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00:00I don't know what to do.
00:37Have you noticed what's happened to plastic in the last ten years?
00:40It's become something in its own right.
00:42I mean, early on, if you made something in plastic,
00:45you had to make it look exactly like what it was replacing.
00:48I mean, particularly leather.
00:49Or people wouldn't buy it.
00:51It's not so long since the word plastic was an insult.
00:54Cheap and nasty, remember?
00:56Not anymore.
00:57It's as if we suddenly changed our attitude to what real meant
01:02and recognised plastic for what it is.
01:04Something that permits us to own objects that we couldn't possibly afford
01:07if they had to be made in the so-called real thing.
01:10So now it's everywhere.
01:12I mean, look at this office.
01:13That's plastic.
01:15So's that.
01:16So are these.
01:22So is this.
01:23And especially what's inside it.
01:26There's plastic paint on the wall.
01:28There's plastic wood on this desk.
01:30My shirt is plastic.
01:33And now there's a new generation of objects that can only be made in plastic,
01:36like that cassette.
01:39It's a plastic world.
01:40And because of plastic,
01:42it's a plastic world in a different sense,
01:44in the original sense of the word.
01:45It changes its shape easily.
01:48So now we no longer buy the thing we want.
01:52We buy the shape of that thing that we prefer.
01:56And when the shapes change regularly, which they do,
01:59we begin to want them to change regularly.
02:08And the plastics industry is ready and willing to satisfy our demand.
02:12Or do they create it?
02:14So our plastic world changes, quicker every year.
02:17We live in a world of fast turnover, built-in obsolescence, novelty,
02:21thanks to plastics.
02:23You can mould it, pre-form it, blow it, extrude it.
02:26Or, most meaningfully of all, you can cut it into little rectangles.
02:36This shape is the shape of our future,
02:38because the only way the money can move around fast enough to keep up with trade
02:41is electronically, from bank to bank, through computers,
02:45or in the case of you and me, through this, the credit card.
02:51This is you, coded into that magnetic tape.
02:55See?
02:56In there is the world's newest virtue, creditworthiness.
03:01Are you a good risk or not?
03:03And what people need to know about you
03:05before you can become a coded signal on that stripe
03:08makes this much more than a substitute for money.
03:11It's a judgement on you.
03:13And that's why here, where they make credit cards,
03:16the security is so tight.
03:26Because you steal one truckload of credit cards,
03:29and you've practically got the key to,
03:30oh, every bank in the country.
03:33The question is, is any security tight enough?
03:37As the data on you and your credit flows from bank to shop to employer
03:42to police to tax inspector,
03:44what happens to privacy?
03:45And if you don't want credit,
03:47how do you live in a world where they don't take cash?
03:50What will happen when being in debt all the time is the normal way to live?
03:56The first time that opportunity came up to live on credit on a major scale
04:01happened when the banks opened about 600 years ago.
04:06And when it did, the behaviour of the people involved
04:09might remind you of yourself under similar circumstances.
04:12Look what it did to them.
04:30The big spenders in question were the 14th century Dukes of Burgundy,
04:34and what they did with the money they borrowed raised every eyebrow in Europe.
04:48Oh, the overindulgent excesses they got up to look very elegant to us.
04:53But behind all the courtly dancing,
04:55Duchess swapping?
04:58There were only four Dukes of Burgundy,
05:00and the whole dynasty only lasted 94 years from 1383.
05:04But what a time they had.
05:06It was a crafty Italian banker who kicked it all off
05:08by lending the first Duke enough money to buy a Dukedom.
05:12Now, he knew he'd get his money back,
05:14because the new Dukedom included half the manufacturing centres of Flanders,
05:17and places like Bruges.
05:19The second Duke picked up his father's debts,
05:22pawned his jewels, assassinated a few friends,
05:24and generally kept the party moving right along.
05:47The third Duke kept four mistresses in every castle,
05:51ruled a country stretching from Holland to the Swiss border,
05:54and drank.
06:08The last of the Dukes was a real weirdo.
06:11They called him Charles the Bold.
06:14He was an egomaniac,
06:16and he saw himself as a sort of second Julius Caesar.
06:19Didn't go for women much.
06:20Wore more jewels in more places than anybody else in Europe.
06:23And he was so convinced he was going to be made emperor
06:25that he chased the real emperor around with a crown in his saddlebags
06:29so that the emperor could proclaim him heir to the throne.
06:32Of course, the emperor kept dodging the crucial meeting.
06:34He also went on long military campaigns to increase his territory,
06:38and lost them all.
06:40Of course, Charles was up to his neck in hock,
06:44thanks to an ambitious bank manager called Thomas Portonari.
06:48He worked for a bunch of Florentine bankers, the Medicis,
06:51ran their local office in Bruges,
06:52and the deal he made with Charles was that Portonari collected the rent on Charles' property,
06:57places like this.
06:59And Charles got to borrow money whenever he needed it,
07:02at nice, fat interest rates, of course.
07:06The first modern nation ran on tick.
07:09Well, in 1470, Portonari got a letter from no less than the president of his bank,
07:13who also happened to be running Florence at the time,
07:15a man called Lorenzo the Magnificent,
07:17saying,
07:18watch it when you're dealing with Charles of Burgundy, won't you?
07:21Of course, Portonari ignored this advice,
07:23and when Charles went off on new military disasters,
07:27Portonari would write a letter to his friends who had a bank near the battle,
07:29and they would turn up on the spot with bags full of loot,
07:32all of which, naturally enough,
07:34tended to make Charles an admirer of things Italian,
07:37especially their soldiers.
07:39He was bringing them in to train his own men in new tactics.
