- 10 months ago
Τα Πιο Παράξενα Αντικείμενα (Strangest Things)
2021 | Επ. 02.05 | HD
Καταχωνιασμένα μέσα σε μουσεία, εργαστήρια και αποθήκες ανά την υφήλιο βρίσκονται τα πιο αξιοσημείωτα και μυστηριώδη αντικείμενα στον κόσμο. Σήμερα, αξιοποιώντας νέες έρευνες και τεχνολογικά μέσα, μπορούμε να τα μελετήσουμε πιο διεξοδικά από ποτέ.
Προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος τον Χίτλερ και την 11/9 με μια μπρούτζινη συσκευή 500 ετών; Γιατί μια εταιρεία φτιάχνει συσκευή που σώζει τη ζωή ενός μικρού πουλιού; Πώς σκοτώνει μια μικρή μεταλλική σφαίρα;
2021 | Επ. 02.05 | HD
Καταχωνιασμένα μέσα σε μουσεία, εργαστήρια και αποθήκες ανά την υφήλιο βρίσκονται τα πιο αξιοσημείωτα και μυστηριώδη αντικείμενα στον κόσμο. Σήμερα, αξιοποιώντας νέες έρευνες και τεχνολογικά μέσα, μπορούμε να τα μελετήσουμε πιο διεξοδικά από ποτέ.
Προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος τον Χίτλερ και την 11/9 με μια μπρούτζινη συσκευή 500 ετών; Γιατί μια εταιρεία φτιάχνει συσκευή που σώζει τη ζωή ενός μικρού πουλιού; Πώς σκοτώνει μια μικρή μεταλλική σφαίρα;
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00:00Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
00:30Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
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08:45...which is very, very dangerous and quite lethal.
08:50And there is no antidote.
08:55Ricin.
08:57Ricin is really easy to get...
08:59...because it comes out of castor oil beans...
09:02...and the oil itself is not dangerous...
09:05...but the waste that remains in huge amounts...
09:08...contains the highly toxic substance ricin.
09:11When ricin enters the bloodstream...
09:13...it blocks cells from producing essential protein.
09:18The reaction in the body is rapid...
09:20...and extremely dangerous.
09:22Ricin causes vomiting, a very high white blood cell count...
09:26...fever, sweating, abdominal pain.
09:29This is all very typical for poisoning...
09:31...and since Markov had exactly those symptoms...
09:34...this is a clear sign that he was poisoned with ricin.
09:39So why doesn't Kostov die in Paris?
09:42The French sphere turns out to be identical to the Markov sphere...
09:47...in all respects except one.
09:50The holes are not empty.
09:52They contain tiny amounts of a substance.
09:55Not poison, but something quite innocuous.
09:59Wax.
10:00Investigators believe the wax acts as a plug.
10:06So the sphere itself is simply the delivery mechanism for this poison.
10:11The poison is tucked away inside, capped with wax...
10:16...until the sphere enters the body.
10:19At that point, it warms up and releases the goods.
10:25Scientists suspect that Kostov's survival is dumb luck.
10:30The sphere enters part of his back where there are fewer large blood vessels.
10:34So by the time the wax melts and the poison starts to circulate...
10:38...his body has begun to protect itself.
10:41In Kostov's case, there was blood clotting taking place...
10:45...and this prevented poison from getting out of the little sphere.
10:53Such a bizarre way to assassinate someone may seem crazy...
10:57...but crazy is big in Cold War espionage.
11:00So this all sounds very James Bond-ish, but we should keep in mind...
11:06...we're talking about the Cold War.
11:09And the use of clandestine weapons, objects concealed in other objects...
11:14...the true purpose of which is cleverly disguised.
11:17This is not so uncommon.
11:18This is part and parcel of the business of espionage.
11:24Poisoning is very typical for secret services.
11:27For example, the leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro...
11:30was supposed to be killed with toxin botulinum in a box of his favorite cigars.
11:36That was in the 60s.
11:37And in the 70s, they developed a method to use a dart...
11:41...filled with shellfish poison that would just leave a very tiny red mark...
11:46...nearly invisible to kill people.
11:49So it's something that happens all the time.
11:53Markov is killed by a speck of ricin contained in this microscopic sphere.
11:59But the truly bizarre story is how it gets into Markov in the first place.
12:08Before Markov dies, he tells hospital staff a strange tale...
12:12...that sounds like something out of a John le Carre novel.
