- 2 days ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Oh, my God.
00:32What you're looking at is a bit of paper with holes in it.
00:35How's that for a spectacular way to start a program?
00:38But this may be the most important bit of paper with holes in it since the hole was invented.
00:44It's a punch card, and it stands for one of the most meaningful inventions man has ever given himself, the
00:50computer.
00:51In most people's everyday life, the computer isn't much more than a very fast adding machine.
00:56It tends to send you bills.
00:58But it is very much more than that.
01:00The modern world could not function without computers because they operate everything from production lines to telephone exchanges to traffic
01:08systems to international finance.
01:10But the main reason why computers matter to you and me and our future is because they have perfect memories.
01:17They never forget anything they're told about you and me.
01:21The kind of data, say, you have to give somebody if you want a bank account or credit or to
01:26be able to vote or buy a house
01:28or if you've been accused of a crime.
01:30And that's why computers contain the future within them.
01:34If you tell a computer everything about a group of people, it'll juggle the mix and come up with the
01:40one factor that is most likely to affect the decision that group will make about something one way or the
01:45other.
01:47Knowing that is knowing the future, and that is power, but in whose hands?
01:55This computer has a particularly spectacular kind of memory of the past and knowledge of the future in its databanks.
02:01Watch this.
02:33Watch this.
02:44Watch this.
02:45Watch this.
02:47Watch this.
02:48Watch this.
02:49Watch this.
02:50Watch this.
02:51Watch this.
02:52Watch this.
02:52Watch this.
02:53Watch this.
02:53Watch this.
02:54Watch this.
02:59Watch this.
03:01This computer runs a planetarium, and so it handles, as a matter of simple routine, the universe.
03:07As far forward in time as you like, or back.
03:11How would you like the beginning of everything?
03:29Or, here's one full turn of the Earth. Tomorrow, in 15 seconds.
03:43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
03:53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
03:59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:01. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:04. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:04. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:06. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:08. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:08. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:09. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:09. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
04:09. . .
04:14Now, the reason I'm showing you all this fun and games
04:17is not because I'm some kind of astronomy freak.
04:19It's because the very first time mankind gained the power
04:23to see into the future, like the computer can now,
04:26that power was in the hands of the priest astronomers
04:29over 3,000 years ago.
04:31And look what that led to.
04:33First, the moon.
04:37Roughly every 12 times you saw this happen,
04:40the waxing and waning of the moon,
04:41you were back where you started in terms of planting
04:44or harvesting or irrigation, once a year.
04:47So the priest astronomers were able to tell the farmers,
04:50plant now.
04:52Now, the more they looked up at the moon,
04:53the more they learned about the stars.
04:55And so by the 5th century BC,
04:58they had identified and named most of the major constellations.
05:0212 of them, stretching across the sky.
05:06Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio,
05:20Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.
05:26So they divided the sky into 12 sections,
05:29six in one hemisphere, six in the other.
05:32They called these sections houses
05:34and gave the houses power over life, health, money, love and so on.
05:43So which house a constellation was in affected life on Earth, they said.
05:48Now, the more this astrology stuff became popular,
05:51the more the astronomers saw.
05:53They saw, for instance, that besides the sun and the moon,
05:56there were five other things in the sky that moved, like this.
06:01So they called them the wanderers.
06:03In Greek, planeta, planets.
06:07So, by the 2nd century AD,
06:10this is the kind of stuff the astronomers were turning out.
06:13It's a copy of a bit of an astronomical bestseller
06:16by a fellow called Claudius Ptolemy.
06:18It's a star table.
06:19There's the name of the star, which constellation it's in,
06:22how many degrees up in the sky, which hemisphere, how bright.
06:25And he did that for 1,022 stars.
06:29But it was still the old magic that got the crowds on their feet,
06:32especially the magic of being able to predict something like this.
06:45So, by the Middle Ages,
06:48they thought they'd got a pretty clear idea
06:49of the kind of universe they'd got.
06:51I say they, we didn't,
06:53up here in cold, windy northern Europe,
06:55we were too busy just trying to get through the Dark Ages in one piece.
06:58But the Arabs did,
07:00and they'd learnt it from the Persians and the Indians.
07:03Take a look at this.
07:06This is a mechanical version of an Arabic universe
07:09we built so we could crank it around.
07:12First, for very obvious reasons,
07:15they thought the Earth, here where I am now,
07:17was at the centre of everything.
07:23All around it, out in space,
07:25was a gigantic crystal sphere
07:26carrying the constellations and rotating slowly.
07:31Inside that were another seven crystal spheres,
07:34also rotating,
07:35each one carrying a different planet.
07:38Closest to the Earth, they thought,
07:39was the Moon.
07:40Then Mercury,
07:42then Venus,
07:44then came the Sun,
07:45and beyond that,
07:47Mars,
07:48and then Jupiter,
07:49and finally,
07:51Saturn.
07:53If you were an Arab,
07:54all this was vital
07:55because it told you
07:57in which direction Mecca,
07:58the holy city, lay,
07:59and it told you what time it was
08:01so that you could pray when you should
08:02because they had this.
08:04It's a kind of heavenly computer
08:05called an astrolabe.
08:07Each one of these little points
08:08represents a star
08:09and you can move the whole lot
08:10so that you can reproduce
08:12what you see in the sky
08:13on a particular night
08:14and when you've done that,
08:15the astrolabe will tell you
08:15what the date is.
08:17On the other side,
08:18there are these two little sights.
08:21You line the sights up on a star,
08:24then you read the angle off there,
08:26and you look that angle up
08:27in your star tables
08:28and they tell you
08:29that the star will be at that angle
08:30at a certain time of night,
08:32accurate to within a minute.