07:42And it was the Italian connection that finally blew it for Charles,
07:45because in 1476,
07:47he decided to strengthen his lines of communication with Italy
07:50by moving into an area south of him.
07:53Now, that was going to bump him up against the Swiss.
07:56Still, who were a bunch of mountain louts
07:58to stand up against Charles the Bold of Burgundy,
08:00the greatest thing since sliced venison?
08:02So, off he set.
08:03And in doing so,
08:05triggered off a series of events
08:06that were to end 500 years later
08:08with a landing on the moon.
08:20Now, the Swiss economy,
08:22timber, a bit of dairy produce,
08:24couldn't pay for a real army,
08:25so Charles reckoned the whole thing would be a pushover.
08:29Wrong.
08:35Waiting for him in the woods
08:36was a Swiss secret weapon.
08:38But even if he'd known,
08:39Charles would have laughed,
08:40because at Grandson in Switzerland,
08:42on March 2nd, 1476,
08:45this was what he'd bought on credit.
08:48Fully armoured mercenaries.
08:55And what could a few Swiss pikes do against that?
09:00Well, this.
09:19Charles' army was routed.
09:21A year later, it happened again.
09:23Charles was killed,
09:24and that was the end of his family tree.
09:34It was how the Swiss used the pike that did it,
09:37in a formation called the Pike Square.
09:40You get a feel for its power with these modern soldiers.
09:46Any cavalry idiot enough to charge this lot
09:48got itself skewered on the four-foot steel tips.
09:51But the real magic was the way the pike square moved.
10:03You see the way they could come to a sudden stop
10:06and turn in any direction instantly in attack,
10:08or open out like a porcupine in defence?
10:12That's why a bunch of mountain louts
10:14whipped the cream of Burgundian chivalry.
10:22The way the pikes had clobbered the mounted knights
10:25changed the battle plans of every military commander in Europe.
10:28For the next 40 years, the pike was it,
10:30and the armies got bigger because they were cheaper.
10:33And then, on April 28th, 1503,
10:37at Ciriñola in southern Italy,
10:38things changed again.
10:40A new weapon had arrived.
10:43It was a gun, the arquebus.
10:45In skilled hands, it could kill at 60 yards.
10:48Used the new miracle ingredient, gunpowder.
10:53An S-shaped trigger brought the smouldering cord down on the powder,
10:57fired a one-pound ball.
11:02At Ciriñola, the Spanish commander de Cordova
11:04lined his outnumbered men up like this.
11:075,000 arquebusiers backed by pikes and cavalry
11:10facing the French who were still using the traditional pike square.
11:14OK, here's the battle.
11:15This is the French.
11:16The arquebusiers are dug in behind a ditch
11:18at the bottom of a hill which is covered in vines
11:20so that when the French come down the hill,
11:21they get snarled up on the vines
11:23and they are cut to pieces by the bullets.
11:25Total involved on both sides, 18,000 men.
11:28Over 100 years later, and another battle
11:30at which the arquebus has been replaced by a weapon
11:33that was to change the face of war yet again.
11:35This time, it was the flintlock musket.
11:45In general service by 1590,
11:47fired a two-pound ball 100 yards.
11:51The trigger released a spring.
11:53It snapped the flint down against the hammer,
11:56made sparks, powder ignited.
12:14The pikes were still needed for protection.
12:17Muskets, prepare to fire!
12:20Present your piece!
12:24Give fire!
12:27Number three ranks, withdraw!
12:29Number two ranks, to the four!
12:31Number one ranks, forward!
12:33This was the new trick.
12:34Several ranks, front row firing, rest reloading,
12:37like this, in stages.
12:39Number two ranks, present your piece!
12:44Give fire!
12:45Give fire!
12:48Withdraw!
12:49As each rank fired, it counter-marched to the rear,
12:52and the next rank stepped forward, ready for action.
12:55Present your piece!
12:57Give fire!
13:00Withdraw!
13:02On the 7th of September, 1631, at Breitenfeld, just outside Leipzig,
13:07the Swedish king, Gustavus, took the technology to its logical conclusion.
13:11Look how he set out his men.
13:13You see how both the pikes and the muskets are in this forward attack position,
13:17and they're set out, muskets, pikes, muskets, pikes, to cover each other.
13:21Gustavus had also shortened the length of the pike and made the musket lighter.
13:26Opposing him, in the imperial army,
13:28they were still using the old-fashioned defensive mode for the pikes, back here,
13:31with relatively fewer musketeers.
13:33And a few years before, the Dutch had started producing books like this
13:37to make firing muskets easier.
13:39They divided up the business between firing a musket,
13:42reloading it, and getting it ready to fire again,
13:44into nearly 45 separate manoeuvres,
13:46each one of them illustrated like that.
13:49And Gustavus had taught his men from those illustrations.
13:52That meant that on the field, he could do with five ranks,
13:56two firing, three reloading,
13:58what it took the other side, ten ranks to do.
14:00And what's more, his rate of fire was three times theirs.
14:03So whatever they did, however they moved,
14:06his men were able to wheel and turn and reposition themselves as necessary,
14:11constantly keeping up a murderous rate of fire
14:13that in the end blew the imperial army right off the field.
14:17Total number of men involved, 70,000.
14:22Another hundred years and another development.
14:24This time, the shape of war was changed
14:26by the arrival of two new bits of weaponry,
14:28the bayonet and the paper cartridge.
14:31You bit the end off the paper cartridge
14:32and then poured a measured amount of powder into the gun, very fast.
14:35And as for the bayonet, well,
14:37when it was put on top of the musket,
14:40you got musket and pike in the same weapon.
14:43So, on the 9th of May, 1745,
14:45at the Battle of Fontenoy,
14:47as you can see from the British lines,
14:49no pikes.