12:15On the afternoon of September 7th, Markov was on his way to work at the BBC.
12:19He crosses Waterloo Bridge and as he's waiting at a bus station...
12:23He feels a sharp jab in his thigh.
12:26He hears someone say, I'm sorry...
12:29...looks around and sees a man he doesn't recognize pick out an umbrella...
12:33...and step into a cab and speed off.
12:35Only hours later, he starts to feel all these terrible symptoms.
12:39Is the umbrella a weapon?
12:41There's no way to know because the umbrella and the suspect have disappeared.
12:46Within a year of Markov's death, the police case has stalled.
12:51It is ten more years before they catch a break.
13:01On the 10th of November 1989, one day after the fall of the Berlin Wall...
13:06...Zhivkov is ousted as the dictator of Bulgaria.
13:09Communism there falls and the secrets start to tumble out.
13:13Investigators exploring the Communist Interior Ministry make a startling discovery.
13:19They stumble upon a stack of these umbrellas...
13:23...modified to fire tiny metal pellets.
13:26Now investigators know the umbrella gun is real...
13:29...and they understand exactly how it works.
13:32This device looked like any normal umbrella.
13:35When you pushed the button to open the umbrella, it acted as a firing trigger...
13:40...and this released a gas stored in the cylinder in the stem of the umbrella.
13:43The gas propels the sphere with enough force to pierce through the flash.
13:50The police now know precisely how Markov died.
13:55The one thing they don't know is who pulled the trigger.
14:03There's a lot of people who come under suspicion...
14:05...as possibly being the man with the umbrella.
14:08Among them is a man thought to be associated with the Bulgarian government...
14:13...Francesco Gallino.
14:16He's known to have made several trips to London...
14:19...including one right around the time of Markov's assassination.
14:23And it's also known that he left for Rome the day after.
14:26Evidence puts him at the right place and the right time.
14:31And Gallino is questioned by the international police in 1993.
14:35But the evidence is circumstantial at best.
14:41Gallino dies in August 2021.
14:45Nobody is ever charged with Markov's murder.
14:49Even now, more than 40 years after Markov's death...
14:52...the only solid evidence we have of his assassination...
14:55...is this strange metal sphere.
14:58No bigger than the head of a pin.
15:01Whoever was ultimately responsible for this attack...
15:04...one thing is certainly true.
15:06Sometimes very, very bad things...
15:08...come in very, very small packages.
15:10At Oxford University's History of Science Museum...
15:20...is an extraordinary device.
15:23This elegant, intricate contraption is hundreds of years old...
15:26...and it straddles the borderlands between science and superstition.
15:31We are still trying to understand how exactly we work.
15:38Now, using the latest technology...
15:40...we are going to open up this incredible instrument...
15:43...layer by layer...
15:45...to uncover its hidden secrets.
15:48It measures roughly 20 centimeters across.
15:52Intricately etched plates and dials cover both faces.
15:56And it changed the way we look at the universe.
16:01It can predict everything that is going on in the heavens.
16:05But it was intended for more than astronomy.
16:10This one in particular has a series of markings and inscriptions...
16:14...that indicate that it was also used in connection to medicine.
16:18But what makes this device truly special...
16:21...is the identity of its owner.
16:23Someone who is claimed to have prophesied world-changing events.
16:34It is said to have belonged to a man that allegedly predicted 9-11...
16:40...or the rise of Hitler centuries before they happened.
16:43And this man was Nostradamus.
16:46Experts believe this could be the device...
16:50...Nostradamus used to make his infamous predictions.
16:54Essentially, it is a kind of way of predicting...
16:57...what the future is going to bring.
16:59What is this extraordinary machine?
17:03Is it really a medical device?
17:06Who is Nostradamus?
17:08And can he really use this to predict the future?
17:18This beautiful device is an astrolabe.
17:21The face of the astrolabe is a kind of two-dimensional map...
17:26...of the night sky.
17:28Overhead, there is this dome of the night sky.
17:31And it's projected onto this flat sort of two-dimensional system...
17:35...in much the same way that the surface of the Earth...
17:38...is projected onto a flat surface in an ordinary map.
17:42The name comes from the Greek, so astrolabe means the taker of the stars.
17:51And it's a very nice image because you are able to encompass the whole of the universe...
17:57...with this tool that you can hold in your hand.
18:00An astrolabe has various moving parts that allows one to predict...
18:06...the altitude of a particular star above the horizon at a particular time and place of the year.
