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00:23Welcome to the C2FM weather and what a morning it is.
00:27We're talking paradise. Nothing to worry about today. Sunny, high of 85 with a cool breeze.
00:33Cruise and weather on C2FM.
00:39This is a program about nothing.
00:45It's about why several times a year people from all over the world spend their life savings
00:50to come to one special picnic spot in the United States so they can stare at the sky for hours.
00:56Sometimes nothing happens, but when it does, the event is out of this world.
01:01An event which is the end of a sequence that started 300 years ago with nothing.
01:07It's the event that is due to happen here today in 23 minutes and 45 seconds if everything goes according
01:14to plan.
01:14The reason we're all here, and it's going to be a free show.
01:18Something for nothing.
01:19It's going to be a free show.
01:23Something for nothing.
01:35It's gonna be a free show.
01:41I am a free show.
01:45It's going to be a free show.
01:48century, if you were within earshot of the Pope here in Rome, you could not talk about
01:54nothing. That's not a double negative. You couldn't talk about nothing. I mean, nothing
02:00as in the vacuum. See, the Pope said there was no such thing, because God was supposed
02:06to be everywhere, filling the whole of existence. So nowhere could be nothing, because that
02:11would be somewhere God wasn't. And he couldn't be nowhere. Is this getting out of hand?
02:20So, to talk about the vacuum and air pressure and such was, well, heresy, which was no help
02:29to the people sinking mine shafts all over Europe, and who were coming across a mystery
02:33force that was making it extremely difficult for them to do their job without getting their
02:38feet wet. See, the miners' problem was that their suction pumps wouldn't suck water further
02:43than 30 feet up a tube. But the deeper they dug, the more it flooded. Now, a pupil of
02:52Galileo's called Torricelli reckoned it was probably air pressure. Now, this isn't real,
02:58but it'll give you the idea. You suck some liquid up the straw, let it go, and most of
03:03it runs out. But because of the air pressure on the surface of the liquid, some of it still
03:07remains supported some way up the tube. Okay, so there was such a thing as air pressure.
03:12The question was, did it get less the higher you went?
03:17So, they went up a mountain with some mercury in a tube. And sure enough, as they went up,
03:26the air pressure on the surface of the mercury went down, and so did the level of the mercury
03:30in the tube. They'd invented the barometer. And then they noticed the empty bit at the top
03:36of the tube. The impossible. The thing the Pope said didn't exist. The vacuum. Well, you won't
03:45be surprised to know that the barometer immediately became a Protestant project, given the religious
03:50climate here in Rome. And speaking of climate, it didn't take them long to realize that while
03:55you got falling mercury from low air pressure up a mountain, you also got falling mercury from
04:00low air pressure in bad weather. But it would take 200 years and a mega disaster for them
04:06to do anything with that fact.
04:11The weather-related disaster happened on November the 13th, 1854, during the Crimean War. And
04:18the result was so appalling, the British government tried the first ever propaganda cover-up with
04:24these specially posed pictures of happy troops relaxing at the front. The papers got hold of
04:29the real story and brought the government down.
04:35The entire British Army supply fleet had been sunk by a hurricane that a weather forecast
04:40could have predicted almost as easily as we can today. They had the tools to do it, like
04:45the barometer, but nobody bothered. So thousands died.
04:50Well, that did it. Official national weather forecasting kicked off literally the following week, without
04:56which the event for which we all came today couldn't happen. Still, perfect weather for it.
05:01So anyway, on with the story. Nineteenth-century forecasting couldn't have come at a better
05:06time for the English. Well, those of them in London's Oxford Street.
05:15Now, back in 1850, Oxford Street wasn't as spiffy as it is today. They were shoveling 24 tons of horse
05:22manure off it
05:23every 24 hours, for a start. So you can imagine what it was like when it rained.
05:29And then a Scotsman called John McAdam invented the blacktop waterproof road surface. Delighted everybody.
05:37Well, everybody except certain gents, who were less than happy, at the prospect of more stormwater runoff.