14:50And because of the fast reloading,
14:51they were able to get by with only three ranks,
14:54whereas the French were still using five ranks
14:57and they were less well drilled.
14:59Now, on the battlefield,
15:00because of the need to get where you could see
15:02the whites of their eyes before you fired
15:03and then on in with the bayonet,
15:05that brought the armies within 30 yards of each other.
15:08First of all, the English pushed the French
15:10back up into their ground
15:12and then, beaten by superior numbers,
15:14the English retreated.
15:16But the days of the uniformed, disciplined,
15:19regular armies had arrived.
15:21Total number involved over 100,000.
15:26Less than 50 years later
15:28came the first signs of mass modern warfare
15:30thanks to the French Revolution.
15:33You see, with most of their aristocratic officers
15:36either guillotined or in exile,
15:38there wasn't much the Republic could do
15:40except conscript every able-bodied man in the country.
15:43And in 1793, that's just what they did.
15:46But sending out raw recruits
15:48against the disciplined armies of the Allies
15:50meant you had to send them in large numbers.
15:52And they looked something like this.
15:54A vast rabble of badly-trained, ill-equipped recruits
15:58and in front, a few professionals
15:59firing individually for maximum effect
16:02to try and break the enemy line
16:03so that the mob could then roll over them
16:06and win by sheer force of numbers,
16:07whatever the cost.
16:08To give you an idea of what those numbers were,
16:11take a look at that.
16:12That is not a battle line you're looking at.
16:14You see, it starts at the Channel
16:16and it ends in Switzerland.
16:18More than one million men
16:20stretched in armies all the way along the frontier.
16:25Now, arming and supplying that number of men
16:27and feeding them was bad enough
16:29when they were just sitting there.
16:30Try doing that and moving them
16:32because in 1797,
16:35that was the task Napoleon took on
16:37when he started to move his armies around Europe,
16:39anywhere from 350,000 to half a million men at a time.
16:44And suddenly, feeding huge armies was the big new problem
16:47and one that almost blew it for Napoleon
16:49at a little-known spot in northern Italy.
16:57It's one of those places, you know,
16:58by the time you notice it, you've passed it,
17:00which is what most people do,
17:02so they never notice the statue.
17:07Or, indeed, the restaurant,
17:09where they do a rather nice line in chicken.
17:11And if you've got a pencil handy,
17:12you might care for the recipe.
17:14Cut up the chicken and flour it well.
17:21Put the chicken parts to brown in oil
17:23with just a touch of garlic.
17:25While the chicken's browning,
17:26prepare the other ingredients for simmering.
17:28One or two mushrooms.
17:33Half a cup fresh tomatoes.
17:35Add a quarter cup of brandy and water and simmer.
17:38Steam a quarter cup of crayfish.
17:41Garnish with fried eggs and potatoes to taste.
17:45Total cooking time, one hour.
17:48Absolutely awful.
17:49It's not often that a dish of food
17:51plays a deeply meaningful role in history,
17:53but this one did.
17:55You see, the ingredients that went to make up
17:57this little culinary work of art,
17:59illustrate a fundamental problem
18:01that Napoleon had with his army.
18:03Because this is chicken Marengo.
18:07So called, after the place it was first served,
18:10here in Marengo.
18:11It's a village,
18:11not much more than a cluster of farmhouses,
18:13outside the town of Alessandria
18:15in northern Italy.
18:16And it's the site of a battle against the Austrians
18:19that nearly finished Napoleon before he started.
18:22It was his first battle since becoming head of state,
18:24and so you could say he cared about it.
18:26A lot hung on it.
18:27Anyway, about dawn on June the 14th, 1800,
18:32Napoleon was jumped by virtually the entire Austrian army,
18:36outnumbered in terms of men and artillery.
18:40Trouble was, the rest of his giant army
18:42were out doing what you do
18:43when there are hundreds of thousands of you.
18:45They were off in separate groups,
18:46out foraging for food.
18:48So Napoleon was caught with his pants down.
18:51Anyway, he started fighting desperately,
18:53and he sent out riders to the other groups,
18:55saying, for God's sake, get here if you can.
18:57And by three in the afternoon,
18:59after nine hours of slaughter
19:00with the French retreating all the way,
19:02it looked as if all was lost.
19:04And then, over the hill,
19:05like the US cavalry coming to the rescue,
19:07came one of the foraging columns.
19:09And the boot was on the other foot.
19:11By six o'clock, the Austrians had surrendered.
19:17That night, Napoleon's chef gave him chicken marengo for dinner.
19:21Cooked, he said, apologetically, with all he could find.
19:24Some tomatoes, some crayfish,
19:26little oil, garlic, eggs, and, of course, chicken.
19:29But then, he said, the whole army was eating like that,
19:31eating what it could find, if anything.
19:34And Napoleon recognised that he had two major problems to solve.
19:38He had to find a way of feeding an army
19:40that was on the move very fast.
19:41And in this particular case,
19:43his men couldn't even buy the food they needed
19:45because the local Italians wouldn't accept their money.
19:48A, because it was paper money,
19:50and B, because of the inflation back in France,
19:53it was worthless paper money.
19:55It was how Napoleon solved these problems relating to food
19:59that brings us, ironically, to his favourite drink, champagne.
20:04Ah, champagne.
20:08Champagne!
20:11Champagne!
20:29When Napoleon got back home to France,
20:31he did several things to get the country out of the mess it was in.
20:34For instance, he set up the Bank of France
20:35and only let it issue notes that it could back with gold.
20:38And he set up the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry,
20:42offering prizes for any idea
20:44that could be put to profitable manufacturing use.
