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00:00You
00:37Ah, the thrill of the open road, the romance of foreign places, the excitement of travel.
00:56Know where we are?
00:58Want to take a look?
01:04France, south of France, Marseille, Bézier.
01:12So, why are we here?
01:16Because of a sick English lawyer called Jethro Tull, who came to this part of the world 300
01:22years ago for his health.
01:25Tull is enjoying a little medicinal tippling among the vines when he notices how it's
01:30all done, or rather, hoe it's all done.
01:41Because, yes, this is a hoe, and Jethro's had just enough of the local plonk to get him
01:47all excited about what he could do to life down on the farm, back in England, with some
01:51of these things.
01:56As a result of which, I'm here.
01:59And thanks to Jethro Tull, and whiskey heiresses, and radio, and sunspots, and a few other things,
02:05I also know where I'm going.
02:07Because, like the hoe, history is all about finding your roots.
02:19The story begins when Jethro Tull gets back to England, and his hoe kicks English agriculture
02:25into high gear, triples the yield, and makes English farmers a lot of dough, and incidentally
02:32triggers a chain of events that will end up leading to nothing less than the French Revolution.
02:44So, here we are, where the revolution really begins, the home of every true lover of French
02:49food, a bakery.
02:54Thank you, madame.
02:55Pro baguette, s'il vous plaît.
02:58Think about it.
02:59Where are we?
03:001760 or so?
03:01The lunatic in charge is Louis XV.
03:05Unlike England, French agribusiness is in deep doo-doo.
03:09I mean, the price of a loaf is insane.
03:11C'est combien, madame?
03:1215, 15.
03:14Merci.
03:16The national economy is not too hot either, and nor is Madame de Pompadour.
03:22She's the king's mistress, and she's frigid.
03:24But her in-house doctor, a certain François Quinet, fixes that.
03:34And then, around 1768, the good doctor comes up with a modest suggestion for, well, total
03:41national economic recovery, based on his entirely erroneous understanding of English farming techniques.
03:48So, France, run France like a giant English estate, which Quinet takes, wrongly, to mean
04:00leave nature and everything else alone to do its thing.
04:10OK, time for a very brief word about economic theory.
04:15Quinet's idea about leaving things alone to do their thing became known as laissez-faire.
04:21Free trade, we'd call it.
04:22The reason I can buy this Japanese car anywhere, for instance.
04:26Back then, what Quinet meant was that if the French government introduced free trade, that
04:32would stimulate the economy and stop the place from generally going down the tubes.
04:36Well, they didn't.
04:38So, it did.
04:46Laissez-faire, leaving things alone and not interfering, got people wanting the government
04:52to do the same thing for them.
04:53If the government don't give us more personal freedoms, shouted the mob, life'll get really
04:59savage.
04:59Well, they didn't.
05:01So, it did.
05:14That word, savage, is why we're in Switzerland, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, nature lover, philosopher
05:21and a general lady's man, as you can see.
05:26Rousseau's busy stirring things up about going savage, by which he means the simple life.
05:32Society living together by democratic consent, with commonly agreed laws, no private property,
05:38freedom of speech, governments that were voted in, so they could be voted out.
05:51Above all, real social equality.
05:55The whole caboodle running according to a social contract everybody signed up for.
06:00Good, eh?
06:01Except, remember where and when we are.
06:051770-odd.
06:06And this lunatic Rousseau is bad-mouthing a king by divine right and military muscle, aristocrats
06:13who've owned serfs for centuries, and giant corrupt government bureaucracies running on
06:18kickbacks.
06:19And worst of all, he comes from this place, Geneva, a republic.
06:25Well, the French royal army invades Geneva for a start.
06:29Too little, too late.
06:31Because basically, the French revolution is just around the next corner.
06:43This was the world the revolution destroyed.
06:46You can tell what it must have been like.
06:48Formal.
06:49Everything in its place, including you.
06:52Classified.
06:53Lower class, middle class, upper class.
06:56A universe that science said was a machine with people just cogs in the machine.
07:02The triumph of order.
07:16Small wonder when the French revolution hit, things went to the opposite extreme.
07:20The obedient, impersonal masses were out.
07:24The caring, emotional individual was in.
07:30The new romantic art of the period says it all.
07:34Individuals turning their back on society to explore their feelings.
07:39So what were feelings?
07:42Well, to the keen medical eye, the real question was much bigger.
07:46What was the physiology of feeling?
07:49How did your senses work?
07:52Let's see, shall we?
07:55Open your eyes wide, please.
08:00Hmm.
08:01Now I'd like you to concentrate on something.
08:08This is Berlin.