05:43Now the rainfall couldn't soak into the ground anymore.
05:47But at least they now had weather statistics to help. They knew, for instance, that severe storm rainfall could be
05:53six times the normal.
05:55And being number-crazy Victorians, they also knew that annually, Londoners generated 15,208,083 cubic feet of what was
06:05euphemistically referred to as flow.
06:08I presume you can guess what these unhappy data-gathering gents were up to. Or rather, down to.
06:16Yep. Sewage. By 1855, they were building this. The biggest sewage network in the world.
06:23Because it was either do that, or things were going to become what can only be described as indescribable.
06:34Now, the key problem in building a sewer, as I'm sure you know, is good old flow.
06:41Too little, and it, so to speak, doesn't move along. Too much, and, well, I don't have to spell it
06:47out.
06:48So, they built for statistically average fluctuations in what they called various freely discharging foul matters.
06:57Nice telephrase, eh? Plus a bit for storms.
07:08When the great work was over, these tunnels drained over a hundred square miles of London.
07:16Where would we be without them?
07:20But, the whole thing took 16 years, and cost an absolute fortune.
07:36Now, the English only spent that kind of money, because they were desperate for any kind of sanitation.
07:42Because of a terrifying disease they'd imported from India. Cholera.
07:47Terrifying because, by mid-19th century, it had killed 100,000 people in England, and they hadn't the faintest idea
07:54what caused it, or how to stop it.
07:56Truth was, the population wasn't in a fit state to fight off a cold, never mind a killer epidemic from
08:01India.
08:03Just like the third world today, back then, English country people had poured into the industrial cities looking for work.
08:10And when cholera struck, they were living in filthy slums, ragged and starving, packed by the dozen in one-room
08:17shacks, swimming in sewage.
08:19And this is downtown 19th century London I'm talking about.
08:23The frightened Victorians tried everything. Even cricket.
08:38This classic English scene, the Sunday match, Village Green, the pub, all that, epitomises the public relations exercise the Victorian
08:47authorities dreamt up in an attempt to prevent the social anarchy they thought a cholera epidemic might bring.
08:53They thought up slogans for people to cling to, like fair play, stiff upper lip, the straight bat, jolly good
09:01sport, all that.
09:02All those myths people still believe about the English, including the English.
09:07On a more pragmatic level, the government also cancelled the excise tax on soap. Sales doubled overnight.
09:15Maybe washing would prevent cholera. Cleanliness, now more affordable, was suddenly next to godliness.
09:27Now, it's an ill wind, as they say. See this? Toby Jug. For decades, English potters had churned these up
09:35by the thousands for country pubs. Fun, aren't they? You could have one that looked like you, or the king,
09:41or some infamous hero.
09:43The cholera scare made the guys who made these guys a million. I mean the potters. Because if you can
09:51make Toby Jug, you can make sewer pipes, and ceramic kitchen sinks, and pitcher and bowl china toilet sets, and
10:00the plumbing to link everybody to the new sewage systems.
10:03Because suddenly, the thing to have was a lavatory. Everybody wanted one. Come to think of it, so do I.
10:15Of course, being Victorians, they wanted their lavatories respectable.
10:19So, the manufacturers made them in decorous white vitreous china, painted with designs called, with a perfectly straight face, Magnolia,
10:28Wild Rose, Morning Glory.
10:32For those more concerned with their sanitary efficiency, high-tech names included, Directo, Rapide, and Deluge.
10:41The first, properly modern, ceramic flush lavatories were sold in 1884 by George Jennings.
10:48The most successful introduced the oval seat design known today to every bottom in the Western world.
10:54Inspired, apparently, by a picture frame.
11:05And ceramics is the second of those modern things I said would be something for nothing.
11:10The first being the weather forecast.
11:12And since we still have a bit of time, more about nothing.
11:16Back in the 17th century, the vacuum rapidly became a hotshot experimental tool.
11:20But to make a vacuum, you had to suck the air out of something.
