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00:26This program is not just about India.
00:30It's about India, and wine, and war at sea, and electricity, and steam engines, and love
00:34affairs, and wallpaper, and other stuff.
00:37So this opening sequence is not what it seems.
00:43However, to avoid confusion, throughout the program, I'll keep you posted with regular
00:48feedback.
01:02Oh, hi.
01:03Could you hold it for a second?
01:04Thanks.
01:06Okay, access the uplink now.
01:09Sorry about that.
01:12Well here we are, intrepid reporter James Burke, in one of the more remote parts of India,
01:17ready to start the show.
01:19A show that travels across the great web of knowledge through space and time to find the
01:24strangest connections between things, and all that stuff you've heard before.
01:29I suppose in a way, you know, the whole connections concept is a product of the technology.
01:34Because back before the technology, you couldn't have seen life that way.
01:38I mean the way everything is connected.
01:40Because back then, it wasn't.
01:47A hundred years ago, for instance, I'd have been really cut off here, really intrepid.
01:53Fifty years ago, a hundred miles to the nearest telegraph office.
01:58Twenty years ago, fifty miles to the nearest phone.
02:05Today, this laptop, this cell phone, and that satellite.
02:10And bingo, here goes my script update back to the office in London.
02:14Okay, I'll send it now.
02:21This is what life in the 21st century is going to be all about.
02:25Wherever you are, Siberia, Paris, Manhattan, all of us living on the great network that
02:31will connect everybody.
02:32Able to be and do anything, free from the limitations of space and time, with the world
02:38at your fingertips.
02:40But only if we learn to live with one important little thing in cyberspace, our other selves.
02:47The electronic version of you that lives in the system and works for you night and day.
02:53Does anything you want, sometimes even before you know you want it.
02:57Watch this.
02:59Run the agent program.
03:05Good morning, James.
03:06You have three appointments today, and it's your mother's birthday, so I've sent pink roses.
03:13George's electronic agent says could the next Wednesday meeting be Friday.
03:17I've confirmed you're free, and we've changed both your diaries.
03:22Your checking account is close to red lines, so I've topped it up.
03:25Don't forget it's your anniversary next week.
03:28I've checked out some things she likes.
03:30Okay?
03:32Your blood test came back.
03:34You're fine.
03:37I've completed the company upcoming tax returns, if you want to review them.
03:42Top temperature today, 95.
03:46Your conference calls at nine, and I've reminded everybody else's electronic agent.
03:52That's it.
03:53Good, eh?
03:54And maybe for some people, a bit scary.
03:58Because there's one thing that has to happen if the electronic agent really is supposed to
04:02be another you.
04:04The agent has to know you intimately.
04:08Every detail of your every day, every moment of your business life.
04:13Your spending habits, and those of your nearest and dearest.
04:17Your personal friends, doctor's records, spare time activities.
04:21And every phone call you ever make.
04:24And when you go anywhere, see anybody, buy anything, break a law, tell a lie, catch a
04:30cold, it knows.
04:32And on the network, it doesn't matter where you do that.
04:37It knows.
04:40And then it analyzes and records and updates your behavior profile.
04:45And that's how it learns to be you.
04:47And it does that thanks to the most fundamental element in all learning.
04:56Something that also kind of won the last world war, and every war since.
05:02Feedback.
05:06Feedback.
05:07Feedback is what stops this happening, because it stops this happening.
05:13German missiles going just too fast for people on the ground to hit.
05:17Until feedback.
05:18The magic idea thought up by MIT and Bell Labs for tracking the missile, and then using fancy
05:25math to predict from the radar data where the missile is likely to be a few seconds from
05:30now.
05:30Then you keep feeding those predictions to the guys trying to shoot the missile down.
05:35So instead of shooting at where the thing is, they shoot at where it's going to be.
05:43By 1943, the predictors, as they're called, are able to do this.
05:52The feedback trick improves the artillery success rate to the point where Hitler stops trying.
05:58And by 1944, thanks to feedback, Allied guns everywhere are hitting anything that moves.
06:04And people are beginning to drink to the end of the war being in sight.
06:12Appropriate, really, when you think of where the idea of feedback came from in the first
06:17place.
06:18It's all due to a guy who is a French winemaker, and who happens to find out what goes on
06:24inside
06:24you when you do things, I'm happy to say, like this.
06:29Cheers.
06:29Cheers.
06:31Cheers.
06:33His name is Claude Bernard, and he lives here in this house, in one of the more beautiful
06:38bits of countryside in the world, just outside.
06:41Why don't you enjoy that, while I enjoy this?