18:15So it's really a device for making sense of the night sky.
18:21But it's so much more than that.
18:29It could be used to measure distances, to calculate the heights of buildings.
18:33It could be used to forecast tides.
18:37There were special astrolabes that were used for navigation.
18:40One 10th century philosopher suggested that there were a thousand uses for the astrolabe.
18:47This is one of the most stunning in existence.
18:51Because it's not just an astrolabe.
18:54It's really two devices in one.
18:57One face is the star predicting astrolabe.
19:02While the device on the opposite face is for the planets.
19:08This is called an equatorium.
19:13The planets are harder to follow because, unlike the stars, they're moving much more.
19:19That's in fact what planet means.
19:21It means wanderer.
19:22These were seen to be star-like objects that wandered around the sky.
19:26It extends both into the past and into the future.
19:31So you can predict really at any time in the future where the planets are going to be.
19:38You can also project back into the past to predict where they were.
19:43So really this device gives you in one package a way of understanding and predicting the movements of the entirety of what you could see in the night sky.
19:56An astrolabe and an equatorium in a single device is virtually unheard of.
20:01That's really rare.
20:03We only have three that have come down to us and we are still trying to understand how exactly they work.
20:11But one thing is clear.
20:13This is a high-precision instrument.
20:18This astrolabe is not only really beautiful and really breathtaking to look at, but it's also very precise.
20:26Very complex calculations go into making all these scales, all these different parts.
20:34But did this rare and specialized piece of equipment really belong to the infamous Nostradamus?
20:40We have very strong clues to the identity of the astrolabe's owner.
20:51Records show the astrolabe belonged to a rich French family called the Dotevilles.
20:58And they had a very famous neighbor.
21:02Nostradamus or Michel de Notre Dame lived very close to the Doteville family for the last 19 years of his life.
21:10Living in the same small French town, it's inevitable these prominent citizens would have known each other well.
21:17And when Nostradamus died, it's thought the Doteville family may have acquired his astrolabe.
21:23They were certainly one of the few families in the region wealthy enough to have bought it.
21:28Another clue is inscribed on the astrolabe itself.
21:34We have this inscription, Inicum Morbi, which means the onset of sickness, which would be used to calculate the beginning of fevers.
21:43Fevers normally happen at particular points throughout the year, and this would need to be calculated.
21:50This rare inscription regarding illness is significant because Nostradamus is a doctor.
21:58Nostradamus was a physician, and he also had the economic power at the end of his life to acquire such a complex and expensive instrument.
22:09So if we put all the pieces together, there are many chances that this astrolabe could have actually belonged to Nostradamus.
22:17But why does a famous doctor need a device that reads the stars and planets?
22:30In the Middle Ages, astronomy and astrology are an integral part of medicine.
22:36There was a belief at that time that there was a correspondence between what was happening in the heavens and what was happening on Earth and in the body.
22:49It's actually something easy to understand.
22:52If we look, for example, at the moon, we see that it has an influence on the tides.
22:58So why wouldn't the rest of the celestial bodies have also a real influence on the lives of people?
23:05The application of astrology to medicine begins thousands of years ago.
23:11In ancient Greece, in the Hellenistic period, around 300 BCE, a technique was developed which attributed a different zodiac sign to every part of the body.
23:20Each one of the zodiacal constellations had particular characteristics that would transfer those characteristics to that part of the body.
23:30So Aries got the head, Gemini got the shoulders and poor Scorpio ended up with the genitals.
23:37The zodiac constellations also take the blame for specific illnesses.
23:42Pisces, Cancer and Capricorn cause diseases involving sores, scales and fistulas,
23:47while Sagittarius and Gemini are responsible for falling fits or epileptic seizures.
23:53And planets have their own unique role in medieval medicine.
24:00Planets were in charge of really rather random collections of parts of the human body.
24:04For example, Saturn controls the right ear and the spleen, while Jupiter controls the lungs and arteries.
24:10And poor Mercury gets speech, thought and the buttocks.
24:16So the astrolabe is a vital diagnostic tool for a doctor like Nostradamus.
24:23Nostradamus would use the astrolabe in order to calculate the horoscope of this person
24:29and see where the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars were at the birth of this particular person.
24:37Secondly, the time they got ill, as its zodiac characteristics had to be assessed.
24:42And thirdly, a decision would need to be made about the best day to try bleeding, bathing, sweating and so on,
24:48based on the locations and phases of the moon in the zodiac.