20:51One of the prize winners
20:53was a Mr. Nicholas Appert,
20:55ex-cook and bottle washer,
20:56and what he did for national economic recovery
21:00was this.
21:15Now, I know it will seem odd that a country, thank you,
21:18with great gastronomic traditions like France
21:21should shower fame and money
21:22on an ex-cook and bottle washer
21:24for stuffing soup and bits of food into a bottle.
21:28But Appert's soup and bits of food
21:30went into the bottle and stayed fresh
21:32for nearly six years.
21:34At the time Napoleon was doing his thing in Marengo,
21:37Appert already had a little shop in Paris
21:39and his catalogue was offering things like asparagus,
21:42beans, meat stew, apricots and so on.
21:46But it was the French Navy
21:48who first caught on to the possibilities of Appert's idea.
21:51They were at war with England,
21:53the British fleet was blockading all the supply ports,
21:55and suddenly this appeared to be a marvellous way
21:57of keeping French ships independently provisioned.
22:00So, in 1803,
22:02they took some vegetable soup, some peas and beans,
22:05and they went off on a three-month trip on the sea,
22:07at the end of which they ate the stuff,
22:09and then wrote back to Monsieur Appert
22:12and said, marvellous, marvellous.
22:14In 1805, the newspapers got hold of the story,
22:17and they were raving poetically about Monsieur Appert
22:20who brings the spring to table in winter.
22:23And all of a sudden,
22:24vintage boiled beef and carrots was all the rage.
22:27Then it was the turn of the army,
22:28who after all march on their stomach.
22:30And by chance, the minister for the army
22:32was also the secretary for the Society
22:35for the Encouragement of National Industry.
22:37And that's why Appert ended up getting one of their prizes
22:39for 12,000 francs,
22:41provided he made his technique public,
22:43which he did in 1810
22:45by publishing a small bestseller
22:47excitingly entitled
22:48The Art of Preserving for a Number of Years
22:50All Animal and Vegetable Substances.
22:53In the book, he says,
22:54take a champagne bottle and empty it.
22:57And you'll notice that in those days,
22:58the champagne bottles were the same shape they are now.
23:01Now, he chose a champagne bottle
23:02because he had worked as a bottler here
23:05in Epernay, the home of champagne,
23:07and he knew that the glass was very strong.
23:09Okay, once you've emptied it,
23:10you put the food in,
23:12and then you bang the cork home with one of these.
23:14Now, I won't do that
23:14because this is a collector's item.
23:17In order to keep the cork in position,
23:20he used the same technique they do today.
23:22He used a little wire cage.
23:29At that point, you put the bottle with the food in it
23:31into a steam bath
23:32where you leave it for a number of hours at 100 degrees,
23:35after which you let it cool,
23:36and then you leave it as long as you like,
23:37and the food won't spoil.
23:39Now, although they didn't know it at the time,
23:42what this humble ex-cook and bottle washer had discovered
23:44was something for which the great scientist Pasteur
23:47was to get all the credit years later.
23:49The fact that heat sterilizes food.
23:53So, back in the first place,
23:55partly because the Italians
23:57wouldn't take Napoleon's worthless paper money,
24:00Appert presented his invention to the world.
24:02And by the most extraordinary trick of fortune,
24:06the reason his invention
24:07ended up in the form it takes
24:09on your supermarket shelves today,
24:11packed in tin,
24:12has also to do with that worthless paper money.
24:16The notes the French government issued,
24:18called Asher,
24:19by this time not worth the paper they were printed on,
24:23were mostly made at a paper mill south of Paris,
24:26at a place called Esson.
24:27Now, what with the fact that most of the labour force
24:30was off fighting with Napoleon,
24:32and there was general inflation,
24:34the fellow running this paper mill, called Dido,
24:36was having a lot of trouble with his production.
24:38So, he wrote to his brother-in-law in Paris,
24:41and said,
24:41send somebody down here to help me, will you?
24:44The man who turned up was called Nicolas Robert,
24:47a clerk with a mechanical turn of mind,
24:49and he arrived with a remark,
24:50well, look, if you had yourself a machine that made paper,
24:53all your troubles would be over.
24:55So, Dido said,
24:56okay, I'll back you, you invent it.
24:59And in 1799, Robert did.
25:02And this is it.
25:04Here is a big vat full of paper pulp.
25:07Inside here, there's a wheel with slats on it,
25:09and as you turn the wheel,
25:10the slats scoop up the pulp
25:12and dump it onto that slide.
25:15Slides down onto this moving mesh belt.
25:18Now, as the belt moves, it's shaken,
25:19so that the water in the pulp
25:21can drain away through the mesh,
25:23and what water is left
25:24is squeezed out by that roller.
25:26That leaves the paper
25:28to be wound onto this roller here.
25:30The entire machine
25:31operates on one handle,
25:34like this.
25:57Okay, I hear you say,
25:59but what's that got to do with
26:02putting preserved food in cans?
26:04Well, it has.
26:06But why
26:08is like one of those French farce stories
26:10where you have people rushing in and out of everywhere,
26:13and it's wives,
26:14and people's brother-in-laws,
26:15and they're all going in all sorts of directions.
26:18So, if you're ready for a rather nutty story,
26:21here goes.
26:22You remember how it all began
26:24with Dido and Trouble at Mill,
26:26and how he wrote to his sister's husband
26:30and said,
26:30send me somebody down to sort the problem out,
26:32and they sent Nicolas Robert,
26:34who in 1799 invented this machine.
26:37Well, after a while,
26:38things weren't going too well,
26:39and Dido said,
26:40I wonder how it would go in England.
26:41So, he wrote to his other sister's husband,
26:45a fellow called John Gamble,
26:46who was working in an office in Paris
26:48for a Royal Navy captain called Coates.