06:54This is the Beaujolais country in the heart of France, where some of the world's best wines
07:00come from.
07:01And it's every bit as delightful as it looks.
07:05Ironic that it should have inspired Claude Bernard to do the awful things he did.
07:10Coming up, after another minute or so of this enjoyable tourist stuff.
07:16I don't know.
07:18I don't know.
07:32I don't know.
07:33I don't know.
07:34I don't know.
07:35I don't know.
07:36I don't know.
07:37I don't know.
07:40I don't know.
07:41I don't know.
07:42I don't know.
07:43I don't know.
07:44I don't know.
07:44I don't know.
07:45I don't know.
07:57Right in the middle of the Beaujolais country, this is that guy's vineyard, and that over
08:02there is his house.
08:06And this is the reason he's in this programme.
08:08Because back in mid-19th century, Claude Bernard, who's a doctor as well as a winemaker, notices
08:14something rather funny about, well, rabbit wee-wee.
08:20He discovers that if you give a rabbit regular meals to eat, its urine is cloudy and alkaline.
08:25But if a rabbit's had no food for a while, its urine goes clear and acid.
08:33This earth-shattering observation gets Claude Bernard all excited about stomachs and gastric
08:39juices and other such internal matters.
08:41And here, in his farmhouse, he decides to take a closer, more scientific look.
08:48And he finds out about the way rabbits and humans automatically switch to living off
08:54their fat if they don't get any food.
08:55That's why the urine changes.
08:58Further investigation also reveals that if you're short of sugar, your liver dumps more
09:02sugar into your bloodstream.
09:06And that there's a whole string of reactions like that going on in your body, feedback reactions
09:11that keep all your body levels the way they're supposed to be, like if you need water, you
09:16get thirsty and drink.
09:17If you're hot, you sweat and cool down.
09:22Other people pick up on this stuff and sure enough find out about more feedback systems,
09:27working to control the level of things like adrenaline, sex hormones and other chemicals
09:32that kick in when you're attracted or scared or angry or cold and so on.
09:37All part of the marvelous body feedback mechanism working to preserve what Claude labels the inner
09:44balance.
09:45We today would call it homeostasis.
09:49And it's from physiologists working on homeostasis that those wartime predictor people you saw
09:55get their ideas for those anti-aircraft feedback fire control systems, remember?
10:00Oh, while we're here, take a look at the kind of science Claude Bernard is doing in 1860.
10:07Great big scales because they're still finding out what everything weighs.
10:11giant glass containers for boiling and condensing and reducing, kind of science as cookery almost.
10:18And then you write it all up in pen and ink, because this is before even typewriters.
10:24But then in contrast, look at this, the kind of delicate precision instruments craftsman
10:30handcraft back then.
10:32Beautiful, eh?
10:34This one's particularly relevant.
10:39See, Claude's discovery of how your insides work is great news for medicine.
10:44But not such great news for rabbits or guinea pigs, dogs, frogs, cats, rats, horses or any
10:52of the many experimental animals that young medical students now start to investigate the
10:57workings of in the interest of discovery or of just getting qualified.
11:03Vivisection, it's called, using instruments like this on animals like this.
11:17As a result of which, Claude's wife, well, leaves him and joins some animal rights people,
11:23one of whom is trying to kill Claude, with something that science at the time has not yet discovered.
11:30Thought waves.
11:36The real movers and shakers in anti-vivisection at the time are the English.
11:40Because up to now, they've treated animals worst of anybody and have now decided it's
11:45time to develop a soft spot for man's best friends.
11:47So, as early as 1822, there's a society for the protection of animals from vivisection.
11:53And its leading light is a formidable lady called Cobb, whose followers start to call themselves
12:00humane societies, in spite of the fact that it was this kind of behaviour the original humane
12:06societies were set up to handle, saving what's described as the apparently drowned from various
12:12watery graves.
12:13That kind of humane stuff really hits the headlines here at a place called Bamboura, in the north-east
12:19of England.
12:20A place famous for its ancient castle, and even more famous for its lousy winter weather.
12:27Rarely lousier than at five in the morning on September 7th, 1838, when a luxury steamer
12:35with 68 people on board heading for Scotland breaks up in a humongous storm out there off the
12:42Farne Islands, and everybody goes down, except for nine people clinging to the rocks, and
12:48fortunately for them, spotted by the young daughter of the local lighthouse man.
12:53The girl, Grace Darling, and her dad make two death-defying trips, rescue all the survivors,
12:59and trigger massive public support for more of the same.
13:05As a result of which, if you're ever clinging to the rocks, with a bit of luck, this will
13:10happen.