08:10Where the next bit happened.
08:13Now I'd like you and everybody watching the programme to close your eyes and not open them until I say
08:18so.
08:18Hmm?
08:19Okay.
08:20Close your eyes.
08:23Now, unless there's something wrong with your eyes, rub lightly on your closed eyelids.
08:30See those images happening?
08:32Okay.
08:33Open your eyes, please.
08:36Did you see anything?
08:38Good.
08:39That's the kind of thing a doctor called Müller got up to in Berlin around 1840.
08:45Thing was, where were those images you saw on your eyelids?
08:50Not anywhere here, hmm?
08:53All right.
08:54Another test.
08:56Please, turn your ear towards this light and shut your eyes again.
09:01Go ahead.
09:05And now, turn back to me and open your eyes again, please.
09:11Could your ear see the light?
09:14Good.
09:15Now, please hold up a hand.
09:19Can you feel this colour?
09:24Good.
09:26That'll be all.
09:32Well, that's what Müller found out, that each sense does a different job, that we don't
09:38perceive the world, we only feel different sensations coming in through each different
09:44sense, and then we put it all together, we being what Müller called the nervous system.
09:51And that was the first time anybody'd thought of the nervous system like that, as an active
09:56rather than a passive thing.
09:58But enough of my voice for the moment.
10:08In 1854, Müller's pupil Helmholtz investigated hearing.
10:12Sound made something in your ear vibrate.
10:15So, was it like singers making piano strings vibrate?
10:25Did different bits of your ear vibrate to different sound wave frequencies?
10:30Did sound travel at different frequencies?
10:33But it was when Helmholtz's pupil went on to see if electricity did the same thing, that
10:39he kind of changed the world.
10:41What he wanted to know was, does electricity move?
10:44And if so, how?
10:45And if so, what does it do?
10:48So, thank you.
10:51Please observe, here we have a big spark jumping this gap.
10:58Here I have a small wire loop almost completely joined.
11:03Now, I walk out precisely this distance.
11:06Now, please observe, this time there will be a big spark and a little spark.
11:12Once more, a big spark and a little spark.
11:18Exactly the same distance once again.
11:21Please observe, a big spark and a little spark.
11:25Once more, precisely the same distance.
11:32Heinrich Hertz, who did all this, found out that electricity goes out like ripples from
11:37the big spark, and the little sparks happen only at the crest of each of the ripples.
11:43In other words...
11:46Once every wavelength.
11:48I said he changed the world with all this.
11:51Actually, he didn't.
11:57Whiskey did.
11:58Thanks to a beautiful Irish whiskey heiress called Annie Jameson.
12:02You may recognise the brand.
12:04Who eloped with an Italian and ended up here, outside Bologna, at the Villa Grifone.
12:14The villa, you'll note, sits on top of what is perhaps the least attractive mausoleum in the history of mausolea.
12:20Designed by that well-known architect, Benito Mussolini, for our hero, Annie's clever son, William.
12:31Who was inspired by a local physics prof to try sending electrical wave ripples across the valley here, to his
12:37brother.
12:38All William really did was to take Hertz's little trick and make it go further.
12:49OK, here's the other end of the experiment, getting into position at the top of a hill across the valley,
12:55and setting up the receiver to... receive.
13:02Well, that's what we all hope.
13:08He rigs up a tall aerial, because that makes long waves that go further,
13:12and then he turns the current on and off three times.
13:15That's S in Morse code.
13:30OK, you get the point.
13:37Now for the big one.
13:39Look.
13:41Here's the receiver disappearing over the hill with his gun.
13:47Now, here's the receiver waiting behind the hill with his gun.
14:00And that was the point of the gun,
14:02to tell William the incredible news that his little electrical essays have gone over a hill.
14:10Well, after this, there's no holding William Marconi.
14:13In 1901, he gets more essays to go round something a little bigger.
14:20The Earth.
14:22From Cornwall in England to St John's, Newfoundland,
14:25with the aerials held up by kites.
14:28So, by 1912, radio was kind of science fiction come true.
14:34There was a transatlantic radio telegraph service,
14:36the first signal from a plane to the ground,
14:39and somebody nearly saved the Titanic.
14:42And all the while,
14:44Marconi's little essays went further and further round the world.
14:47On one occasion, from Britain all the way to Buenos Aires.
14:50And all without bothering Marconi as to why.
14:55But why?
14:57Well, the BBC helped.
15:16Well, almost as soon as Marconi had done the Newfoundland thing,
15:22researchers were announcing
15:23that there might be some great radio wave reflector in the sky,
15:27bouncing the signals around the Earth.
