unique--

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uniquely bankrupt.

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See, Charles hocked
his entire income

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from Hispaniola, Spain, Naples,
Sicily, Holland, and Austria

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so as to borrow a fortune
from the Fuggers

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so as to bribe everybody in sight--
kings and archbishops, mostly--

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so as to vote him rather than
the other candidate for the job:

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the king of France,

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the position
of Holy Roman Emperor.

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Now, Charles wasn't poor.

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But not even all the boatloads
of Inca gold and silver

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coming through this palace
in Hispaniola

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on its way back to Europe

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was enough
for that kind of debt.

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So finally,
he kind of declared bankruptcy,

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and the Fuggers
went out of business.

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And so did Charles,
leaving his son, Philip Il,

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with the royal crest,
the royal crown,

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and a royal financial pain.

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Phil, a chip off the old block,

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tried solving the problem
in the traditional manner:

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by invading someone.

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Picked the wrong person
to do it to, though:

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a uniquely talented woman called
Queen Elizabeth of England.

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Elizabeth was running things in 1588,
when Philip made his play,

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which was to head up the
English Channel with an invasion fleet

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called, for psychological
warfare reasons,

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the Armada,
meaning "tons of guns."

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Philip's grand plan was
to wipe out the English navy,

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take over a fast-growing economy,
and get some money.

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As the shock news of the
approaching Spanish megafleet

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reached the English
naval high command,

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they were out
having a quiet game of bowls.

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So like any Englishman would
in moments of impending disaster,

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they went on with their game,
of course,

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because they knew that
they could finish their match

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and still get out there

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before the Armada was
within spitting distance

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and still clobber them.

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Yeah, you got it.

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Because thanks
to Queen Elizabeth,

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they had new,
high-tech, high-speed ships

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able to run circles
around the Spanish,

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which they did,

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and won.

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Cheers.

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But the Armada
had given the English

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the kind of scare you don't forget,

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so by the mid-17th century,

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they, and then everybody else,
were into building really big ships.

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I mean, one of those monsters
took 1,000 oak trees.

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Well, that put the kaibash
on people making glass,

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because they'd been
chopping down all the wood

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to make charcoal for fuel
for their glass furnaces.

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Well, they got out of wood pretty quick
and turned to coal for fuel

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and a new kind of glass
for the big, new building boom

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because by the late 17th century,

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there were new housing starts
all over Europe.

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the particular one
I happen to be at right now

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was just the biggest one of all.

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The palace of Versailles,
outside Paris:

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a glazier's dream.

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I mean, look at all those windows.

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Well, with plenty of coal around
for fuel,

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the glassmakers
started to experiment,

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and in 167 4, an Englishman
called Ravenscroft

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put powdered flint
and lead oxide into his glass

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and got stuff so transparent,

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you could read a newspaper
through it.

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00:12:03,883 --> 00:12:06,283
New thing at the time, that:
newspapers,

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00:12:06,418 --> 00:12:08,386
and clear glass, of course.

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A year later,
a Frenchman called Nehou

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came up with a way
of making big slabs of it,

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00:12:12,925 --> 00:12:14,859
thus inventing plate glass.

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00:12:14,994 --> 00:12:17,428
As it happens, the factory
he ran in 1688

200
00:12:17,563 --> 00:12:20,532
still produces glass today:
Saint-Gobain.

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00:12:22,001 --> 00:12:24,469
Another clue
in our detective story.

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00:12:24,603 --> 00:12:27,333
Anyway, after windows,
plate glass got used

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for the one thing that makes
any room bigger and brighter.

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Not surprisingly,
in a world filled with candles,

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it got used for mirrors.

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00:12:44,690 --> 00:12:47,124
The Versailles Hall of Mirrors
started a new craze

207
00:12:47,259 --> 00:12:48,851
among the willfully extravagant,

208
00:12:48,994 --> 00:12:50,985
and there were
plenty of them around,

209
00:12:51,130 --> 00:12:52,529
because for the first time,

210
00:12:52,665 --> 00:12:55,327
in an age when nothing mattered
more than your image,

211
00:12:55,467 --> 00:12:58,197
think what it must have been like
to see yourself

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00:12:58,337 --> 00:13:02,603
again and again and again
and again and again.

213
00:13:02,741 --> 00:13:05,972
Everybody had to have
their own hall of mirrors.