24:51Another job for the equatorium.
24:54Nostradamus then looks for the astrological sign that rules over the diagnosed disease.
25:00So Nostradamus would have known that if the problem was with the spine, then the orbit of the sun would have been important.
25:05While if it was the liver, then Jupiter needed to be tracked.
25:08All of which could be done with his equatorium.
25:12And Nostradamus uses the predictive powers of the astrolabe for more than just medicine.
25:18Nostradamus used the astrolabe to make calculations and predictions that he would publish in sort of digest form called almanacs.
25:27And they would contain all kinds of information that was extremely useful to people like farmers and fishermen,
25:34because they would predict the times of the tides, they would predict sunrise and sunset.
25:40But they were also commonly packed with little tidbits of useful information,
25:46useful tips about cures, for example, bits of folklore,
25:50things that would attract a readership beyond those who would find them immediately practically useful.
25:57All this seems a long way from supposedly predicting the rise of Hitler and the assassination of JFK.
26:04So what transforms Nostradamus from a medic into a prophet?
26:10And what does this strange device have to do with it?
26:14In the 16th century, Nostradamus works as a physician, using the astrolabe to treat patients.
26:26But it's a bad time to be a doctor.
26:33The continent was ravaged by plague, which was an incredibly deadly disease.
26:41And nobody knew what caused it. It seemed to strike without apparent rhyme or reason.
26:45When Nostradamus' wife and children are killed by the plague,
26:50he begins to move from medicine towards the occult and his infamous prophecies.
26:56Nostradamus tried to find a way of predicting what was going to happen so that he could be ready for another plague or another disaster.
27:06He spends hours meditating.
27:09He has hallucinations or visions.
27:13These inspire his prophecies, which he then refines with the predictions of the astrolabe.
27:19This ability to be able to say at such and such a time, on such and such a day,
27:26this planet will be here and this star will be here, this would have looked like an astonishing, almost a magical capability.
27:34The result is his ten-volume compendium of prophecies called The Centuries.
27:43But to avoid problems with the powerful Catholic Church, Nostradamus deliberately obscures his prophetic writing.
27:51What he did was use metaphorical language and also words in different languages, Latin, Greek,
27:59in order to predict the future, but also to do it in like a veiled way.
28:05One example says, the great man will be struck by a thunderbolt.
28:10And this has been associated with the murder of JFK.
28:20But of course, this is a very broad statement.
28:23A great man could be any kind of ruler and a thunderbolt could be a gunshot,
28:28but it could also be a real thunderbolt or any other kind of violent event.
28:35Nostradamus is also supposed to have predicted the rise of Hitler.
28:46One of these lines says that in the west of Europe, a child born of poor parents will rise,
28:53but many people were born from poor families and then have obtained power.
28:59So the problem of using this veiled language to present these predictions
29:04is that you can basically make them work for everything.
29:10But there is one prediction Nostradamus doesn't obscure.
29:14In the evening prior to his death, in July 1st, 1566, he said to his secretary
29:21that he wouldn't be found alive in the next morning, and then he died the next day.
29:27But of course, if you're going to die during the night, you probably don't feel very well in the evening of that day.
29:35Debate over the accuracy of Nostradamus' predictions will run and run.
29:42One thing we do know, Nostradamus claims all his prophecies are based on astrological calculations
29:50that he may have made with this astonishing astrolabe.
30:03In a cabinet at the Science Museum in London sits a very odd device.
30:09It's such a strange-looking contraption. Does it do good or does it do bad?
30:16It helps save thousands of lives all over the world.
30:20This strange thing was found in some of the deepest, darkest holes in the world.
30:24And it proved to be an incredibly simple solution to an industrial-sized problem.
30:28Now, using the latest technology, we are bringing this amazing machine out of the darkness and into the light.
30:40Measuring roughly 30 centimetres tall and 11 centimetres wide, this is the Canary Resuscitator.
30:48This simple metal-framed glass box changes the world.
30:52It actually became illegal to not use these birds.
30:56So what is this strange device? What inspires its creation? How does it save people's lives? And why is there a tiny bird inside?
31:16In fact, that tiny bird is crucial to how this machine works.
31:20Essentially, what you've got here is the world's most high-tech birdcage.
31:24It's not so bad for the bird. From inside, it can see out. It's got windows.
31:28But the key thing about it is that it's supposed to keep the bird alive in a place where the atmosphere should kill it.