08:33And of course,
08:34if you know what direction
08:35the star is in,
08:36you can work out where Mecca is.
08:38So, the Arabs were able to say
08:41where everything in the sky would be
08:42throughout the year
08:43at any time,
08:44day or night.
08:45I mean, take, for example,
08:47Dawn on September the 14th,
08:49714 AD.
08:50At that point,
08:51Venus would have been
08:52up in the third house,
08:53let's get it up there.
08:55Mercury would have been
08:55in the second house
08:56and everybody else
08:57would have been clustered
08:58in the first house
08:59together with the constellation Virgo,
09:01except for Jupiter,
09:02which would have been
09:03down below the horizon
09:04in the 12th house.
09:08So, since this vast universe
09:10was so powerful,
09:11I mean,
09:12the sun made plants grow
09:13and the stars changed
09:14with the seasons,
09:15everybody reckoned
09:16that the sky ruled
09:17all life on Earth.
09:18So, if you got sick,
09:20say,
09:20a great deal hung
09:22on what was in the sky
09:22when you were born.
09:24And that's why
09:25dawn on September the 14th,
09:28714 matters so much.
09:30It was the birthday
09:31of the Caliph al-Mansur,
09:33the founder of Baghdad,
09:34who in 765
09:36got as sick as a dog
09:37and couldn't be cured.
09:39And what happened
09:40because of that
09:40is one of the most
09:41extraordinary accidents
09:43in history.
09:44You see,
09:45up in the mountains
09:46a few hundred miles away
09:47at a place called
09:48Jundi Shapur,
09:49there was a monastery
09:50that had a medical school.
09:52And finally,
09:53in desperation,
09:53the director of the
09:54medical school
09:54was invited down
09:55and he promptly
09:56cured the Caliph.
09:57And he probably
09:58used astrology to do it.
10:00See,
10:00astrologers reproduced
10:01what was in the sky
10:02on a chart,
10:02very much like
10:03the ones in your daily paper.
10:05Each planet
10:06or constellation
10:06was supposed to have
10:08power over
10:09metals,
10:10plants,
10:11medicine,
10:12your career,
10:13your life,
10:14disease,
10:15you name it,
10:16they ruled.
10:17So any medical astrologer
10:18looking at the Caliph's
10:20birth horoscope
10:20would have said,
10:21wow,
10:21look at this lot here
10:22in one influential grouping
10:23in the house of life.
10:24I mean,
10:25Virgo gives you
10:26stomach trouble,
10:27Saturn gives you
10:27a hernia,
10:28Mars gives you ulcers
10:29and the moon
10:30makes you vomit.
10:30So diagnosis
10:31would have been
10:32a piece of cake.
10:33Now,
10:34you may think
10:34that's a lot of garbage.
10:35So do I.
10:37But history records
10:38that Al-Mansur
10:39actually did have
10:40stomach trouble.
10:42Well,
10:43he was up and about
10:43in no time
10:44and Jundishapur
10:45became a very popular place
10:47and that's when it happened
10:48because when the Arabs
10:49turned up for a look around
10:50they found it stuffed
10:51full of manuscripts
10:52containing a vast amount
10:54of ancient Greek knowledge
10:55which they jumped at
10:56and started translating.
10:58Knowledge
10:59that might have been
11:00lost to us forever
11:01if Al-Mansur
11:02hadn't gone sick
11:02because as Arab civilization
11:04moved west
11:05across the Mediterranean
11:06it took that knowledge
11:07with it
11:08and a belief
11:09in a mechanical universe
11:10whose signs could be read
11:12for the benefit
11:13of mankind
11:14trapped inside it.
11:27The new knowledge
11:28was to take us
11:29out of the treadmill
11:30of ignorance
11:31and put us in charge
11:32of our lives
11:33in a way
11:33we'd never been before
11:35especially when
11:36the amazing new
11:37Arab translations
11:38of medical stuff
11:39got to pox-ridden
11:40in Europe.
11:43The first European
11:45medical unit
11:45was set up at Salerno
11:46in Italy
11:47in the 11th century
11:50complete with
11:51do-it-yourself
11:51instruction manuals
11:52like this lot.
11:57Salerno had its first
11:58big success
11:59as a medieval mash
12:00you know
12:01crusaders stopping off
12:02on their way back
12:03for repairs
12:03and then moving on
12:05to tell the folks
12:05at home
12:06all about this
12:06amazing new thing
12:07called curing people.
12:13Well to the Europeans
12:14so short of medical
12:16knowledge that
12:16with any disease
12:17you tended to get
12:18seriously dead
12:19this was something
12:20they had to have
12:21and in their new
12:22universities
12:23one of the two
12:24really avant-garde
12:25things to study
12:26became doctoring.