11:24So they invented a pump to suck with, and then one to blow with.
11:29And there was compressed air.
11:31Great news for insurance companies, because now you could go and get your shipwreck cargo back.
11:36All you needed was a trusty friend pumping away above your head, up there on the surface.
11:49One day in 1858, a young American entrepreneur called George liked the look of a girl who was selling magazine
11:55subscriptions.
11:56So he bought one.
11:57The very first copy he read had a story in it about an amazing new use for compressed air.
12:02But not under water, under mountain.
12:06The magazine story was all about the knockout new compressed air drills being used for the first time ever to
12:12cut a hole through the Alps.
12:14Bingo, thought George. Or something like that.
12:21George, whose other name was Westinghouse, travelled quite a bit.
12:26And like every other American at the time, knew he was taking his life in his hands whenever he got
12:30on a train.
12:31For the very simple reason, as you are about to see, that the brakes on trains didn't work very well.
12:41Any minute now.
12:52Well, you get the point.
12:54In 1869, the Westinghouse compressed air brake meant you didn't have to get off trains this way anymore.
13:01George used compressed air to hold back a sprung piston in a cylinder below each coach.
13:06In an emergency, you released the air pressure and the piston slammed shut, putting on the brake.
13:15The air brake let them run so many trains, Westinghouse needed electricity generators to power new signalling systems and all
13:22the lights they needed.
13:23Which is why he took up with a guy called Nikola Tesla, who solved the problem by designing the world's
13:29first hydroelectric power station under a waterfall.
13:33Westinghouse installed Tesla's power generators here at what has to be the most spectacular source of electricity in the world.
13:58Tesla also came up with a brilliant idea to use electricity for more than just lights and railway signals.
14:04See, this gigantic mass of falling water makes electricity with turbines that spin copper coils next to magnets.
14:13Here's a coil spinning and cutting through a magnetic field, first one way and then the other, to make electricity
14:19that goes first one way and then the other.
14:22Alternating current.
14:22No good for motors because it goes backwards and forwards.
14:27Okay, you remember an electric current in a coil sets up a magnetic field?
14:32Tesla puts a series of coils, one after the other, round a circle and turns them on and off in
14:37sequence.
14:38So their magnetic fields turn on and off in sequence around the circle, creating what is effectively a rotating magnetic
14:46field.
14:47Put a metal disc in that rotating field and the rotating magnetism will make it spin.
14:52Put a belt round the disc and you've got a motor that will turn things.
15:04But the really great thing about Tesla's electric motor was that there were no moving parts and it came in
15:09all sizes.
15:10I mean, there's one running this toy, look.
15:13And back then, a small electric motor was just what boat builders were looking for.
15:18But not this kind of boat.
15:20Or this kind of boat.
15:24This kind of boat.
15:25The latest giant, all steel, armour plated, heavyweight battleship known as the Dreadnought.
15:31Bristling with the amazing 15 inch guns that could throw a 2,000 pound shell 14 miles.
15:38Now at that distance, on a heaving sea, aiming wasn't exactly easy.
15:43Tesla's little motor solved that problem because it would keep a new gun aiming gizmo called a gyroscope spinning.
15:51The gyroscope would sense the role of the ship and compensate for it.
15:54The new gyro controlled guns were so good at hitting the target, everybody's navy had to have them.
16:09So this time, the something for nothing is the gyro.
16:12See how it works.
16:14Because of the inertia of the spinning wheel, the gyro always points the same way.
16:19Whatever happens to my hand, or the guns on a Dreadnought, or the earth going round the sun, the gyro
16:24always knows which way is up.
16:26Okay, one last trail, starting back with the nothing we began with.
16:31You remember how the vacuum got everybody all worked up about air?
16:34Also about the lack of it.
16:35For instance, for some strange reason, animals and plants, well, died in a vacuum.
16:40And you couldn't hear bells in one.
16:52Meet Stephen Hales.