13:16Lifeboats is what Grace Darling starts, and early on, they look like this.
13:20Covered in cork to make them unsinkable, with five pairs of oars, eventually this design gets
13:26used all over the world.
13:27So, thanks to anti-missile feedback, and Claude Bernhard's vivisection and humane societies,
13:34here we are, on the way to help somebody in distress from becoming an apparently drowned.
13:40We're south by south-east of the pinnacles, and due west of the long-sinned might.
13:47Now, it has to be said, that back in 1854, when lifeboat associations really get going,
13:53it isn't all volunteer altruism, although there's a lot of that.
13:58No, rescuing people back then tends to be something you do on the way to rescuing their cargo.
14:04Because what with industrial production going up in Europe and America, and raw materials
14:09by the thousand tons crossing the ocean, there's a lot more shipping out there.
14:14So there's a lot more money out there.
14:17But there's another reason for all those ships, as I'm sure you've guessed.
14:22And it's linked to a new seafaring habit of chucking bottles over the side.
14:29Now, it's not often a bottle changes the course of history.
14:32But this is no ordinary bottle, as you will see.
14:38Meanwhile, all that extra shipping out there, which is out there thanks to a young American
14:43naval officer, who knows more about what goes on at sea than you could shake a crab net at.
14:53This guy is so hot at oceanography, like how far winds and currents will take you at particular
14:58times of the year, that one day, when an American troop ship gets hit by a gigantic storm in the
15:05Atlantic, our pal, Matthew Morey, marks a cross on the chart.
15:09And that's exactly where the rescue ship finds the survivors, floating in the water days later.
15:16Pretty good, eh?
15:25Morey's able to do that, ex-marks-the-spot stuff, because by 1847, he's spent years going through
15:32more than a million observations on wind and currents, from piles of dusty old ship's log books
15:37that the Department of the Navy have hung on to, but never done anything about.
15:43And that's why I'm here, in posh academic surroundings, with a bunch of people who
15:48owe their careers to the bottle, if you get my drift. And if you don't, you soon will.
15:56Attention on deck. Thank you. Take seats.
16:02The end result of all Morey's data collecting is basic training in every navigation class today.
16:10Basically, what Morey comes up with is a kind of road map of the sea, showing, well, the expressways.
16:15This is one of his best examples, the Gulf Stream. You jump on this 50-mile-wide current,
16:21going across the Atlantic that way, at a time of the year when Morey tells you the winds are also
16:25going that way, and you will be across the Atlantic quicker than you can, say,
16:30path of minimum time sailing, which is what Morey calls this trick.
16:34Using winds and currents, instead of a straight line, to go from any A to any B,
16:39thus saving a lot of time, and more important, a lot of money.
16:45So Morey produces a book called Sailing Directions, and keeps it updated because
16:50every navigator gets a free copy of this book from the US government, as long as they agree to
16:55fill in a form every day of a voyage with temperature, pressure, speed and direction of wind and currents,
17:02and so on. And at certain times, throw over the side a bottle, corked of course, with a bit of
17:09paper
17:09inside, saying date, time and position. See? Oh, and pick up any other bottle they happen to see floating by.
17:22As a result of all this, not surprisingly, Morey becomes an international weather biggie,
17:27which is why he gets to organise the first international weather conference in Brussels in
17:321853, where he talks everybody into standard formats for weather charts.
17:37The other thing Morey is hot for is a weather reporting network that will use the latest
17:43wonder technology, a new gizmo called the Telegraph, which of course bumps Morey into Sam Morse,
17:50well known by history for having invented the Morse code, and almost entirely forgotten by history
17:56Morey for something else. But before we get to that, why are we doing all this about Morey here?
18:03Because this place was his idea. It's where you become a career naval officer like Morey,
18:08the United States Naval Academy.
18:26The United States Naval Academy.
18:35OK, enough of the fun. Now for Sam Morse, revelations of thwarted ambition and conspiracy theory.
18:42And where better for such revelations than the home of such revelations, Capitol Hill.
18:49The court is in session, all rise.
19:04The evidence would seem to indicate that Mr. Matthew Morey and all those other weather experts
19:11are able to exchange data thanks to a trip Mr. Samuel Morse takes back from Europe to America in 1832,
19:20and during which he, quote, invents, unquote, the Telegraph.
19:26In fact, any court in the land would agree that he's probably the sixth person to do so.
19:32Anyway, back in New York, let me see.
19:36He reads up on electricity, picks everybody's brains, and has the two ideas that make his Telegraph
19:43the one that will end up famous rather than anybody else's. Exhibit A, the key you tap with,
19:51and Exhibit B, the code you tap.