12:33the other academic turn-on
12:35was also due
12:36to the Muslims
12:36when the Christians
12:38took Toledo
12:39back from the Spanish
12:40Arabs in 1105
12:41they found libraries
12:42stacked with astronomy
12:44books
12:44which the king
12:45promptly ordered
12:45translated
12:46you could hear
12:47the sound of scribbling
12:48and excitement
12:49all over Europe
12:49remember those
12:51star tables of Ptolemies
12:52that sort of stuff
12:53was turning up
12:54well by the 13th century
12:56anybody studying
12:57the new medicine
12:58and astronomy
12:58was into what we would call
12:59scientific investigation
13:01a hard-nosed approach
13:02to things
13:03that definitely
13:04underwhelmed
13:04one very heavy
13:05bunch of people
13:15see these were the days
13:16of the great clerical
13:17carve-up
13:18between the traditionalists
13:19in the church
13:20and the new thinkers
13:21who'd got turned on
13:22by the new science
13:32on the one hand
13:33the traditionalists
13:35who said
13:35listen all you have
13:36to do is believe
13:37and whatever the early
13:37church fathers wrote
13:38that's the horse's mouth
13:43and on the other
13:44the new thinkers
13:45who reckoned
13:45that if something
13:46didn't stand up
13:47to analysis and argument
13:48then you couldn't trust it
13:49no matter who it was
13:50well that kind of made
13:52the traditionalists
13:53foam at the mouth
13:54to them
13:55it was revolutionary
13:56claptrap
13:57though to us
13:58this new view is obvious
13:59if you could examine
14:00the sky
14:01and the human body
14:02and find out
14:03how they worked
14:03was there any limit
14:05to what you could do
14:05why believe anything
14:07unless you could prove it
14:08our modern approach
14:10to learning starts here
14:11but what drove
14:13the traditionalists
14:13bananas
14:14was that these guys
14:15were even suggesting
14:16you could apply
14:17the same experimental
14:18approach
14:18to what God was
14:27West of all
14:28they said this
14:29you compare one
14:30holy writer with another
14:31on some crucial point
14:32and they don't agree
14:37put yourself in the Pope's
14:39position with all these
14:40guys rocking the boat
14:41there was only one thing
14:42to do
14:42invent the inquisition
14:44and we all know
14:45what that got up to
14:46very nasty stuff
14:47Neil Glavius
15:00Now
15:02while some of the
15:03knowledge coming in
15:05via the Arabs
15:05was causing the church
15:06a load of trouble
15:07some of it
15:09was about to
15:09help solve
15:10a really serious problem
15:12the problem the church
15:13had was telling the time
15:15you see
15:16the church had rules
15:17that if you were a monk
15:18you had to say certain prayers
15:19at certain hours
15:20of the day and night
15:21and as a monk
15:22your salvation
15:23depended on doing that
15:24properly
15:24so knowing what time
15:25it was was vital
15:27now
15:27in the Mediterranean
15:28in the south
15:29they had sundials
15:31and they had candles
15:32now they had both
15:33up here in northern Europe too
15:34but the problem
15:35with the sundial
15:36in northern Europe
15:36is that
15:37there's not very much sun
15:38it's cloudy a lot
15:39of the time
15:40and as for candles
15:41well at the time
15:42they were very expensive
15:43and they did sometimes
15:45tend to burn places down
15:46now the only way
15:47we know
15:48how they solved
15:49the problem
15:49of getting the prayer
15:50right at the right time
15:52was because of a chronicle
15:53written by a monk
15:54called Jocelyn de Bracalond
15:56and he lived
15:57in the abbey church
15:58of Bury St. Edmunds
15:59in England
16:00where the body
16:01of St. Edmunds
16:02was buried
16:02so it was a very
16:02important church
16:03anyway he says
16:04that one night
16:05June the 23rd
16:071198
16:08everybody in the abbey
16:09was awakened
16:10by the sound
16:11of the most gigantic fire
16:13and they raced out
16:14terrified
16:14and sure enough
16:15the whole place
16:16was going up in smoke
16:16it was a major catastrophe
16:17and he says
16:18the young men among us
16:20ran
16:20some to the well
16:21and some to the clock
16:24now the reason
16:25they ran to a clock
16:26to put the fire out
16:27was because
16:28they were using
16:28a water clock
16:30and that's fine by day
16:32but who wakes you up
16:33at night
16:33and says
16:34excuse me
16:35it's five o'clock
16:35and you've got to do
16:36that particular prayer
16:37now we haven't known
16:38for centuries
16:39how they solved the problem
16:40of waking up in the middle
16:40of the night
16:41until recently
16:42when a fragment
16:44of an 11th century manuscript
16:45was discovered
16:46in a monastery
16:47in the Pyrenees
16:48and in this fragment
16:49it said in Latin of course
16:50this is how you build
16:52a water powered
16:53alarm clock
16:54so we did
16:55we think it's the only one
16:56in the world
16:57and you know what
16:59it works
17:01I think it's fantastic
17:03here's the reservoir
17:03of water
17:04running water
17:05coming down here
17:06at a very carefully
17:07controlled speed
17:08fills the reservoir
17:09here
17:09where there's a float
17:10down in there
17:11and on top of the float
17:12is this shaft
17:13and on the shaft
17:14there are teeth
17:14now as the float
17:15rises slowly
17:16these teeth engage
17:17in this cog system
17:18here
17:18on the face of the clock
17:20and that turns the clock
17:21very slowly
17:22and for daytime
17:23there's your clock
17:24you know what time it is
17:25now for your alarm call
17:26at night
17:27you take
17:28a little sliver
17:29of metal like that
17:29and you stick it
17:30in one of these slits
17:31around the outside
17:32of the clock face
17:33depending what time you want
17:34like say 3 o'clock
17:35in the morning
17:35and when 3 o'clock
17:36in the morning
17:37comes around
17:37that little metal sliver
17:39rises just
17:40and touches this ledge
17:42here and trips it
17:43as it goes by
17:44causing this tiny weight
17:45to swing down here
17:47pulling this noose
17:48off that restraining arm
17:50now once the noose
17:51is off that restraining arm
17:52this shaft here
17:53spins round and round
17:54now it does that
17:55because in here
17:56it's got rope
17:57wound round and round it
17:58and that rope's attached
17:59to some very heavy weights
18:00so when the shaft is free
18:01the weights fall
18:02and the shaft spins
18:03and when it does
18:04this bit here
18:05goes forward
18:06and hits the bell
18:07and that's your alarm call
18:08and who said genius
18:09was simple
18:10look at it in action
18:41and I'll see you guys
18:41to see you guys
18:41as well
18:41in run
18:42to see
18:44Great showbiz, but the trouble was in winter the water still froze, so it wasn't until
18:49about 1280 that somebody came up with a brilliant idea of getting rid of the water completely
18:55and using only the weight to power the clock.