16:54In 1709, a church of England vicar, and obsessed by anything to do with air, or lack of it.
17:01His mission, to discover how plants breathed.
17:05He reckoned air was carried around plant bodies by their sap.
17:08Question then was, what was it that moved the sap around?
17:12So night and day, for ten obsessive years, Hales fed and watered his subjects, and monitored their horticultural particulars.
17:25You could, I suppose, call Hales sap-measuring science cutting edge stuff.
17:31Because all he did, to find out how fast sap rose, was just cut a big hole in the stem
17:36of the plant,
17:36a stick a glass sap collecting tube into the hole, and then wait to see how long it took for
17:41the sap to go how far up the tube.
17:44And then it struck him.
17:47Sap pressure was very like blood pressure.
17:50If only he could work out the figures.
18:00After a number of experiments, better not discussed in front of the children,
18:04Hales announced that blood pressure in your veins moved your muscles.
18:08Turned out, though, there just wasn't enough pressure to do that.
18:11So Hales was wrong.
18:13But fortunately, science is full of weirdos waiting to pick up where others fail.
18:24Like the guy who spent most of his life in this strange wooden operating theatre,
18:28filled with wax statues in Bologna, Italy.
18:31Luigi Galvani, professor of anatomy and crazy about muscles.
18:36If it wasn't blood pressure that moved muscles, maybe it was some invisible force.
18:42So was it some form of electricity?
18:45In 1891, Galvani galvanized the world of science by doing nasty things to frogs.
18:51I had this pair of frog's legs, he announced, hanging by a copper hook on an iron stand.
18:57And the legs jerked every time I gave them a shock or there was lightning around.
19:01But only when my scalpel touched the nerves.
19:04Well, I got a bit bored and I was idly scraping the copper hook against the iron stand.
19:09And the legs jerked.
19:11No lightning.
19:11No shock.
19:13Eureka, I thought.
19:15The source of the force is in the frog.
19:17This must be animal electricity.
19:21Sbagliato di grosso.
19:23Garbage.
19:25Galvani's discovery went over like a lead balloon
19:27with a contemporary electricity freak called Volta.
19:31Era il ranocchio, si, ma solo perché, per puro caso, rappresentavo un oggetto salzato.
19:36Okay, it was the frog.
19:37But only because it happened to be something wet and salty in between the two different metals in your scalpel
19:44and your hook.
19:46I had a go at making the mystery force the same way, but I used discs of paper soaked in
19:52salty water
19:53and sandwiched between alternating zinc and copper discs.
19:57And there it was.
20:01Electricity.
20:02Nothing to do with the frog.
20:03My battery.
20:05The world's first.
20:16Roger, Jerry.
20:19Things look in real good.
20:21That's up here.
20:22I mean, that's right.
20:23That's right.
20:23That's right.
20:24Down here as well.
20:27The battery is the last of those modern something for nothing inventions
20:30that brings us here now, where it's finally time for what we came here to see.
20:35The one thing that could only exist when all those inventions came together.
20:38Weather forecasting, ceramics, the gyro, and the battery.
20:49Independent battery power keeps the shuttle crew alive.
20:51The onboard gyroscope tells them where they are.
20:55Ceramic tiles protect them against re-entry temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
21:01And an accurate weather forecast tells them when it's safe to come home.
21:07And gear touchdown.
21:09He's coming by for drag shoot deployment.
21:11Shoots deployed and gears down.
21:13Discovery's crew returned with a bounty of new knowledge of the sun, our own planet, and its fragile atmosphere.
21:19Discovery rolling out on runway 33.
21:20To Mulho honey.
21:2920 European.
21:35There this long also brings him back to the corporations.
21:36To make Para Jenni.
21:36As theンダーカールが sperm.
21:38hing线を隔天抜で渡す部分は、雑尊が尊かしら、 at 。
21:46They still試して。
21:54You've got a bunch of smiling faces in the room here, that was a beautiful piece of flying,
21:58Ken.
21:59And welcome home to the crew after a super mission.
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