The television In Europe we have more television sets than children and spend an average of nine years of our lives watching them.Yet its inventors, two men with wildly different visions, died unrewarded.This is the remarkable story of John Logie Baird, a Scotsman whose only previous successful invention was the thermal under-sock, and Philo T Farnsworth, a Mormon boy who at the age of 14 drew on a blackboard the outlines of an electronic television camera.The first public television broadcaster was the Nazi party, not the BBC, but though Hitler recognised its propaganda potential, he missed its real value: television would help win the Battle of Britain, not because of what was on it but what was in it.From terrorist outrages to soap operas, from obesity to politics, Jeremy gives his own unique take on how television has changed our world.
In Victorian times 'computers' were people who added up rows of figures. Now they are mechanical wonders - without them we couldn't fly planes, drive cars or even run our dishwashers. Jeremy Clarkson tells the story of the computer's evolution Jeremy tells the remarkable story of the computer's evolution from man with pencil to android with sub-machine gun. Jeremy discovers that the threat from computers lies not with Schwarzenegger's Terminator but from a much more devastating computer - Armageddon. The computer might yet change the world in a way that none of us are expecting.
The jet In 1929 a young pilot named Frank Whittle described his idea for a plane without propellers, a plane that could fly at more than 500mph and 30,000 feet above the ground. His invention, the jet, would change our world, yet for over a decade he struggled to get financial backing. In this programme Jeremy tells the all too British story of how Frank Whittle pioneered and yet lost this extraordinary invention. Jeremy also heads off on a five day trip around the globe to explore the impact of Whittle's brainchild on the modern world. He explores how the jet has encouraged a range of developments from tourism to the spread of SARS, from air crashes to jetlag. Jeremy offers his own very opinionated take on the benefits of the jet.
The gun The first invention covered in the series has generally had a negative press – the gun. The need for a more accurate cannon led James Wilkinson, in 1774, to invent a tube boring machine. This was then used by James Watt to make more efficient steam engines, which in turn powered the industrial revolution. Gun maker Sam Colt was not only the inventor of the first reliable revolver, which helped early settlers to defeat the Indians and led to the myth of the cowboy, but also invented a new method of manufacturing guns – the production line. Henry Ford made his Model T car affordable by copying, 'the Colt method'.Even the car exhaust pipe was a spin-off of the gun silencer. Street lighting was introduced to deter armed highway robbers whilst trauma medicine and the control of infections were initially developed to deal with gun injuries.
History Presentation 8D Note: There is an extra 24 seconds near the end just stop the video at 4:00
In this revealing documentary, Stephen Fry investigates the story of one of the most important machines ever invented - the Gutenberg Press. The printing press was the world's first mass-production machine. Its invention in the 1450s changed the world as dramatically as splitting the atom or sending men into space, sparking a cultural revolution that shaped the modern age. It is the machine that made us who we are today. Stephen's investigation combines historical detective work and a hands-on challenge. He travels to France and Germany on the trail of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press and early media entrepreneur. Along the way he discovers the lengths Gutenberg went to keep his project secret, explores the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors, and discovers why printing mattered so much in medieval Europe. But to really understand the man and his machine, Stephen gets his hands dirty - assembling a team of craftsmen and helping them build a working replica of Gutenberg's original press. He learns how to make paper the 15th-century way and works as an apprentice in a metal foundry in preparation for the experiment to put the replica press through its paces. Can Stephen's modern-day team match the achievement of Gutenberg's medieval craftsmen?
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In "Echoes of the Past." The tea in India leads Burke to the ritual of the Japanese tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism, and porcelain takes him to the architecture in Florence and Freemasons. Moving back in time and across continents, Burke finds the links to secret coding, and from there to radio-telephones and the science of radio astronomy, which allows scientists to listen to sounds from the rest of the universe.
![The Confessions of Robert Crumb [Part 1]](http://ll-images.veoh.com/media/w120/media-v15597097NdA78SzE1219327563Med.jpg)
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The Confessions of Robert Crumb [Part 1]
[Part 1] Fantastic documentary about comics guru, madman and pervert Robert Crumb. This film predates Terry Zwigoff's 'Crumb' by 7 years, and contains some truly bizarre moments captured by a BBC film crew over in the States. The artist discusses the seeds of his 60s work, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and also features interviews with his wife Aline.
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