18:57The system that made that idea feasible was probably one of the greatest inventions in
19:02the history of mankind, the verge and foliate.
19:14This is it, you see this wheel with teeth in it, well it's being turned by weight and
19:21a piece of rope wrapped around a shaft just like the one in the alarm clock.
19:24It's not whizzing round so fast because it's being held in check by the verge and foliate
19:28system I told you about.
19:29Look, this is the verge bit and it has a blade there which comes in and catches the teeth and
19:34stops the wheel moving for a second like that.
19:36Now every time it does that it's then kicked away by the wheel because the wheel is being
19:39pulled by the main weight.
19:40And when that happens, another blade down at the bottom catches in the teeth and holds
19:45the wheel for another split second before it too is kicked away.
19:49And the two blades alternate between them, back and forth, holding the wheel back all
19:52the time.
19:53And as they operate, you can hear the sound with which the world has become familiar over
19:59the last 700 years.
20:00the sound of tick, top, tick, top.
20:05really cool, big, dangerous, tough as he's験ged in the world as he is fromooks when more
20:16about his way to go.
20:17You can hear the sound of thing I'm interested in.
20:18By 1400, what had started as a machine to tell people when to pray had become a machine
20:23for telling people when to work.
20:44Towns all over Europe got clocks,
20:46and when they rang, you moved.
20:48And you moved until they rang again when you stopped.
20:51Does that idea ring a bell?
20:58MUSIC PLAYS
20:59This was also when we got our 12-hour clock,
21:02because striking 24 for one of these monsters
21:04was much too complicated.
21:08The new clocks made the towns more efficient,
21:10and production went up.
21:13OK, put yourself back then,
21:15say, in the position of a successful merchant or businessman,
21:19riding high on the late medieval economic boom.
21:22All around you, towns are running their businesses
21:25with clocks like these in their towers.
21:28Time is becoming money.
21:30So what do you want?
21:31You want time.
21:32But you don't want it like that up a tower.
21:34You want it in your pocket.
21:35So there must have been a very ready market around
21:37when some craftsman, I don't know,
21:39around about 1450, 1460,
21:41made the next great step.
21:43He might even have been, say, a locksmith.
21:46Because if you look at the locks of the time,
21:48you see that they work,
21:49they stay open or stay closed,
21:51because of the power of that.
21:53Bending metal.
21:55So the spring is the concept I'm talking about.
21:57But it was what you do with the spring
21:59that was really clever.
22:01You see, a spring has problems.
22:03When it's wound up tight, it starts to unwind,
22:06it's working very powerfully, strongly.
22:07As it unwinds, it becomes weaker and weaker.
22:10So if you're going to get a spring to work,
22:12you have to make sure that it's given the hard work
22:14at the beginning and the easy work at the end.
22:17Now, in clocks, this is how they did that.
22:21They put the spring inside a barrel.
22:23There's a barrel.
22:24And the spring is connected to the barrel
22:25so that as the spring unwinds, the barrel turns.
22:28Now, coiled around the outside of the barrel,
22:30there's either cat, gut or chain, in this case.
22:33And that chain is then taken across over here
22:34and wound round and round the main drive shaft of the clock.
22:38But you see that?
22:40That drive shaft is tapered
22:41so that as the chain unwinds,
22:44the first parts unwind down here
22:45where the hard work has to be done by the spring.
22:48And then as it weakens,
22:49it's unwinding further and further up the shaft
22:52until right at the top, the easiest work is being done,
22:54the position it's in now, as a matter of fact.
22:56Now, that threaded shaft there is called a fusee.
22:59And if you're ever looking at your wristwatch one day
23:02and wondering why you're a slave to it,
23:03blame the fusee.
23:04That's where it all started.
23:06These spring-driven clocks were, as you would expect,
23:09instant raving success.
23:10I mean, imagine being given something like that
23:13when the world you live in
23:15is full of bears and wolves
23:18and dark forests and muddy tracks and thatched roofs.
23:21It must have been like one of us
23:22getting a personal interstellar spacecraft to play with
23:25and park round behind the house.
23:28Most of these medieval mechanical marvels
23:32came from the same town in southern Germany
23:34that this one did
23:35because it's called a Nuremberg egg.
23:56OK, enough of the tourist bit.
23:58On with the story.
23:59Nuremberg was good at clock-making
24:01because it was good at metalwork
24:02because it was in the greatest mining area in Europe.
24:05Gold, silver, iron, copper.
24:07So it was very, very rich.
24:10And it had the best craftsmen in Europe.
24:13They used to boast that your average burgher here
24:15lived better than the king of Scotland.
24:18Nuremberg was also on a main road,
24:20so a lot of people came through.
24:22In most cases, they came for the expertise
24:24that the craftsmen here guarded so jealously,
24:27keeping their earnings up
24:28by keeping other craftsmen out of town.
24:32At one end of the scale,
24:34they produced some of the best armour around.
24:36At the other, extremely delicate
24:38and extremely expensive trinkets like this.
24:42Nuremberg became a centre for research into metallurgy,
24:44and since they also ran silver mines,
24:46they also had the biggest banking corporations in Europe.
24:49They lent money to everybody to finance their wars
24:51and then made even more money
24:53by selling them a nice little line in weapons they also made.
24:56And where have we heard that trick before?
24:59But the point of all this, I hear you ask?