214
00:13:08,614 --> 00:13:11,014
Now, this may not look
like much to you,

215
00:13:11,150 --> 00:13:14,881
but back then, this mirror was
a miracle in precision:

216
00:13:15,020 --> 00:13:18,456
clear image, smooth,
carefully ground surface,

217
00:13:18,591 --> 00:13:20,821
undistorted reflection--

218
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:23,827
just what you needed
if you were one of two people:

219
00:13:23,963 --> 00:13:26,591
the fellow who paid
for all this, Louis XIV,

220
00:13:26,732 --> 00:13:29,462
the egomaniac
whose glory is reflected here

221
00:13:29,602 --> 00:13:31,661
and who called himself the Sun King;

222
00:13:31,804 --> 00:13:34,773
and the next character
in our historical detective story,

223
00:13:34,907 --> 00:13:39,367
an English precision freak
called James Hadley...

224
00:13:41,146 --> 00:13:42,909
who put two new precision mirrors

225
00:13:43,048 --> 00:13:46,848
on a navigation instrument
he invented, called a sextant.

226
00:13:46,986 --> 00:13:49,113
Line up the horizon
through the telescope

227
00:13:49,255 --> 00:13:50,950
on the half-silvered mirror.

228
00:13:51,090 --> 00:13:54,218
With the top mirror,
move the image of a star

229
00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:57,591
so it's superimposed on the horizon
in the half-silvered mirror.

230
00:13:57,730 --> 00:13:59,721
Read the angle off the bottom scale.

231
00:13:59,865 --> 00:14:02,993
Then do the same again
with another star.

232
00:14:03,135 --> 00:14:06,070
Then your star tables will tell you

233
00:14:06,205 --> 00:14:08,036
where on earth
you would have to be

234
00:14:08,173 --> 00:14:11,973
to get those two stars
at those two angles,

235
00:14:12,111 --> 00:14:14,671
so now you know
where your ship is.

236
00:14:14,813 --> 00:14:18,840
So now you know that fact,
you can try another trick.

237
00:14:18,984 --> 00:14:22,249
Check your distance
from an onshore headland.

238
00:14:22,388 --> 00:14:23,548
Turn the sextant flat,

239
00:14:23,689 --> 00:14:27,022
and measure the horizontal angle
to the next headland.

240
00:14:27,159 --> 00:14:32,722
Basic geometry will then tell you
how far apart those headlands are.

241
00:14:32,865 --> 00:14:35,663
This was the technique
used in the 1770s

242
00:14:35,801 --> 00:14:38,361
by a couple of surveyors
from the Royal American Regiment

243
00:14:38,504 --> 00:14:40,529
called DeBarre and Holland.

244
00:14:40,673 --> 00:14:44,837
They mapped the east coast
of America for the British.

245
00:14:48,948 --> 00:14:51,348
The reason we paid somebody
to map America

246
00:14:51,483 --> 00:14:52,916
was because we owned it.

247
00:14:53,052 --> 00:14:55,350
And besides,
we needed the charts

248
00:14:55,487 --> 00:14:56,977
so that our ships
could get over there

249
00:14:57,122 --> 00:15:01,149
with guns and soldiers and supplies
to fight the American revolutionaries.

250
00:15:01,293 --> 00:15:04,057
Unfortunately, by the time
the charts were ready,

251
00:15:04,196 --> 00:15:06,528
we'd lost the war.

252
00:15:06,665 --> 00:15:09,259
Still, DeBarre and Holland
did teach Captain Cook,

253
00:15:09,401 --> 00:15:10,390
who then went off

254
00:15:10,536 --> 00:15:12,936
and found Australia
and New Zealand for us.

255
00:15:13,072 --> 00:15:15,199
Win some, lose some.

256
00:15:18,110 --> 00:15:21,477
Which left only one problem:
heights.

257
00:15:21,613 --> 00:15:23,308
There still weren't any
on maps yet,

258
00:15:23,449 --> 00:15:27,112
until the next character
in our detective story:

259
00:15:27,252 --> 00:15:29,311
this chap...

260
00:15:31,457 --> 00:15:33,152
over there.

261
00:15:35,928 --> 00:15:37,225
His name was Saussure,

262
00:15:37,363 --> 00:15:38,830
and he lived here in Switzerland,

263
00:15:38,964 --> 00:15:40,363
and he was unique--

264
00:15:40,499 --> 00:15:43,662
uniquely obsessed by Mont Blanc.

265
00:15:49,074 --> 00:15:52,771
In 1787, he climbed it with a
barometer to measure the height.