31:34110 years ago, the construction of this birdcage is cutting-edge technology.
31:40It's a very engineering-focused device. There are screws, there are panes of glass.
31:46And once the bird is in the device, it can't get out. There's a perforated metal grill.
31:52The perforated grill inside the hinged porthole is key to its purpose.
31:58So once the porthole door is opened, the surrounding air rushes into that device. The bird breathes in that air. If there's something dangerous in the air, the bird will pass out. And that's when you know there's something wrong.
32:10The bird can be saved by shutting the airtight porthole, isolating it from the dangerous atmosphere. And that's where the tank on top comes in.
32:20There's a thin metal pipe that feeds oxygen into the space. It's airtight and it's responsible for resuscitating the bird. It's almost like a tiny space capsule keeping that bird alive.
32:33It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a small bird. In reality, this strange contraption is a game changer. But what is a canary doing inside it in the first place?
32:48In fact, this bizarre life saving bird box plays a vital role in the rise of the modern world.
32:58At the end of the 19th century, heavy industries are sweeping all before them.
33:05The world is powered by steam and steam in turn is powered by coal. So coal is really fundamental to this new way of life.
33:16But the more coal the world demands, the more hazardous coal mines become.
33:23It was a really dangerous place to work.
33:26You are at the mercy of cave-ins. There was big machinery. They were using dynamite. There were potentially floods.
33:33But the most feared ways of dying are invisible. The gases.
33:40All of the toxic gases are called damps, based after the German word damp meaning vapor.
33:47There was almost a superstitious fear with the damps because different damps killed people in different and sinister ways.
33:56Fire damp, the term used for trapped flammable gases, is the most violent.
34:02Fire damp is methane. And you can imagine these coal miners were walking around with candle lamps.
34:09Any naked flame would just ignite that methane.
34:15White damp is a more subtle but equally deadly killer.
34:22White damp is mostly made up of carbon monoxide. It's odourless, colourless, tasteless and lethal.
34:31Every time you're exposed to it, a bit more of that carbon monoxide binds to your hemoglobin.
34:38Slowly occupying more and more of the slots that are necessary to carry oxygen around your body.
34:42And if enough of those slots get filled, you can die within minutes.
34:46It's one of the most dangerous gases in mining and one of the most difficult to detect.
34:54In 1896, 57 men and 80 pit ponies die in a single incident in Wales.
35:02Oxford physiologist John Haldane is brought in to investigate.
35:07The bodies show no signs of fatal injuries, but they do have a familiar pink tinge.
35:14This pink tinge to the skin is one of the telltale signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.
35:21This demonstrated that it was the white damp, this silent killer, that had killed these men.
35:28Haldane sets out to find a way to detect carbon monoxide,
35:33which is where the canaries come in.
35:37But why canaries?
35:38In the late 19th century, there's no machine capable of detecting carbon monoxide.
35:49But what about an animal?
35:51Physiologist John Haldane locks himself away in his lab searching for answers.
35:56He studies mice and quickly discovers they are up to 20 times more sensitive to carbon monoxide than humans.
36:06Unfortunately, there's a problem with mice, and that problem is they sleep a lot.
36:10And that means if you see a mouse that's not moving in its little cage,
36:13how do you know whether it's suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning or just taking a nap?
36:17Birds turn out to be much more promising.
36:20They sit on their perch, and if a bird falls off of its perch, you know it's not sleeping, but it's been overcome.
36:27And Haldane discovers birds are even more sensitive to carbon monoxide than mice.
36:33They've got a very advanced respiratory system because birds have an incredibly fast metabolism for one simple reason.
36:39They fly.
36:43And flying expends an absolutely huge amount of energy per unit weight.
36:46Which means they have to inhale huge amounts of oxygen to power all those chemical reactions that allow them to stay in the air.
36:56That means they breathe a huge amount more air per unit volume than a human does,
37:01and are therefore much more susceptible to tiny concentrations of airborne toxins.
37:05There are literally thousands of bird species.
37:09So what is so special about canaries?
37:13Canaries sing, particularly the male birds are singing almost constantly.
37:19And let's face it, when you're a miner, you don't have a lot of time to be watching over your bird.
37:24You're too busy mining.
37:26So that means that they might just notice the canaries stop singing.
37:31Haldane's canaries rapidly transform the dangerous world of mining.
37:35On February the 15th, 1901, there's a devastating mining accident in Fife, and the mine becomes flooded with carbon monoxide.