25:02Well, because Nuremberg was so well-placed
25:05to make fantastically complex clocks like this,
25:07it started turning out instruments
25:09that were just as accurate,
25:11sky-watching instruments.
25:13Thanks to the locksmiths and the clockmakers,
25:15you could now look at the sky in such detail
25:17with the new improved instruments,
25:19you began to see that there was something wrong
25:22with the old idea of the Earth
25:24being at the centre of everything.
25:29This frightening possibility took Europe by storm.
25:32Up north, everybody was talking about it.
25:34Down south, here in Italy, and nobody was.
25:37Or if they were, they made sure they were alone.
25:40Well, most of them did, except one,
25:43which is why our story takes us next
25:44to the Italian cathedral city of Pisa.
25:48And this is where the Catholic Church comes into the picture.
25:52It was probably a man called Hans Lipperske,
25:55a spectacle-maker who lived in Holland,
25:57who is as responsible as anybody
25:59for kicking the whole thing off.
26:01Because in 1603, he offered this to the Dutch army
26:05for use in the battlefield.
26:06He called it his looker.
26:08We call it a telescope.
26:11A year later, in 1609,
26:14one was in the hands of Galileo.
26:15And from the very first moment
26:17that he looked through it at the night sky,
26:19our view of where we stand in the universe changed.
26:22Because what Galileo saw
26:24confirmed what the Polish astronomer Copernicus
26:26had been saying theoretically for 60 years,
26:29that the Earth was not the centre of the universe
26:31with everything going round it.
26:37Galileo saw something that shook him rigid.
26:40Jupiter.
26:41That was OK.
26:42But with moons going round it?
26:44So if Jupiter was the centre for its moons,
26:46that blew the idea that the Earth
26:48was the centre of everything.
26:52When Galileo published what he thought,
26:55the result was the Inquisition
26:56and house arrest until the day he died.
26:59In those days, you simply did not question
27:02what the Catholic Church said.
27:03And the Catholic Church said
27:05that the Earth was the centre of everything.
27:10However, something else Galileo wrote about
27:13wasn't quite so revolutionary,
27:15so it didn't get suppressed,
27:16so people got to hear about it.
27:18It was something he noticed
27:20that was to turn out to be the solution
27:22to another problem that the telescope created.
27:26You see, now astronomers had these things
27:28to observe with.
27:29They needed better clocks than they had
27:31to time the movements of the planets
27:34they were watching.
27:35And over a long period of time,
27:37a spring-driven clock was just not good enough.
27:41According to the legend,
27:43this was what Galileo noticed
27:45here in Pisa Cathedral one day in 1581.
27:50Out of curiosity,
27:51he timed the length of the swing on his pulse,
27:53and he noticed that the length of time
27:56it took the lamp to swing was exactly the same
27:59whether it was a big swing
28:00or, as the swing lessened,
28:02a little swing.
28:03In other words,
28:04it was an extremely accurate unit of measurement.
28:10Well, neither in Pisa nor anywhere else in Italy
28:13did Galileo do very much about his observation.
28:15It took somebody from a northern country,
28:17a Protestant country,
28:18with no fear of the Inquisition,
28:19to take things to their logical conclusion.
28:23He was an astronomer too,
28:24and he needed an accurate clock
28:26just like everybody else.
28:27His name was Christian Huygens,
28:29a Dutchman,
28:30and in 1656,
28:31he produced this,
28:34a pendulum.
28:36You remember the virgin foliate system,
28:38the very first mechanical clock system?
28:41The one that had a big weight
28:43pulling a wheel with teeth on it,
28:45and the teeth were held in check one at a time
28:47by a rod with blades that went like this
28:49as the wheel was pulled around.
28:51Well, instead of using a swinging weight
28:54to give those blades the power to hold the wheel,
28:57Huygens used the swinging power of the pendulum
28:59so that as the pendulum swung,
29:01the blades went hold, release,
29:04hold, release,
29:05hold, release.
29:07Very accurate indeed.
29:08So it solved all the problems the astronomers had.
29:12But there was another bunch of stargazers
29:14who couldn't use that system.
29:15They were sailors who had to know the time.
29:18And the reason they couldn't use this system,
29:20well, you try a pendulum clock on a pitching sea
29:23and you'll get the point.
29:25The pendulum goes all over the place.
29:37Now, the reason why navigators
29:39had to be able to tell the time
29:40was that by the beginning of the 17th century,
29:43the trade routes to America and to India
29:46had been opened up,
29:47and the great maritime empires were really going,
29:50the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch and the English.
29:52And in that order,
29:54their governments offered really big money
29:56for anybody who would come up with a way
29:57to help their navigators till the time.
29:59Here's why.
30:01Each navigator had a book of star tables with him,
30:04and what those star tables told him
30:06was the position of any star or the moon
30:10at any particular hour of any particular day
30:12during the year.
30:13And if he observed a star,
30:16he would check the position of it in the sky
30:18so many degrees up,
30:19so many degrees to north or south.
30:21Then he'd go and look in his book,
30:23and the book would say,
30:23well, if that's where it is at this particular time,
30:25then that means you're in the only place
30:27where you would see it in that position,
30:28therefore you must be at X,
30:30and that would be his position.
30:32Now, the problem with that is
30:33that those star tables were only made
30:35to be used when you were going either north or south
30:38in the same time zone.
30:41Suppose you, say,
30:42go out into the Atlantic west towards America,
30:45say to a point where the sun comes up
30:46an hour later than when you left home.
30:49Then all your measurements are an hour out.
30:51So you look at your star tables,
30:52and the star tables tell you information
30:53that it's OK for when you left home,
30:55but not for where it's actually an hour later.