19:55The Morse Code.
19:59In 1844, here in the old US Supreme Court in Washington DC, before astonished members of Congress,
20:07Sam Morse powers up his contraption and blows everybody away with what must have seemed a little
20:13short of magic. An instant message all the way from Baltimore, 45 miles away, he says,
20:18he says, and here it comes, now, and this happens.
20:44And the rest, as they say, is history.
20:47The history everybody knows.
20:49Now for the less known bit, and get ready for some culture.
20:55This is the Capitol Building Rotunda in Washington, and the next bit of the story.
21:02The reason Morse is on that ship back from Europe, remember, is because he's been over there
21:10painting this kind of stuff, for which he's already quite famous.
21:14I mean, he's president of the National Academy of Art and Design in New York, for a start.
21:20So, you won't be surprised to know that in terms of what happens next,
21:24he pretty much reckons he's got the picture.
21:30The thing is, back in 1836, they haven't quite finished building the Rotunda, and of the decoration and stuff left
21:37to do,
21:38the main job the Rotunda Art Committee still have to commission is for a set of four giant paintings like
21:44this one.
21:44A commission which Sam Morse's pitched to the committee kind of takes for granted.
21:51Take a look at this, gentlemen, and you'll see that important themes are my stock in trade.
21:56This is called the Gallery of the Louvre in Paris. I mean, I think big.
22:03So a job like the Rotunda for a man of my talents would be a piece of cake, right?
22:10Wrong.
22:12The problem is, Morse is a political loony.
22:14He believes that the Pope is infiltrating Catholics into Missouri in preparation for an armed uprising,
22:21that there is a foul foreign conspiracy against these United States,
22:26and that very soon there will be an American world empire.
22:30Well, you can imagine the reaction of the Rotunda Art Committee, can't you?
22:34Don't call us.
22:36Morse is so ticked off, he gives up painting for good.
22:40Still, as you know, he makes a fortune with the telegraph.
22:44Can't win them all.
22:48Meanwhile, why was he on that trip to Europe in the first place?
22:51Well, as I said, boning up on European art in preparation for this presentation,
22:57and also spending some time with his big hero,
23:01a fellow who had the kind of disease most of us would like to have.
23:14The disease in question is a condition for which the only cure, even today, is trips to Italy.
23:21And Sam Morse's hero is nuts about the place, especially this place,
23:26the tiny hill town of Alevano Romano, just south of Rome, where the food and the wine and the people
23:33and the architecture and the sun and the olive groves will do to you what they do to this gent
23:39here.
23:40Washington Alston, who turns up in 1805 so that he can do what all romantic painters did,
23:47go totally over the top about how, well, Italian Italy is.
24:00Now, clearly, this programme hasn't suddenly turned into an art history class.
24:06As usual, there's more to all this than meets the eye.
24:10First of all, because Alston goes on to become America's leading romantic painter,
24:14which is why Morse worships him and why he's in this programme.
24:19And because, apart from mooning around, hugging trees and smelling the flowers,
24:24and taking his sketches home and filling them with classical maidens and Greek temples and all that good stuff,
24:30Alston gets mixed up with a rather dubious type I'm quite sure the puritanical Sam Morse never knew about.
24:37The chap I have in mind turns up here to visit and accompanies Alston on his daily commune with nature,
24:44while they discuss the meaning of life.
24:48Only, however, on those very rare days when the gentleman in question is in a fit state to discuss anything.
25:00And the name of this candidate for the rehab clinic?
25:03Romantic poetry hotshot Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the greatest scribblers and drug addicts in English lit,
25:10and who spends time over in Olevina Romano, Italy, visiting Alston on his way back to England from this delightful
25:17spot,
25:17the holiday island of Malta, where he's been up to some pretty strange shenanigans.
25:23But before I dish the dirt, a quick catch-up on the story so far.
25:28Electronic agents on the internet and wartime guns use feedback techniques discovered in the first place by Claude Bernard,
25:37whose vivisection experiments kick off all those animal rights movements called humane societies,
25:42that really start out as lifeboat crews, rescuing people from all the shipwrecks happening
25:48because of all the extra ships out there who are using Maury's data on wind and currents,
25:53transmitted by the amazing New Telegraph invented by Sam Morse,
25:56who's also a painter, whose hero is Washington Alston, who spends time in Italy with Coleridge,
26:02who is, as I said, here in Malta.
26:04And, as you will see, spending a lot of time writing back to London.
26:16Okay, on with the story.