37:45One of the survivors, Archibald Ramsay, went back in to rescue other miners, taking two canaries with him.
37:51And afterwards he said definitively that it was the canaries who kept him alive.
37:54This leads to the slightly bizarre situation of an actual canary law.
38:01Haldane's findings about canaries are considered so important that by 1911 they actually passed a law in parliament to say you must take canaries into the mines.
38:11And this isn't confined to Britain.
38:13Once people realize how vital canaries are, they become used all over the world as a standard in coal mining.
38:18By 1914 canaries are saving the lives of 800 men a year in Britain alone.
38:28But where does the idea of building a resuscitator for them come from?
38:38For the beginning of the 20th century, the canary resuscitator is a sophisticated piece of technology.
38:43This device is the work of the British engineering company Siba Gorman.
38:51Siba Gorman were a company who specialized in building diving helmets since the 1830s.
38:56And that meant they knew a lot about the critical technologies to building the resuscitator, providing oxygen and airtight seals.
39:03And by the time they build this canary resuscitator, Siba Gorman have already developed expertise in this kind of technology.
39:10In 1902, they actually built a man-sized respirator for mine rescue, which brought the miner about two hours working in this toxic environment.
39:21This same technology, now called the Proto, was also used in World War I for any regions that suffered from chemical weapons.
39:29The company's expertise in respiration and diving is obvious in the construction of the device.
39:34If you look carefully, there are rubber seals on the panes of glass and the screws that hold it all together, but also on the porthole door.
39:44And that's exactly the same kind of technology that's used in diving equipment.
39:49This diving technology makes the resuscitator airtight.
39:52As soon as the miner detected that the bird was in some kind of distress, the miner would shut the porthole door, sealing the air inside it.
40:02They'd then open the valve to the tank and all the toxic air would be flushed out, hopefully saving the bird.
40:08The black and white paint on the tank indicates that the contents are pure oxygen rather than simply air.
40:18And that is vital to saving the tiny bird.
40:21The higher the concentration of that oxygen, the easier it is for your lungs, even if they are in some kind of trouble, to absorb enough to keep the rest of your body alive.
40:28If you're a canary who's just breathed in a bunch of toxic gas, then it's far safer to be in a high oxygen atmosphere.
40:35That gives you a fighting chance of recovery.
40:37And on top of the device is a final sign of Siva Gorman's expertise.
40:43The oxygen in the tank is highly pressurized and you can't let that level of pressure into the device.
40:50It would kill the bird. So there's a small safety valve that just bleeds the pressure, making sure that the bird is safe.
40:56But why go to all this engineering cost and effort just to save a tiny bird?
41:09Some suspect the answer lies in the relationship between the miners and their canaries.
41:16I think we should be careful not to underestimate the need that human beings have, that lots of animals have, to form relationships with other things.
41:24We crave connection. We crave interaction.
41:27So if we interact with anything long enough, we have the potential to form some kind of connection to it.
41:33And if you have a canary in a cage and it's your canary and you're taking care of it every day, then on some level your brain becomes attached to that canary and you think, well, I love this canary.
41:42This is a very special canary. This is a great canary. This is my canary.
41:45Perhaps this is the origin of the resuscitator.
41:52It's entirely possible that canary resuscitators were really a result of the pressure for miners to protect their friends.
41:59Canaries become an instant fixture at the side of coal miners across the world.
42:06But even these much loved birds can't survive the march of technology.
42:13By the end of the 1980s, coal mines everywhere are retiring their canaries.
42:20These birds were used for a hundred years down in the mines and then they were replaced by little electronic devices.
42:28It's the end of the line for the canary resuscitator.
42:34So after a century of saving thousands of lives, the canary resuscitator ended up being a scuffed object in a museum.
42:42Just a historical curiosity.
42:45The resuscitator may have gone, but the canaries it protected have left their mark.
42:51The memory of the canary in the coal mine has a long lasting effect.
42:54After 9-11, canary breeders in New York were not able to keep up with demand because people really wanted that safety of having the canary there to warn about a potential chemical attack.
43:05And in 2003 in Baghdad, canaries were in really high demand for the very same reason.
43:11And they've left their mark on our language too.
43:15Everyone knows what the phrase canary in the coal mine means.
43:19It's become a shorthand for warning of trouble ahead.
43:21It's incredible to think that that term that we use so frequently came from this idea of canaries being so effective in saving lives.
43:31And saving lives.
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