30:58And in terms of distance,
31:00the Earth turns 1,000 miles during an hour,
31:04so your position is 1,000 miles out.
31:07And even if you got the time right to within one minute,
31:09you'd still be 15 miles off course.
31:1115 miles off course,
31:12you miss the place you're going to,
31:13you don't get the cargo you've been sent to pick up.
31:15And that kind of thing was happening all the time.
31:17They were absolutely desperate
31:19to get a clock to those navigators
31:21that would tell them what time it was back home
31:23so they could make the necessary alterations
31:25in their star tables.
31:26And the one thing it couldn't be
31:28was a pendulum clock.
31:36So where have we got?
31:37The sick caliph,
31:39the Arab science that turned on European monks,
31:42their need for alarm clocks,
31:44up came the spring,
31:45fancy metalwork followed
31:47and sky-watching instruments like the telescope,
31:49and then the pendulum clock that timed the planets,
31:52but was useless for navigators.
31:55Their need to get the position of the moon in the sky
31:58or a star right
31:59demanded a better clock spring.
32:02And that need triggered off a series of events
32:04that begins with a spring,
32:06but ends typically somewhere different.
32:08It starts, of all places,
32:10here in a glass-making furnace in Sheffield.
32:13And it ends with something
32:15that was good for the mussels,
32:17thanks to the way
32:18all these bits and pieces on this table go together.
32:21You see,
32:22the steel in the springs
32:23was made by piling up alternate layers
32:26of iron bars and charcoal
32:28and keeping the pile hot for, oh, anything up to a week.
32:32The carbon in the charcoal diffused
32:34into the surface of the iron
32:35and made a layer of steel.
32:37Now, you knock those layers off
32:39and then you hammer them together
32:40and what you come up with
32:41is laminated steel
32:42made up of the compressed layers.
32:44Now, when you coil that steel into a spring,
32:46you've given yourself a problem.
32:48Because of the different qualities
32:49of the different layers,
32:50the spring tends to unwind irregularly.
32:54Now, if only you could melt the layers,
32:56they would all run together
32:57and form a steel of uniform strength.
32:59But in 1740, who could melt steel?
33:02Well, the glassmakers who worked in this place could,
33:05only they didn't know it,
33:07until a clockmaker called Benjamin Huntsman
33:11came along and noticed
33:12that the local glassmakers
33:13were putting old bits of glass into their furnaces
33:16and managing to melt them
33:18because they lined the walls of these places
33:21with a kind of clay
33:22that reflected the heat back into the furnace.
33:24And that sent the temperature way up.
33:27The first thing Huntsman did
33:29was to make pots out of that clay
33:31because it could stand terrific heat.
33:33Then he put these pots
33:34into one of the amazing new coke furnaces.
33:37And here's where he pinched the glassmaker's technique.
33:39He put bits of old steel into the pots,
33:43left the lot to simmer at very high temperature,
33:45and after five hours instead of a week,
33:49the pots came out of the furnace
33:50full of white-hot melted steel
33:53that was just the stuff for clock springs
33:55and, as it turned out,
33:57a lot of other things.
34:06So, the glass industry helped solve Huntsman's problem.
34:10The new steel also, incidentally,
34:13gave Sheffield steel cutlery its start in life
34:16and that's a clue to what else it did too
34:18because, at the time,
34:21navigation instruments had become really very precise.
34:24Look at this sextant.
34:25This is the viewing tube.
34:27You put your eye at that end
34:28and you look, let's say, for the moon.
34:29At the other end,
34:30half of it's glass
34:31and you see the moon through that.
34:33The other half of it's a little mirror
34:34and you also see the moon reflected in there
34:37because of this main reflecting mirror here.
34:39Picks up the image of the moon,
34:41sends it down to the tiny mirror
34:42and back into your eye.
34:43So that when you look at the moon,
34:45you actually see two moons,
34:47one's almost superimposed on the other.
34:50To find how high the moon is in the sky,
34:52you come down until you're looking at the horizon
34:54and then using this rod,
34:57you tilt the main reflecting mirror back
35:00gradually until it picks up the moon again
35:02and now you see a horizon and a moon.
35:05The angle at which you had to tilt that main mirror back
35:09to find the moon
35:10is the angle at which the moon is up in the sky.
35:12It's a very precise instrument
35:13but it is only as precise
35:15as those scales down there
35:17off which you read the angle
35:18and that's where he comes in.
35:21Jesse Ramsden.
35:24Jesse Ramsden was the fellow who invented,
35:27or stole,
35:27a way of marking a scratch
35:29every sixth of a degree on a sextant
35:31and he did it with a screw.
35:35See how the foot pedal pulls a cord
35:37wound round the screw?
35:38That turns the screw an exact number of times
35:40moving a big flat circular plate round
35:43exactly a sixth of a degree.
35:44Each time you mark the instrument
35:47clamped on top of the plate.
35:49Ramsden's machine came out in 1774,
35:53cut the price of marking instruments by 50 times,
35:56won him a prize
35:57and put him on the road to Richie's.
36:02This was the secret of Ramsden's success,
36:04the idea of using a screw to measure like that.
36:07But you could only get a good screw when you wanted one
36:10thanks to what was going on in the furniture business.
36:14You know all that knobbly 17th century furniture
36:16with bulbous legs?
36:18Well, that happened because of some unknown woodturner
36:20doing things to this,
36:22the pole lathe.
36:23Here's the springy pole,
36:25fix a strap to it,
36:26wind it round the wood
36:27and cut on every other turn.
36:29Now, if you give the turner something
36:31to rest his knife on
36:32that's the same shape as the leg you want,
36:35he can cut it to a pattern.