26:36What Coleridge is up to here is travelling all over the island on picnics and jolly trips to the countryside
26:43and, at the same time, working for the contemporary British equivalent of the CIA
26:49and trying and failing miserably to get over his rather unfortunate habit,
26:54which is to take humongous amounts of opium four or five times a day and get totally off the wall.
27:01So, surprise, surprise, Coleridge is in Malta for his health.
27:21By this time, his marriage is also on the rocks and he's broke, has rheumatism, gout, heart problems, paranoia,
27:29hypochondria and a giant guilt complex about various kinds of sin.
27:33And he's only 32.
27:35Oh, and he has written some great poetry, most of it hallucinatory.
27:43Now, as I said, Coleridge isn't just taking in the scenery here.
27:48By day, he's doing the 007 Act, deeply involved with for your eyes only stuff.
27:57On hush-hush missions he won't talk about, for the fellow running this place, the British governor of Malta, a
28:04navy type called Alexander Ball.
28:07That's Coleridge by day.
28:13By night, he's burning the candle as rewrite man on Governor Ball's secret reports back to London about all the
28:21spying and skullduggery going on here.
28:23Because Malta, in mid-Mediterranean, see, is just where everybody wants to be.
28:30Russia wants a Mediterranean outpost.
28:33France wants to stop them.
28:35Britain wants to stop France.
28:38And America's having a war with Libya and needs a local base.
28:43So the island is what you might call a classic hotbed of intrigue, as they say in stuffier programmes than
28:50this.
28:50Well, you get the point about Coleridge.
28:52Malta's the last place for a romantic poet to get a lot of musing and scribbling done.
28:57So he doesn't.
28:59And by 1806, he's getting seriously worried about his literary output, with good reason, because there isn't any.
29:07So he heads for home via Olevina Romano, where he will stay with Alston, leaving behind the good governor, Alexander
29:14Ball.
29:16Alexander Ball, whose attitude to drug addict poets is typically navy, shape up or ship out.
29:25Alexander Ball gets that governor's job in the first place, because back in 1798, he's a navy captain fighting the
29:31French,
29:32and gets orders to join a new squadron in the Mediterranean.
29:37The job of the squadron is to keep tabs on Napoleon.
29:41His fleet is rumoured to be in the French port of Toulon, here.
29:47Now, British intelligence says his plan is to cross the Mediterranean and invade Egypt, here.
29:53But just in case his real plan is to go for Britain, the Brits are covering their bets, here.
30:00As well as blockading the other big French naval port of Brest, here.
30:04As well as hanging around another possible bolt hole for the French fleet in Cadiz, here.
30:11So, the Brits are stretched pretty thin.
30:14Turns out, Napoleon's real target is Egypt, after all.
30:18So he slips out of Toulon with 29 warships and arms and ammunition up the yin yang.
30:24Everything they need to take over Egypt.
30:26Now, this is a catastrophe in the making.
30:29And all there is to stop Napoleon is Alexander Ball, his boss, and six measly little ships.
30:38And then up comes a gale.
30:40The Brits get driven way down here, off Sardinia.
30:44So there's nobody to prevent Napoleon making it all the way to Egypt and taking over as planned.
30:52And this is where Ball gets that job in Malta.
30:55There they are, in the teeth of a storm.
30:58His boss's flagship has lost its mast, and Ball is towing him.
31:02The winds are up to force ten.
31:04The seas are humongous.
31:06They're nearly on the rocks.
31:07And the boss signals, cut loose and leave me.
31:09The aptly named Ball signals, no way.
31:13Things are looking pretty disastrous.
31:15And then, at the last minute, in the nick of time, the storm abates.
31:20And it all ends like Hollywood, as you knew it would.
31:24It just so happens, the guy whose life Ball has just saved is Admiral Horatio Nelson,
31:30the great British hero, who promptly thanks Ball by making him governor of Malta.
31:35Down here, you remember.
31:37While Nelson himself nips off to mop up Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile.
31:44From which he then sails off for some R&R, and all the pasta the crew can eat, to Italy.
31:50Here.
31:51It's in Naples that Nelson comes across the hottest thing he's ever seen.
31:55No, not Vesuvius.
31:59A lady called Emma Hamilton.
32:02These two are about to make whoopee.
32:04Sorry, history.
32:06And this is where they will meet.
32:08Naples, a city that has welcomed sailors with open arms for centuries.
32:13The place for food, fun and frolic.
32:16And Emma Hamilton's husband is giving her enough rope,
32:18so she's spending most of her time partying with the locals.
32:23The elderly Hamilton is hardly the ideal match for a dish like Emma,
32:28so she's in the market for some pretty fishy stunts with the local gentry.