26:51Now, Coates was in charge of prisoner of war exchange.
26:54In 1800, Coates got Gamble
26:56and his letters and bits and pieces
26:58across the channel to Dover
27:00with an introduction to the mayor of Dover,
27:02who promptly invited Gamble to dinner,
27:04where he met another fellow called Millican.
27:06Now, when Millican heard what Gamble was up to,
27:08he said,
27:08oh, I know the people you should meet,
27:10and he took him up to London.
27:11When he met two more people,
27:13two brothers called Faudrinia,
27:14who were stationers.
27:15They said,
27:16this is a great machine,
27:17we've got to make some.
27:18So, they told their millwright,
27:20John Hall,
27:20to get on with the job.
27:21Now, he was a bit busy,
27:23so he gave the job
27:24to his wife's sister's husband,
27:28a fellow called Brian Duncan.
27:29And in 1803,
27:30Duncan made the machine.
27:33Well, by 1809,
27:34things were going really badly,
27:36people pirating the idea,
27:37legal costs and so on,
27:38and the Faudrinias went bankrupt.
27:41Gamble,
27:41who had got everybody into this mess,
27:44was so worried,
27:44he was looking around for an idea to save face.
27:47And he met a fellow called Peter Durand,
27:50who was a merchant,
27:51and who had just finished reading a book
27:53translated from French.
27:54This was in 1810.
27:55He'd copied everything down in that book,
27:57and got himself a patent on the contents of the book,
28:00and he sold that patent
28:01to Messrs, Gamble,
28:04Duncan and Hall
28:04for a thousand pounds.
28:06Guess whose book it was?
28:09Appare's book,
28:10the one about preserving food.
28:11And that is what you call
28:13a chain of events.
28:14Anyway,
28:15the partners went into business immediately
28:17in the food preservation line,
28:19only since they knew all about
28:20how to handle metal,
28:21they chose not to put the food
28:23into the bottles,
28:24but to put it into the form
28:25that we all know and love today,
28:29the tin can.
28:31Well,
28:31in 1813,
28:32after three years of experiment,
28:34the partners finally got their product
28:35to Kensington Palace,
28:36where the Prince Regent
28:38and the Queen
28:38and various other knobs
28:39pronounced the contents
28:40absolutely delicious,
28:41and could they have some more?
28:43Well,
28:43with backing like that,
28:44how can you fail?
28:45So they began to get their product
28:47onto the Royal Navy ships,
28:48where they went over very big.
28:50Around this time,
28:51the 1820s,
28:52the Arctic explorations
28:54were going on,
28:54and as the explorers sailed away
28:56with their decks
28:57filled up with canned food,
28:59it began to look as if
29:01canning was a quick way
29:01to become a millionaire.
29:03Around 1830,
29:04the cans began to appear
29:05in the shops,
29:06and then along came
29:07the Crimean War,
29:08with all those troops to feed.
29:12And then it happened.
29:14On the dockside in the Crimea,
29:16somebody opened
29:16one of the new
29:17jumbo-sized cans of meat,
29:19and what did they find?
29:22Rotten meat.
29:23The market took a nosedive.
29:25Everybody but everybody
29:26was trying to find out
29:27why it happened.
29:28The cans had been sealed,
29:29they said.
29:29The water had been
29:30at the right temperature
29:31for long enough
29:31to kill the bugs,
29:32they said.
29:33So,
29:33what was it?
29:37They hadn't heated
29:39the cans long enough,
29:40though they didn't know that.
29:41They thought the culprit
29:42was this.
29:48The kind of air
29:49that comes off
29:50rotting vegetation,
29:51heat,
29:51and stagnant water.
29:53Very fashionable at the time,
29:54this rot.
29:55Everybody thought
29:56all disease was due to it,
29:57which is why our story
29:59brings us to this
30:00pleasant little holiday spot.
30:01Because if you ever wanted
30:02to see miles and miles
30:04of hot rot,
30:05come here
30:05to the Florida swamps.
30:16At the same time
30:18the meat packers
30:19in London
30:19were going bananas
30:20about what bad air
30:21was doing to their success rate,
30:23somebody else
30:24here in Florida
30:25was doing just the same thing
30:27for just the same reason.
30:28Only his success rate
30:29depended on keeping
30:30people healthy.
30:32He was a doctor,
30:33a fellow called
30:33John Gorey,
30:34and in 1833
30:36he had come
30:37to a small cotton port
30:38on the Gulf of Mexico
30:40called Apalachicola,
30:41surrounded on three sides
30:43by this creepy stuff
30:44full of alligators
30:46and snakes
30:47that drop from the trees
30:48and other goodies,
30:49including malaria,
30:51which was
30:51John Gorey's problem.
30:53You see,
30:54every year
30:56people went down
30:57with it
30:57by the hundreds
30:58and Gorey reckoned,
30:59well,
31:00just like everybody else,
31:01that malaria
31:01was caused
31:02by an invisible
31:03disease-ridden gas
31:05seeping in
31:06from these swamps
31:07and made,
31:08just like the air
31:09in the London cans,
31:10from a mixture
31:11of rotting vegetation,
31:14stagnant water
31:15and heat.
31:20So when,
31:21not long after
31:22he got to Apalachicola,
31:24Gorey became
31:25bank manager,
31:27postmaster,
31:29chief of the
31:29Masonic Lodge,
31:30city treasurer
31:31and mayor,
31:32he thought he'd
31:33try to stamp
31:34the disease out
31:34by draining wetlands,
31:36filling in ponds,
31:37building in brick
31:37instead of wood
31:38that would rot.
31:40Great.
31:41Everybody's still
31:42got malaria.