36:40Jesse Ramsden realised
36:42that if you cut a table leg
36:43by following a table leg pattern,
36:45then you should cut a screw
36:46by following a screw pattern.
36:48So this, at least in principle, is what he did.
36:50He mounted a cutter on a base
36:52that had a threaded hole in it
36:53and through the threaded hole
36:55he put the master screw he wanted to copy
36:57so that as he turned the master screw,
37:00the cutter moved along it.
37:01Now, with the workpiece turning on the lathe
37:04at exactly the same speed as the master screw,
37:06the cutter made an exact copy.
37:09All Ramsden had to find
37:11was a cutter that would make screw after screw
37:12without going blunt
37:14and there was only one metal around
37:16that was remotely hard enough to do that job.
37:20Yes, Huntsman's steel.
37:24So, by 1797,
37:26all the ingredients in this story I've just told you
37:28were waiting around,
37:29as so often happens in history,
37:31for somebody to put them together,
37:33which, of course, somebody did.
37:35And this is another one of those rare times
37:38when somebody sees beyond the bits and pieces.
37:41In 1800, Henry Maudsley put the edge of Huntsman's steel
37:44together with Ramsden's idea
37:46of using the screw to measure with
37:48and came up with a machine
37:50that would cut metal to within a ten thousandth of an inch
37:52because he was a precision freak.
37:56And he realised a screw that accurate
37:58would guide a cutter to make anything else that accurate.
38:02And curiously, that was great news for the Navy.
38:13You see, at the time,
38:14boats used things called blocks by the thousand,
38:18complicated bits of wood with pulley wheels inside.
38:20Great for sailors with no muscles
38:22because it gives you a pull three times your own strength.
38:30In 1800, a fellow called Brunel got Maudsley
38:33to use his precision machinery
38:35to make other machines that would make blocks.
38:38The British Navy jumped at the idea.
38:40By 1808, in Portsmouth Dockyard,
38:43this was happening.
38:47It may look like a bunch of dusty old guys
38:50cutting wood to you,
38:51but this is the beginnings of an idea
38:52that runs your life today.
38:57Maudsley built a long line of machines,
38:59each of which did one job.
39:01From a tree trunk,
39:02the wood was sawn into wooden cubes
39:04and as it passed from one machine to the next,
39:06the block was gradually shaped and drilled
39:09and contoured one step at a time
39:11and so were the wooden pulley wheels
39:13that fitted inside it.
39:14It took 43 separate machines to finish the job
39:18and 43 men,
39:20each doing just one job over and over again.
39:24Sound familiar?
39:36With Maudsley's line of machines,
39:38each one doing just part of the operation,
39:40you've got yourself the ability
39:42to shove raw material in at one end of the line,
39:45run the whole thing from one power shaft,
39:47spinning up above
39:49and pick up the finished product
39:50as it comes off the last machine.
39:53I'm sure you recognise this for what it is
39:55and it was the world's first.
40:09Everybody went crazy about the idea.
40:11Everybody, that is, except the craftsmen,
40:13machines like these would put out of work.
40:18But 4,000 miles away,
40:20this system was just what the doctor ordered.
40:25See, the British were putting the screws on America
40:27with a naval blockade
40:29and the Americans desperately needed to make their own goods
40:31and short of manpower,
40:33the first thing they did was grab that factory system idea.
40:40This is the other thing Americans were doing at the time,
40:43making guns.
40:44Take a close look at this rifle.
40:46This bit here is called the breech block.
40:48Now, there's a trigger.
40:49You pull the trigger,
40:50the spring inside releases this hammer here,
40:52carrying a bit of flint.
40:53The flint jumps forward,
40:55hits that metal,
40:55causes sparks.
40:56The sparks cause the powder in that little shelf to ignite,
41:00the flame goes through that tiny hole,
41:02ignites the main charge inside the gun
41:03and causes the bullet to be fired down the barrel.
41:07Complicated bit of workmanship, wouldn't you say?
41:09And that, at the end of the 18th century,
41:12is just what America couldn't do.
41:13She didn't have enough skilled men.
41:15And that put the country in a real hole
41:17because at the time,
41:19they were importing most of their guns from us Europeans.
41:22And half the time,
41:23they were on the edge of war with us.
41:25So what did they do?
41:27They came up with a way
41:28of making handcrafted weapons
41:30without making handcrafted weapons.
41:32And that's why this isn't what it appears to be.
41:34See, it's not made by hand.
41:35It's made by machine.
41:37It was a European idea.
41:39Oh, rather like that
41:41Portsmouth block-making system
41:42that went over like a lead balloon in Britain.
41:44Only this time it was in France.
41:46A fellow called Honoré Leblanc,
41:48who was getting zero interest from his fellow Frenchmen,
41:50told the American ambassador about his idea,
41:53Thomas Jefferson,
41:54who promptly went bananas,
41:55wrote to the folks back home,
41:57and they jumped at the idea.
41:58Let me tell you in principle
42:00what that idea turned out to be.
42:03It was to get a machine to do all the clever work
42:05so you don't need a skilled operator.
42:07See what's happening?
42:08The machine cuts only so far and stops.
42:18So the guy working the machine
42:20doesn't need any skill.
42:21And the reason the machine knows what he doesn't
42:24is because you use a master of the shape
42:26you want to cut to set the machine.
42:28So every time,
42:29the drills and the knives go so far and no further.
42:33So every time,
42:34you get an identical piece cut
42:36in metal or in wood.
42:41That was Leblanc's idea,
42:42picked up here in New England
42:44by Eli Whitney and John Hall in Simeon North,
42:46to make each part of a gun on a machine
42:48set to make that part
42:50and that part only
42:51over and over again.