266
00:15:52,911 --> 00:15:55,004
The Swiss were so knocked out
by this feat,

267
00:15:55,147 --> 00:15:58,947
they nearly changed the name
from Mont Blanc to Mont Saussure

268
00:15:59,084 --> 00:16:00,608
and because Saussure also started

269
00:16:00,753 --> 00:16:02,584
all that mountaineering
and skiing stuff

270
00:16:02,721 --> 00:16:05,087
that brings all the tourists in.

271
00:16:05,224 --> 00:16:08,853
Anyway, up there, Saussure
got turned on by what he saw.

272
00:16:08,994 --> 00:16:12,521
No, not that.

273
00:16:12,664 --> 00:16:16,464
This: bits of granite
and shellfish fossils.

274
00:16:16,602 --> 00:16:19,162
Saussure reckoned if you found
shellfish up a mountain,

275
00:16:19,304 --> 00:16:22,933
the ancient seabed must have risen
to become mountains.

276
00:16:23,075 --> 00:16:24,133
Why?

277
00:16:24,276 --> 00:16:26,005
Because the mountains
were made of granite,

278
00:16:26,145 --> 00:16:30,081
volcanic upheavals
of molten granite way back.

279
00:16:30,215 --> 00:16:33,013
And since granite didn't exactly
wear down easily,

280
00:16:33,152 --> 00:16:35,552
then the present-day erosion
you could see in granite rocks

281
00:16:35,687 --> 00:16:38,087
must have taken quite a while.

282
00:16:38,223 --> 00:16:39,520
And if that took a long time,

283
00:16:39,658 --> 00:16:42,650
how long had it taken
to cause the erosion

284
00:16:42,795 --> 00:16:45,457
you could see all around you
on the mountains?

285
00:16:49,601 --> 00:16:51,330
So Saussure wrote a book saying,

286
00:16:51,470 --> 00:16:53,370
if erosion took
the same amount of time

287
00:16:53,505 --> 00:16:55,666
in the ancient past as it did today,

288
00:16:55,808 --> 00:16:59,073
that meant the ancient past
was really ancient;

289
00:16:59,211 --> 00:17:02,612
the earth was incredibly old.

290
00:17:05,517 --> 00:17:06,950
More evidence.

291
00:17:12,591 --> 00:17:15,116
Well, I don't have to tell you
where that would lead.

292
00:17:15,260 --> 00:17:18,195
Saussure's ideas eventually got
to Charles Darwin,

293
00:17:18,330 --> 00:17:20,798
who used
the enormous age of the earth

294
00:17:20,933 --> 00:17:23,401
to back his theory of evolution,

295
00:17:23,535 --> 00:17:26,299
where species with the luck
to have certain characteristics

296
00:17:26,438 --> 00:17:27,803
survive change.

297
00:17:27,940 --> 00:17:29,464
The others end up
like these people.

298
00:17:29,608 --> 00:17:31,735
All luck.

299
00:17:33,345 --> 00:17:35,745
Now, Darwin happened
to have a cousin,

300
00:17:35,881 --> 00:17:37,815
whose name was Francis Galton.

301
00:17:39,051 --> 00:17:40,416
He had a unique thought.

302
00:17:41,453 --> 00:17:43,182
Could you make your own luck?

303
00:17:43,322 --> 00:17:45,085
If you happened to be a member
of a "good family"--

304
00:17:45,224 --> 00:17:46,248
his words--

305
00:17:46,391 --> 00:17:48,086
could you keep the luck
in the family

306
00:17:48,227 --> 00:17:50,923
by marrying somebody
from another good family...

307
00:17:51,063 --> 00:17:52,655
like his?

308
00:17:59,071 --> 00:18:02,302
Galton studied funeral records
and death certificates

309
00:18:02,441 --> 00:18:04,602
and came to the conclusion
that the data backed him up.

310
00:18:04,743 --> 00:18:08,179
It showed, he said, eminent men
came from eminent families,

311
00:18:08,313 --> 00:18:10,907
and imbeciles came from imbeciles.

312
00:18:11,049 --> 00:18:14,041
He called his theory eugenics,
set up a professorship in it,

313
00:18:14,186 --> 00:18:16,120
and became the darling
of the new thinkers,

314
00:18:16,255 --> 00:18:17,688
especially those writing

315
00:18:17,823 --> 00:18:20,724
American immigration
quota laws in 1924,

316
00:18:20,859 --> 00:18:25,228
who used eugenics to keep out
what were called "undesirables."