32:33Including one I can't possibly show you, so try this spaghetti eating contest instead.
32:39But Emma knows her ship will come in if she plays her cards right.
32:43Well, it does.
32:44And I bet you've guessed who's on it.
32:46Yes.
32:47In 1798, the megastar admiral Horatio Nelson arrives in Naples.
32:53Everybody faints in fashionable style, especially Emma.
32:57There are parties where Emma distributes buttons and ribbons with H.N. on them.
33:02She also entertains Nelson wearing no underwear.
33:05And not surprisingly, they become friends.
33:09Nelson persuades his wife to stay back home with tales of how Italy's bad for your health.
33:14And eventually he and Emma return here to England where she has his child,
33:17and they hit the tabloids, so to speak.
33:21He leaves again for sea, is killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, and that's it.
33:25One of history's greatest soap operas.
33:29The grieving Emma lives on, widow of the nation's role model.
33:34Not bad for a girl who got a start in what can only be described as shocking circumstances.
33:48Doors have been opening for Emma since she was a hooker aged 14,
33:53from which she graduates to be mistress of various aristocrats.
33:56She hits the big time around 1780, pouring drinks for the well-heeled suckers who are flocking
34:04into London's latest health and beauty salon with a difference, where they charge you in more
34:10senses than one, with electric shocks.
34:17Dr. James Graham claims his current treatment will generate a galvanizing effect on anybody
34:22who has a spark of life in them and wants to be a real live wire.
34:27And if you think that sentence was dreadful, you should read Graham's original sales pitch.
34:34But where Graham really scores is with his electrico-magnetico-celestial bed, where,
34:40if you can't have children, a few high-voltage sessions with the good doctor,
34:45and from then on, all your troubles will be little ones.
34:51Now, this may all look like indictable offences to you,
34:54but you've got to remember that back then, this is high-tech amazement.
34:58I mean, who knows?
35:00This quack is a fully paid-up member of the respectable professional classes,
35:05a friend of Benjamin Franklin and various dukes and duchesses.
35:09And, of course, he studied at the best medical school in Britain, Edinburgh.
35:15Where he is taught by a fellow with a drinking problem.
35:22The problem in question is being solved by Graham's prof, Dr. Joe Black,
35:27here in Bonny, Scotland, for the people who make this delicious stuff.
35:32Here's how they do that.
35:40Well, more or less.
35:43This fire heats up the whisky mash, it makes steam, you run the steam through a jacket of cold water,
35:50which condenses the steam into drips of whisky.
35:55And that's still all there is to a still.
35:58Except, of course, for the secret magic ingredient of the whisky mash.
36:03OK, Black's job for the distillers is to quantify how much fire you need to make how much steam,
36:09to be condensed by how much water, to give you how much whisky.
36:16In the inebriating course of these researches, Black discovers that steam is so scalding hot
36:22because it has a massive amount of heat in it.
36:26Latent heat, he calls it.
36:29So he tells James Watt, and that's why Watt comes up with a steam engine that works so well,
36:35it kicks off the Industrial Revolution.
36:37And the legend is, he does it here, in a place called Bowness, near Edinburgh, in this very cottage.
36:48Well, ruin. Standing, however, in the grounds of something rather grander.
36:58In 1764, Keneal House is being rented by a yuppie coal mine owner called Roebuck,
37:03who backs Watt's steam engine research, and then his coal mines flood out and he goes bankrupt
37:08before Watt can finish his work.
37:11The two of them split amicably enough. It's nobody's fault.
37:15And there's not much point, is there, in crying over spilt milk.
37:25Appropriately enough, spilt milk is the reason Roebuck makes his money in the first place.
37:29See, this is the old way to bleach cotton, soaked in sour milk for six weeks.
37:35A lot of time, and a lot of real estate.
37:38Until Roebuck comes up with the better way, cheaper and faster.
37:42But the bleachers aren't keen, with good reason.
37:46Because, although Roebuck's new stuff will bleach in 24 hours, and costs a lot less,
37:52a sulphuric acid's not exactly user-friendly if you happen to spill it.
37:57So, thanks to the electrical Graham's link with Black, who introduced Watt to Roebuck,
38:02here we are, about to see the bleach fields disappear forever,
38:06when somebody now invents a way to bleach cloth just like the way you do it in your washing machine
38:11today.
38:12This somebody is called Tennant, and he takes a scientific approach.
38:17First he makes chlorine gas, and then mixes it with lime and water,
38:20and comes up with a magic liquid that will put all these people out of work.