31:43So,
31:44defeated by the
31:44rotting muck
31:45and the stagnant water,
31:47Gorey turned
31:47to the one ingredient
31:48that he reckoned
31:49he could control.
31:51The heat.
31:52You see,
31:53back in those days,
31:54there were regular
31:55shipments of ice
31:56down here
31:57to the southern states
31:58from Boston,
31:58where they used
31:59to hack it out
32:00of the frozen rivers
32:01and ponds
32:01during the winter
32:02and store it
32:03for shipment
32:03right through the summer.
32:04Went as far as
32:05Calcutta.
32:06Now,
32:07Gorey reckoned
32:07that since people
32:08didn't get malaria
32:09in the winter,
32:11he'd crack the problem
32:12if he could use
32:13the ice
32:13to help his
32:14patients keep
32:15their cool
32:15right through
32:16the summer.
32:17What he didn't know
32:19and what he couldn't
32:20have known
32:20in 1837
32:21because nobody
32:22had discovered
32:22that malaria
32:23was caused
32:23by an insect
32:24was that here
32:25he was surrounded
32:26by a giant
32:27mosquito menagerie.
32:39As far as Gorey
32:40was concerned,
32:41the billions
32:41of mosquitoes
32:42here were
32:43just annoyance.
32:49So Gorey
32:50set up
32:50a chilly fever
32:51room
32:51where you could
32:52have very easily
32:53caught yourself
32:53of a cold.
33:00And for a few years
33:01Apalachicola
33:02murmured
33:03to the chattering
33:03teeth of Gorey's
33:04victims,
33:05I mean patients,
33:05as he proceeded
33:06with his grand design.
33:12His idea
33:13was quite brilliant
33:14and of course
33:14totally wrong
33:15but Gorey
33:16was indefatigable
33:17in bending the ear
33:18of any visitors
33:19on the subject
33:19me too
33:20so the hanging bucket
33:22is filled with ice
33:24above a pipe
33:25bringing in air
33:26from outside.
33:27The ice chills
33:27the air
33:28and if you block
33:29up the fireplace
33:29the only place
33:31the air can get out
33:31is down
33:32through a pipe
33:34in the skirting board.
33:40Alas,
33:40poor Gorey
33:41he so nearly
33:42got it right.
33:43Gore's curtains
33:44help,
33:44he said
33:44because they keep
33:45out the vapours
33:46that bring in
33:46the disease.
33:49His only problem
33:50he thought
33:50was a way
33:51of getting cheap ice.
33:53Sometime after 1845
33:55he found it
33:55with this machine.
33:57It may not look much
33:58but if you've got
33:59a cool house
33:59on a hot day
34:00thank that.
34:01Gorey built it
34:02using an idea
34:03that had been around
34:04for some time
34:05but that nobody
34:06had put into practice.
34:07The idea was
34:07that if you compress air
34:09it gets hot.
34:10If you then
34:11let it expand
34:12it gets cold
34:13and it draws heat
34:14from its surroundings.
34:16Look,
34:16here's a steam-driven wheel
34:18driving a force pump
34:19that compresses the air.
34:21Here comes the
34:22compressed air
34:22through that coil
34:23in a bath of cold water
34:25into this chamber
34:26where it expands
34:27and as it expands
34:29it gets very cold.
34:31Okay,
34:31the cold air
34:32then comes up
34:32through tubes
34:33in this container
34:34which is full of brine
34:35and the cold air
34:36draws heat
34:37from the brine.
34:38Now,
34:39on every cycle
34:39the air draws heat
34:41from the brine
34:41until the brine
34:42is the same temperature
34:43as the cold air
34:44and from then on
34:45as the air
34:46comes out
34:47of the top here
34:47it's cold.
34:49Air conditioning
34:50invented by a man
34:52very few people
34:53have ever heard of.
34:54I mean,
34:55had you?
34:56One more trick.
34:58If you run
34:59the cold air tube
35:00up here
35:01through a reservoir
35:02of water
35:02the cold air
35:03chills the water down
35:04and the chilled water
35:05drips down
35:06into a container
35:07which is immersed
35:09in the super-cooled brine
35:11and that causes it
35:12to make something
35:13that looked as if
35:14it was going to make
35:14John Gorry
35:15a very rich man
35:16in a very hot climate.
35:19Ice.
35:36On Bastille Day,
35:381850,
35:39Gorry made his invention
35:40public.
35:41The occasion
35:42was a boozy get-together
35:43in the home
35:44of Apalachicola's
35:45French consul
35:46who was holding
35:47a little soiree
35:48in honour
35:48of the anniversary
35:49of the French Revolution
35:50with more French red wine
35:53and French champagne
35:54than you could
35:54shake a stick at.
35:55Now,
35:56unfortunately,
35:57the ice boat
35:58from Boston
35:59hadn't come
35:59and snide remarks
36:01were passed
36:01about what a social
36:02gaffe it was
36:03for a Frenchman
36:04to offer warm champagne.
36:06We're having warm wine
36:08and most possibly
36:09warm champagne.
36:10Undoubtedly.
36:11In spite of the snickering,
36:12however,
36:12the host displayed
36:13all the symptoms
36:14of a man utterly confident
36:15in his savoir-faire.
36:16We're not only about
36:17to offer you
36:18a chilled champagne
36:19but also
36:20a cold oyster too.
36:22You see,
36:22our hero
36:23had previously shown him
36:24his magic machine
36:25and both men
36:26were looking forward
36:27to their little
36:28moment of triumph.
36:29It was,
36:30sad to say,
36:31to be Gorry's
36:32only moment of triumph.