15:31And the more they beamed BBC radio programmes upwards,
15:35P.S. note the word addressed in the BBC studios at the time,
15:38the more they recognised
15:39that some of the radio programmes came back down,
15:42and some did not.
15:44And that this changed with the season,
15:46day, night,
15:49even the weather.
15:53Now, they know radio goes 186,000 miles a second,
15:57so the returning signals tell them
16:00there are several reflecting layers 60 to 300 miles up.
16:04But only atoms of air missing some electrons,
16:07ionised air,
16:09would reflect radio waves.
16:10Or, if the air weren't ionised,
16:12let them through.
16:14So what can be knocking electrons out of air atoms?
16:17Some Austrian called Hess
16:19discovers that ionisation is four times up there
16:22what it is down here,
16:23and says it's all being caused
16:25by what he modestly calls Hess rays.
16:39Turned out, one source of the mystery rays was this.
16:42Solar flares that spewed out billions of particles
16:45that hit the Earth a couple of days later
16:48and ionised the atmosphere.
16:50But ionisation still happened
16:52even when the sun wasn't having solar flares.
16:56So there had to be a source
16:58beyond the sun.
17:01Oh, well, now we're into the big time.
17:04They changed the name
17:05from Hess rays
17:06to cosmic rays.
17:11Which is, of course, why I'm here in the redwoods.
17:18Looking for tree rings.
17:21Ah.
17:23You see how each ring is a year's growth?
17:26But look at that fat ring there.
17:28That means a lot of growth that year.
17:29That means a lot of rain.
17:30And again,
17:32and again,
17:33and again,
17:34and again,
17:35every 11 years.
17:38And guess what?
17:40They find out
17:42that the sun has
17:43flares and spots and such
17:45in the same 11-year cycle.
17:47So in the 1930s,
17:49a weather expert called Mokley
17:51decides to take a closer look
17:53at this sun-spot weather relationship.
17:56Now, this is going to involve
17:58a humongous amount of calculation.
18:00And right next to him
18:01are some people
18:02counting cosmic ray particles
18:04with these.
18:06Vacuum tubes.
18:08Turns on and off
18:09when the particles hit it.
18:11So Mokley tries it
18:12with electrical signals instead.
18:14And it works.
18:15They turn it on and off too.
18:17Bingo, says Mokley.
18:18That means...
18:20At which point,
18:22enter World War II,
18:23and before he knows what's hit him,
18:25his great idea
18:26has been taken over by the army.
18:28But not for weather forecasting.
18:34The army needed an adding machine.
18:36See, calculating artillery tables
18:38to tell gunners
18:39how to aim their guns accurately
18:41was a nightmare.
18:42There were so many variables,
18:44it took hot-shot mathematicians
18:4624 hours to calculate
18:48one shell trajectory.
18:54So, in 1942,
18:56either we found a quicker way
18:57to do arithmetic
18:59or we lost the war.
19:00And we didn't.
19:01So you know we did.
19:03And anyway,
19:04I'm near the end of the show.
19:05It was Mokley
19:06and weather forecasting
19:08that did the trick.
19:09Remember the vacuum tube
19:11and how those signals
19:13turned it on and off?
19:14Well,
19:16here's what Mokley did with that.
19:18I'll show you with wine bottles
19:20since we're back
19:20at that French vineyard.
19:23OK.
19:24Sets of ten vacuum tubes.
19:27Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands,
19:30and so on.
19:31Now, say you want to add
19:3321 and 101.
19:35You send in a signal
19:37to the ones
19:38to turn one tube on
19:39and then
19:40two signals
19:41into the tens.
19:45Twenty, one.
19:47101's the same.
19:49One signal into the ones
19:51and one signal
19:52into the hundreds.
19:54Now, to add it all up,
19:56you just send
19:57a number of signals in
19:58that will turn everything off.
20:03Two.
20:09Twenty-two.
20:12One hundred and twenty-two.
20:15And keep on adding
20:16sets of ten
20:17and you can add sums
20:18in the trillions
20:19in a split second.
20:23Solve the artillery problem.
20:25Won the war.
20:26End the show.
20:43Because that's how
20:44I know where I am
20:45with this little gizmo,
20:47remember?
20:48Because that wartime
20:49artillery adding machine
20:50was called ENIAC
20:52and it was the first computer.
20:55So, as I said
20:57at the beginning
20:57about finding your roots,
20:59history is what tells you
21:00where you're going next.
21:02Because you only know
21:03where you're going
21:03if you know
21:04where you've been.
21:05So, as I said,
22:05and I'll see you next time.
22:05So, let's see.
22:05Let's see.
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