317
00:18:25,364 --> 00:18:29,266
In 1934, the Nazis used
Galton's sincere attempt

318
00:18:29,401 --> 00:18:31,062
to discover why people were different

319
00:18:31,203 --> 00:18:35,435
to give spurious credentials
to their policies on racial purity.

320
00:18:35,574 --> 00:18:39,374
Poor old Galton
would've turned in his grave.

321
00:18:42,181 --> 00:18:44,672
I said at the beginning
that this detective story

322
00:18:44,816 --> 00:18:46,977
would involve a series
of unique people,

323
00:18:47,119 --> 00:18:49,383
which now, of course,
includes you and me,

324
00:18:49,521 --> 00:18:51,853
because as Francis Galton
was trying to point out,

325
00:18:51,990 --> 00:18:53,355
we're all unique.

326
00:18:53,492 --> 00:18:56,359
Each of us has a unique mix
of genetic inheritance,

327
00:18:56,495 --> 00:18:58,429
which is why Galton's work

328
00:18:58,564 --> 00:19:01,158
resulted in something else
much more important

329
00:19:01,300 --> 00:19:03,165
than just his book
about good breeding.

330
00:19:03,302 --> 00:19:08,069
Galton was trying to pinpoint
the way in which we're all different,

331
00:19:08,207 --> 00:19:10,402
and he found it in a code
he thought up.

332
00:19:10,542 --> 00:19:13,978
It's a code that tells
how you are uniquely you

333
00:19:14,112 --> 00:19:16,580
and that would also identify

334
00:19:16,715 --> 00:19:20,412
these detective story clues
I've picked up as we went along

335
00:19:20,552 --> 00:19:25,489
and prove that I was there just now
in Bologna University,

336
00:19:27,259 --> 00:19:29,489
at that bank in Hispaniola,

337
00:19:31,363 --> 00:19:33,160
up the mountain with Saussure,

338
00:19:34,933 --> 00:19:36,958
and at the palace of Versailles,

339
00:19:37,102 --> 00:19:40,230
because my version of the code
is all over these clues.

340
00:19:42,341 --> 00:19:44,036
Here's the code.

341
00:19:45,944 --> 00:19:48,845
The code describes
the different pattern everybody has.

342
00:19:48,981 --> 00:19:53,543
Some bits of the pattern
are identified by a pair of letters.

343
00:19:53,685 --> 00:19:56,347
Other bits are given a number.

344
00:19:57,623 --> 00:19:59,887
Take a look
at one particular bit of detail:

345
00:20:00,025 --> 00:20:02,721
this number, nine.

346
00:20:02,861 --> 00:20:06,228
It's the number of times my pattern
crosses a reference line

347
00:20:06,365 --> 00:20:08,492
from one feature in the pattern
to another.

348
00:20:08,634 --> 00:20:13,230
In my case, the pattern crosses
the reference line nine times.

349
00:20:13,372 --> 00:20:15,237
So with Galton's code,

350
00:20:15,374 --> 00:20:17,569
you can identify
my unique patterns

351
00:20:17,709 --> 00:20:20,143
in any one of these.

352
00:20:24,249 --> 00:20:25,739
My fingerprint.

353
00:20:25,884 --> 00:20:28,580
That's what Galton invented
at the turn of the century:

354
00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:29,846
fingerprinting.

355
00:20:31,323 --> 00:20:33,883
The number
of possible pattern variations

356
00:20:34,026 --> 00:20:36,187
and the number
of possible fingerprint ridges

357
00:20:36,328 --> 00:20:39,422
crossing that reference line
on any single print

358
00:20:39,564 --> 00:20:42,328
means that the chances of you
and anybody else

359
00:20:42,467 --> 00:20:47,131
having the same set of fingerprints
is one in ten trillion.

360
00:20:48,273 --> 00:20:49,706
And that's the end of the story,

361
00:20:49,841 --> 00:20:53,140
because in 1902,
for the first time ever,

362
00:20:53,278 --> 00:20:57,044
Scotland Yard used fingerprints
to catch a petty criminal

363
00:20:57,182 --> 00:20:58,945
called Harry Jackson.

364
00:20:59,084 --> 00:21:01,575
And you know how they knew
who done it?

365
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:03,153
Remember this?

366
00:21:03,288 --> 00:21:05,552
The fingerprints
at the scene of crime

367
00:21:05,691 --> 00:21:09,957
matched the fingerprints they found
all over the stuff he'd stolen:

368
00:21:10,095 --> 00:21:12,655
a set of billiard balls.

369
00:21:12,798 --> 00:21:14,265
Case closed.