36:34APPLAUSE
36:43It was at the port
36:44of New Orleans
36:45in 1869,
36:4714 years after
36:48Gorry had died,
36:49broken by his failure
36:50to get any backing
36:50for his machine,
36:52that his idea
36:52suddenly turned up again.
36:55It was the end
36:55of a steamboat race
36:57along the coast
36:58from Texas.
36:59The winner,
37:00the good ship Agnes,
37:01had beaten the other boat
37:03with a cargo
37:04of chilled beef,
37:05the first in history
37:06and long since forgotten.
37:15So here we are
37:16on the New Orleans
37:16waterfront
37:17in the summer of 1869
37:18because Charles of Burgundy
37:21got clobbered
37:21by Swiss pikemen
37:22who then made
37:22infantry fashionable
37:23and because the armies
37:24got so big,
37:25Napoleon desperately needed
37:26provisions for them,
37:27Appare invented
37:27preserved food
37:28which Donkin put in cans
37:29because his paper-making
37:30venture failed
37:31and the rot
37:32that spoiled the meat
37:33and also maybe
37:33gave people malaria
37:34which Gorry tried
37:35curing with cold air
37:36that chilled the beef
37:36that the Agnes brought
37:37for the great New Orleans
37:38beef race.
37:38Um, remember?
37:40Ha!
37:40Get off of there!
37:42Ha!
38:20Ladies and gentlemen,
38:21to the chilled beef.
38:23To the chilled beef!
38:26Now, by an extraordinary coincidence,
38:29as the flour of New Orleans'
38:31upper crust
38:31were tucking into their beef,
38:33a fellow called Mr. J.D.
38:34Possel
38:35was chilling
38:35his first beef,
38:37also with cold air.
38:38Only he was doing it
38:39in a place
38:40where interest in the idea
38:41ran very high
38:42because Possel
38:43lived in Australia.
38:45See,
38:45unlike here in New Orleans,
38:47these were the years
38:48of the great
38:49British starvation scare.
38:50As the country
38:51became more industrialised
38:53and the population
38:53shot up,
38:54the government decided
38:55that if some new way
38:56of getting lots
38:57of fresh meat
38:58from Australia
38:58and New Zealand
38:59wasn't found,
39:00well, I mean,
39:01the old country
39:01was finished.
39:03Spurred on
39:03by patriotism
39:04and profit,
39:06the Australians
39:06did it.
39:13They had a few horrendous
39:14goes at it first,
39:15though.
39:16In 1873,
39:17a ship left Melbourne
39:18with a cargo of meat
39:19covered in ice and salt.
39:20It leaked.
39:22In London,
39:22the smell was described
39:23as indescribable.
39:25They had another go
39:26in 1876
39:27with a load of mutton
39:28and a rather more
39:29sophisticated cooling system.
39:31It leaked
39:31before it left,
39:33ended up in Sydney Harbour.
39:34Finally,
39:35in 1880,
39:36the SS Strathleven
39:38docked in London
39:38with a cargo
39:39frozen solid
39:40to be sold
39:41here at Smithfield.
39:42Britain was saved.
39:44Queen Victoria
39:45enjoyed the beef.
39:46Refrigeration
39:47was a success.
39:56What happens next
39:57has to do
39:58with the drinking habits
40:00of the people
40:01who live here
40:01in and around
40:02the city of Munich
40:03in southern Germany
40:04and especially
40:06what's going on
40:07right now
40:07about 50 feet
40:08above my head,
40:09the annual
40:10Munich beer festival.
40:21Hundreds of thousands
40:22of people come here
40:23and get totally looped.
40:25In spite of the fact
40:26that it was a German
40:27who said way back,
40:28beer spoils the blood,
40:30burns it up,
40:31causes great thirst,
40:32horrible red faces,
40:33also leprosy,
40:34swelling of the body,
40:35injury to the head
40:36and all internal parts
40:37of the intestines.
40:38You'd think that'd put them off.
40:40Doesn't.
40:50Now, one of the things
40:52that that mob out there
40:53are doing is
40:53drinking beer
40:54the way the French,
40:56the Italians,
40:56the Greeks,
40:57the Australians,
40:58the Americans,
40:58practically everybody
40:59drinks it,
40:59cold.
41:00Whereas we English,
41:02we prefer our beer
41:03at room temperature
41:04or warm.
41:06Now, the reason
41:07for the difference
41:07is that English beer
41:08is fermented using
41:09a yeast that does
41:11its fermentation
41:11on the surface
41:12of the beer in the vats
41:13and it prefers to do it
41:15at slightly warmer temperatures
41:16which is why it also
41:17drinks slightly warmer.
41:19Some people think
41:20it's an acquired taste.
41:22Yeast in German beer vats
41:24does its fermentation
41:25at the bottom of the vats.
41:27It's called
41:27bottom fermented beer
41:28and it takes anything
41:30up to three months
41:30to do that
41:31and it needs to be kept
41:32just above freezing point
41:34for the whole thing to work.
41:36That's why since
41:37so about the 16th century
41:38there have been laws
41:40all over Germany
41:40saying you can't brew beer
41:41in the summer
41:42because it'll go bad.
41:44Now, that's not very good news
41:45because if you can't brew
41:47in the summer
41:47that's half the year gone
41:49when you could be brewing
41:49and making profit
41:51because especially
41:52here in Bavaria
41:53if you make beer
41:55they'll drink it.
42:16so in about 1870
42:19one of the biggest brewers
42:20in Munich
42:21this man
42:22head of the Sedlmayr brewery
42:24went to one of his friends
42:26who was a locomotive engineer
42:27called Carl von Linder
42:28and asked him
42:29if he could come up
42:30with something
42:30that would keep this place
42:31cool enough in summer
42:32to brew right through the year.