38:34Tennant's bleaching liquid relocates the bleaching industry into factories.
38:38And when he produces a powdered version of the stuff,
38:40you can bleach clothes in the comfort of your own kitchen.
38:43So, the bleach fields go back to being moorland, and Tennant goes on to become a paper millionaire.
38:50Ironic, considering what his bleaching powder does to paper.
38:57Here's an important bit of paper I'll get to in a second.
39:00Meanwhile, where are we?
39:02Remember Coleridge in Malta, where he worked for Captain Alexander Ball,
39:07who saves Nelson's life so he can fall for the dubious Emma,
39:11whose electrical start in life was with Dr Graham,
39:15educated in Scotland by the whisky experimenter Joe Black,
39:18whose friends were the sulphuric Roebuck,
39:21whose bleaching techniques are improved by Tennant,
39:23who gets rich by making things whiter than white.
39:28Not, however, this important bit of paper.
39:33The American Declaration of Independence.
39:35Have you ever noticed how American documents from this period are all kind of mud-coloured,
39:40and the English stuff from the same time is grey?
39:44That's because they're made from rags, and whatever colour the rags are, you get.
39:49Well, Tennant's new bleach makes paper white at last,
39:52because it does the same to the rags, no matter what the cloth,
39:56no matter what the pattern on them.
39:58And the need for good white paper is on the rise,
40:01like everything else in the Industrial Revolution.
40:04Which is why, around 1812, a new French patent makes such a big hit here in London.
40:11Take a lot of bleached pulp made from rags,
40:14and spread it evenly on a wire mesh belt, which is vibrating to shake all the water out.
40:20Then run the damp pulp between a series of heated rollers,
40:25and what you get is cheap enough to stick on the walls.
40:28And cover with fancy designs, too.
40:34And the printing is mechanised by now, too, because in 1840, a Yorkshire cotton printing firm
40:41comes up with a way for printing paper with rollers.
40:45Between them, mechanised paper making and roller printing make life in the modern world just that
40:50little bit more fun for young homeowners, because they make possible cheap wallpaper.
40:57And this is where things take a left-hand turn for the decorative, the medieval, and the socialist.
41:10This is the medieval bit. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Romantic movement has everybody nostalgic
41:17for the Middle Ages, and what life was like before they built the factory down the street.
41:22So real east feats turn their homes into kind of Victorian versions of the 15th century with gaslight.
41:29Into this radical chic world of historical inaccuracy comes a failed architect who is hot stuff at the
41:35new rustic simplicity, name of William Morris, who promptly invents what we now call decor,
41:41the kind of country-fresh design work people pay the earth for at some of the fancier fabric outlets,
41:47as well as arts and crafts furnishings and textiles that are supposed to make your little suburban home
41:53look less rookery nook, and more, Queen Elizabeth slept here.
41:58Now, you'd expect a nice middle-class decorator like William Morris to have a favourite colour, right?
42:03Well, he does. It's red.
42:05And here's where the left-hand turn I mentioned comes in.
42:08Because Morris is also revolutionary.
42:22In 1883, Morris and Karl Marx's sister and others get together,
42:28and a year later, Morris found the Socialist League, with uplifting class warfare songs to match.
42:43And over on the piano, a couple of canoodling Socialist nobodies who are more than just friends,
42:50and who are about to become world-famous.
42:56Now, those two lovebirds I mentioned, George Bernard Shaw and Annie Beesant,
43:01first meet when she gets herself embroiled in what becomes known as the Great Contraception Trial.
43:09Now, you've got to remember that back then, you can get yourself in deep doo-doo just by putting the
43:15words family and planning together. Annie, however, does a good deal more than that.
43:22In Britain, she publishes a new book recently arrived from America and called The Fruits of Philosophy.
43:29Now, this little book is no big deal to you or me. The stuff in here is so tame,
43:33it would cure your insomnia. But boy, does it cook Annie's goose.
43:42Let me read you a little bit of the stuff that offends all right-thinking, decent-minded folk back in
43:481877,
43:50gets Annie a fine and six months in jail.
43:55And I hope you're ready for this.
43:58Another check which the old idea of conception has led some to recommend with considerable confidence,
44:03consists in introducing, previous to connection, a very delicate piece of sponge moistened with water
44:10to be immediately afterwards withdrawn by means of a very narrow ribbon attached to it.
44:17Lurid stuff, eh?
44:21Well, the fine and the sentence turn Annie into a real revolutionary,
44:26which accounts for me playing the piano badly here in India. Madras, to be specific.