42:52Now, the result of that idea
42:54was that if your gun went kablooey
42:55in the middle of a battle,
42:56you just got out your little screwdriver
42:58and did this.
43:03And any other block will do
43:06because
43:09they're standard shape.
43:16And because they're standard,
43:18they're interchangeable.
43:22And if that doesn't blow your mind,
43:24well, it should.
43:25I mean, almost everything you possess,
43:26you only have
43:27because of the way
43:28those guns were made by machines.
43:30Have you ever heard of a one-off
43:32handcrafted television set?
43:34So anyway,
43:34when these two great ideas got together,
43:36the factory system
43:38that textile manufacturers were using
43:39and the interchangeability idea
43:41that the gun makers were into,
43:42America really took off.
43:44And look what the country had going for it.
43:46Water power coming out of your ears.
43:48Mountains of raw materials.
43:50And a uniquely American way
43:51of using machine tools.
43:54The humble machine tool
43:55probably did more
43:56to make America great
43:57than almost anything else.
43:58Because although each machine tool
44:00only did one thing,
44:01like grinding or boring or drilling,
44:04all machine tools
44:05had to solve the same general problems.
44:07Control systems,
44:09gearing,
44:10power transmission,
44:11so that what you learned
44:12in making machine tools,
44:13you could use when you made the machines
44:15with the machine tools.
44:16And what you got from that
44:17was a kind of technical cascade
44:20from guns to sewing machines
44:21to bicycles to cars.
44:23I mean, did you know
44:24that Cadillac started with bicycles?
44:26Anyway, by the end of the 19th century,
44:28American machines were so good,
44:29the only thing that wasn't
44:31was the people.
44:37The fellow who helped
44:38to turn people into machines
44:39used to go berserk
44:41watching bricklayers work,
44:42or rather not work.
44:44He was an American engineer,
44:46a guy called Frank Gilbreath,
44:48who studied expert oyster openers,
44:51swordsmen, typists,
44:52you name it,
44:53and got all fussed up
44:54about how disorganized
44:55ordinary people's work was.
44:57So he and his psychologist wife
44:59set about putting things right.
45:01They looked at the way people
45:02moved when they did a job,
45:04put lights on their hands,
45:05filmed the action,
45:06and then used the films
45:08to make 3D models
45:10of the movement
45:10so they could redesign the moves
45:12so as to make the jobs
45:13more efficient.
45:14They even put a grid everywhere
45:16to measure the movement
45:18down to the inch.
45:19This was world champion typist
45:21Miss Hortense Stolnitz
45:22showing just what she could do.
45:28And you know how the surgeon
45:29says forceps
45:30and the nurse slaps it
45:31into his hand?
45:32That was one of the
45:33Gilbreaths' ideas too.
45:34Everywhere they went
45:35they took a job to bits
45:36and put it together again
45:38in a way that saved time.
45:40Time and motion
45:41was their thing.
45:56Bored out of your skull at work?
45:57Thank the Gilbreaths.
45:59To be fair to them
46:00they ran their own lives
46:01the same way.
46:02Had 12 kids
46:03and wrote a book about it
46:04called Cheaper by the Dozen.
46:08So here we are
46:09at the modern production line
46:11because
46:111.
46:12Knowledge of the sky
46:13apparently cured
46:14that Arab car leaf.
46:152.
46:16The Arabs got excited
46:17by astronomy
46:18and translated Greek books
46:20on it
46:20and medical astrology
46:21and other science.
46:233.
46:23That knowledge
46:24helped the church
46:25to find a way
46:25to make alarm clocks
46:26that spread
46:27and took over
46:28people's working lives.
46:294.
46:30The pendulum
46:31that still left sailors
46:32looking for a good spring
46:33made of steel.
46:34That 5.
46:35Cut screws for precision work.
46:37That 6.
46:38Built machines
46:39to make blocks for warships
46:40thanks to putting the machines
46:41in 7.
46:43A long production line set up
46:44that led to
46:458.
46:46The manufacturing system
46:47that helps to give us all
46:48the same possessions.
46:50Made by people
46:51doing identical things
46:52with identical machines
46:53to make everything
46:54from cars
46:55to gingerbread men
46:56for everybody
46:57not just the privileged few.
47:00This place, America
47:02is a democracy
47:03of common possession
47:04and the rest
47:05of the industrial world
47:06is rapidly going
47:07that way too.
47:09But there's a price.
47:10The way our lives
47:12have to become
47:13an extension
47:14of the production line.
47:16We work together,
47:18we holiday together,
47:19we sit in the same
47:19traffic jams together,
47:20we wear the same clothes,
47:21we live in the same house,
47:22we drive the same car,
47:23we have the same ambition.
47:27That's the price
47:29watching the clock.
47:31And ironically,
47:32we're back with the question
47:33they were asking
47:33at the beginning
47:34of this programme.
47:35What happens to individuality?
47:38Oh sure, superficially
47:39it's there.
47:40My car is a different
47:41colour from yours,
47:42I watch a different
47:43television programme from you.
47:45But enter your pockets
47:46and see what you get.
47:48The pen,
47:49the watch,
47:50checkbook,
47:51some money,
47:52credit card,
47:54keys,
47:56driving licence,
47:57comb,
47:57some money,
47:59lighter.
48:00The paraphernalia
48:01of people's private lives.
48:03And yet,
48:03is there one object here
48:04that thousands of other people
48:06don't own?
48:07All of it made by machine,
48:09not one object
48:10uniquely,
48:11individually,
48:12me.
48:13And if I'm not here,
48:16where am I?
48:48and there's two only
48:50op sık teak a lot of life.
48:50And I'm not a journalist,
Comments