42:33So Linder went off
42:35and basically used
42:37John Gorey's system
42:37do you remember
42:38it used the idea
42:39of compressing air
42:40except that von Linder
42:42used compressed ammonia gas
42:44because it does its thing
42:45at much lower temperatures.
42:46What he did was
42:47he got a piston
42:48and he squashed
42:49the ammonia gas
42:51until it became liquid
42:52and then he released it
42:53into an area
42:54of much lower pressure
42:55and as the pressure dropped
42:56the ammonia evaporated.
42:59Now you know the way
43:01perfume or aftershave
43:03cools your skin
43:04well that's because
43:05as it evaporates
43:06to do so
43:07it needs energy
43:07and it takes that energy
43:09in the form of heat
43:10from the surrounding area
43:11so it takes the heat
43:12from your skin
43:13cooling it down.
43:14In Linder's case
43:15the ammonia
43:16took its heat
43:17from its surroundings
43:19which was a water tank
43:21through which the pipes
43:22containing the ammonia ran
43:23so the water cooled down.
43:25Since the water tank
43:26was all around the beer vat
43:28when the water cooled down
43:29so did the beer.
43:31And why von Linder
43:32should mean anything
43:33to you or me
43:34is because
43:35in the back of our
43:36domestic refrigerators
43:37we have his basic system
43:38at work.
43:41Thanks initially
43:42to German Lager Beer.
43:54So towards the end
43:55of the last century
43:56as the refrigeration
43:57processes got better
43:58and they could go
43:58to lower and lower temperatures
44:00people started trying
44:01to liquefy gases
44:02that would only liquefy
44:04very low temperatures
44:05indeed
44:06like hydrogen and oxygen
44:07because there was
44:08a ready market.
44:09The limelight business
44:11for example
44:11you make limelight
44:12by burning
44:13hydrogen and oxygen
44:14and lime
44:14and you get a very brilliant light
44:15or small scale welding
44:18like jewellers.
44:19The trouble was
44:20what do you do
44:21with a load of liquid hydrogen
44:22when it evaporates away
44:24all the time
44:24which it does
44:25if you don't have
44:27an efficient container
44:27to keep it in
44:28and they didn't.
44:40Well they didn't
44:41until this idea came along.
44:42It's supposed to have been
44:44the brainchild
44:44of the great
44:45Scottish scientist
44:46James Dewar
44:47in fact
44:47an obscure Frenchman
44:48thought of it first
44:49the flask
44:50with a sealed vacuum
44:51between two layers
44:52of silvered glass
44:53kept things cold
44:54or hot
44:55revolutionised
44:57the great Edwardian picnic
44:58in 1904
45:02so the story takes one more twist
45:05and we've reached the end.
45:08You remember how it all began
45:09with credit
45:10and the Swiss beating
45:11Charles the Bold
45:14and the race for bigger armies
45:15until they got really big
45:19so Napoleon had trouble
45:21feeding his men in battle
45:25and so Appare used his champagne bottling experience
45:29to invent food preservation in bottles
45:34and how by a complicated series of events
45:36the bottled food idea got to England
45:42which was where Duncan put it in cans instead
45:45and then they went rotten
45:46and John Gorey thought that it was the rot
45:48that caused malaria
45:49and invented air conditioning
45:51to try and cure it
45:52and how refrigeration and liquid gas
45:55followed kept in the thermos flask
45:56marketed by a German
45:58called Reinhold Burger.
46:04It would be difficult to overestimate
46:07the effect Burger had on life
46:08at the beginning of this century.
46:10The thermos flask didn't only go to picnics
46:12it changed the working man's lunch break
46:14it provided airborne drinks
46:16for people on zeppelins
46:17it went to the South Pole
46:19and to Central Africa
46:20both to sustain the intrepid explorers
46:22and to bring back hot and cold specimens
46:25and it saved countless people's lives
46:27because it stopped their insulin
46:28from going bad.
46:30But it was in the form behind me here
46:33that the thermos flask
46:35probably made its greatest impact
46:37on the 20th century
46:38and I use the word impact advisedly.
46:41It took that form
46:42principally because of two men
46:44whose work was virtually ignored
46:46and a third who did his work
46:48in a way that nobody could ignore.
46:50The first was a Russian called Tsiolkovsky
46:52and he literally thought everything out
46:55and his work lay buried in Russian disinterest
46:57until after his death.
46:59The second was an American called Robert Goddard
47:03who did most of his best work
47:05on his aunt's farm in Massachusetts
47:07and all he got for his pains
47:08was some rather lukewarm interest
47:10from American weather forecasters.
47:12The third man was called Hermann Aubert
47:16and people noticed what he did
47:18because in 1944 what he was trying to do
47:21was destroy London.
47:22His particular version of the thermos flask
47:25became known as Vengeance Weapon 2
47:28and before the war was over
47:30it had killed thousands of Allied troops and civilians.
47:33You see, all three men had understood
47:35that certain gases ignite
47:39and that the thermos flask permits you
47:41to store vast quantities of those gases safely
47:44in the frozen liquid form
47:46until you want to ignite them
47:47at which point you take the top off the flask
47:49the gases evaporate
47:51you apply a light and boom!
47:54Now, two gases do that better than any other
47:57and it was Aubert's assistant
47:59who put them together most efficiently.
48:02His name was Werner von Braun
48:04and the two gases that he released
48:06from his particular version of a thermos flask
48:09the one lying on its side behind me now
48:11were hydrogen and oxygen.
48:18If you release those two gases into a confined space
48:21with a hole at the other end of it
48:23and mix them as you do so
48:24and then set light to them
48:27you get that.
48:36Destination, the moon or Moscow?
48:40The planets or Peking?
49:04The planets or Peking наблюд
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