44:37After a couple of decades of fighting the establishment back in England for women's rights,
44:42Annie comes out here to India to fight another cause. We Brits are running the place at the time,
44:47and Annie reckons we shouldn't be. So she takes on the crazy task of getting the British out of India.
44:54We did pretty well. We're out, aren't we?
45:04By 1893, Annie's done courses in spiritualism, hypnotism and psychic perception,
45:11and moved on to various swamis and gurus and the Indian National Congress, of which by 1917 she will
45:20become president and get to know such movers and shakers as Gandhi and Nehru.
45:27On the way to the political high life, she also sets up this place, the International Theosophy Headquarters,
45:34where courses in comparative religion are given.
45:50So Annie has come a long way since tinkling the ivories with down and out socialists like George Bernard Shaw.
45:56She's now very well known wherever liberals flourish, even America.
46:04Where she and her gurus go over very big, in 1893 at the Great Columbia Exposition in Chicago,
46:11where they fire everybody's imagination.
46:14And I don't just mean with the spices in the curry, I mean the curry.
46:20Vegetarianism, which by this time has also become the subject of some visionary thinking
46:24by another lady who knows a bit about religion, in Michigan.
46:43The lady here in Michigan is Ellen White, a leading member of the 19th century Seventh-day Adventist Church.
46:58Ellen White has a series of visions, most of them about the direction the church ought to be going.
47:04But, as you'll see, from this little visionary home of hers, she changes more than just life in the church.
47:21See, one of the things Adventists stand for is moderation in all things.
47:26And that includes something close to Annie Beeson's heart, too.
47:29Because the Adventist Church discourages its members from taking stimulants of any kind and from eating meat.
47:39At one point, some Adventists visit Dansville, New York, famous for its water cures, cold baths, that sort of stuff.
47:47And hygiene and health fit very well with the new Adventist diet.
48:00And this is where the Adventist Church begins to affect the rest of us.
48:11Inspired by Dansville, they do this, a 19th century version of what I'm doing.
48:16They set up the first real organised health and fitness centre, and it sets a whole new style of living.
48:22As a result of which, today, every morning, people like me work up a sweat with some kind of keep
48:28fit thing or other.
48:29And speaking of sweat, excuse me.
48:34Well, we're almost at the end of our story.
48:36In 1866, the Adventists open the Western Health Reform Institute,
48:41and ten years later, invite a young doctor they've sponsored through training to be the superintendent.
48:48He changes the name to the sanitarium, introduces room service and entertainment,
48:53and turns this place into where the elite meet.
48:56If you're into healthy living, this place is playing your tune.
49:02The new superintendent is quite a guy.
49:0618-hour days, he can dictate letters at 125 words a minute for 48 hours.
49:11He dresses only in white, and can often be seen with his cockatoo on his shoulder.
49:16He does away with some of the more violent water cures, and opens schools of nursing, physical education, and home
49:23economics.
49:25He works everybody to exhaustion on exercise machines known as muscle beaters,
49:30and makes everybody sit, all the time, on posture chairs like this.
49:36He starves his clients on a diet of water, yoghurt, rice, nuts, fresh fruit and veggies.
49:44And then he does something that only changes the entire world.
49:51Thank you. I'll take the breakfast, please.
49:54So, here we are, with a new menu for living, thanks to the ingredients that have made up this programme.
50:01Electronic agents, using feedback techniques, developed for wartime guns because of Claude Bernard
50:07and all those experiments that kick off the anti-vivisection humane societies,
50:12that really start out as lifeboat organisations set up to rescue people from ships,
50:17using the wind and weather data from Maury, based on telegraphy invented by Samuel Morse,
50:23who learns painting from Alston, who's a pal of Coleridge,
50:27who works in Malta for Ball, who saves Nelson for Emma,
50:31who's worked for the electrical Graham,
50:33who's taught by whisky scientist Black,
50:35who knows the sulphuric Roebuck,
50:37who bleaches paper that will be decorated by Morris,
50:40who's a socialist with Annie Besant,
50:42who is a vegetarian, just like the Seventh-day Adventists.
50:49Which is why we end, as I said, with the day that changed the world.
50:53Because here, in 1895,
50:56the superintendent was trying to invent a healthier kind of bread,
50:59and all he came up with was some mushy gunk.
51:01So, just for kicks, he put it through rollers and baked it.
51:05And what came out changed the daily routine of the inhabitants of planet Earth.
51:11Today, it's named after the superintendent who produced the original mush.
51:15And that is why a programme that began with electronic agents in India
51:18ends here, in Battle Creek, Michigan, with this.
51:27Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
51:28Good for my feedback.
52:13Transcription by CastingWords
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