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00:26To be continued
00:32I suppose you could call this programme a travelogue.
00:36It does travel through space and time.
00:38Or you could call it a kind of detective story.
00:42It's certainly full of mysteries.
00:44Or you could say it's about one of history's greatest cases of mistaken identity.
00:49Or you could call it any one of these things.
00:52After all, what's in a name?
01:01Here we are in the Mysterio Thorian, right?
01:04Colourful, exotic customs, ancient rituals.
01:07Above all, perhaps, different.
01:12Well, that's what it says in the brochure.
01:15Fact is, that might have been true 50 years ago.
01:18But today, half the world's cities, including Singapore, look more like Dallas.
01:24And anyway, nowadays, most travellers and holidaymakers don't actually want all that foreign stuff, do they?
01:31I mean, ask anybody in a package tour.
01:34Ah, room service.
01:37What most people care about when they're abroad is the state of their insides.
01:42So you also stick to international food.
01:46Well, that way you don't get Montezuma's Revenge or Deli Belli or whatever you want to call it.
01:51Well, not with this you don't.
01:54The new global diet for the new global person.
01:58The calorie-aware, weight-conscious, healthy-living individual.
02:02This little flake is eaten by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
02:08Pretty much anywhere you go, you can get cornflakes.
02:15Now, there are those gourmets and old-fashioned exploring adventurers who lament the passing of local customs in things like
02:23food
02:23and the disappearance of exotic breakfasts, of fried ants, boiled tripe, black pudding, meat soup, cheese and olives,
02:34or whatever people used to eat before this new high-speed diet for a high-speed world.
02:42There are even those who would say that, gastronomically speaking, this is a load of garbage, which would be unfair.
02:49There is garbage associated with it, but I assure you it comes into the story well after you've finished your
02:55cornflakes.
02:57So let me bring it into the story now.
03:01This is what I'm talking about.
03:02What's left after you've taken the corn for the cornflakes?
03:05There are thousands of tons of it being produced every day.
03:08Ah.
03:10Used corncobs.
03:12And thanks to a totally forgotten German chemist, who I think really didn't know what he was doing anyway,
03:17this garbage is far from garbage.
03:20For much of modern industry, what you can do with this stuff really beats the band.
03:33This musical interlude is happening in the market square of the small eastern German town where the story starts.
03:40It's called Jena.
03:42And back in 1810, it's got one of the best universities in the country,
03:45and two professors, one of whom becomes world famous, the other ones totally forgotten,
03:52until this programme drags him out of obscurity thanks to those corncobs I mentioned.
03:57But let's have a little more oompa first, hmm?
04:20OK, sorry.
04:21Back to corncobs again.
04:23While I lead you up the garden path in what can only be described as
04:27the corniest story I've ever told.
04:31One of the things in the 19th century you're not going to find in fancy botanical gardens like this
04:36is that.
04:37I mean, from a horticultural point of view, this is pretty low-rent stuff.
04:43Back then, you feed corncobs to cows and chickens,
04:46you grow mushrooms on them,
04:48you use them to fill swampy ground,
04:50and sometimes you make pipes out of them.
04:52What are you going to do with corncobs?
04:56And then, in 1810,
04:58the fellow who lives in this house,
05:00and runs this botanical garden,
05:02and administers Jena University,
05:04and is one of those academics I mentioned,
05:07the one who becomes world famous,
05:09the great German poet Goethe,
05:11takes up the cause of a corncob,
05:14and changes history.
05:18Thanks to encouragement from Goethe,
05:20an associate professor of chemistry here,
05:23that I bet my life you've never heard of,
05:25called Wolfgang Dobreiner,
05:27takes a close look at various organic matters,
05:30and comes up with a totally new chemical,
05:32I also bet my life you've never heard of,
05:34called
05:35ferforal.
05:36Now, don't ask me, or him,
05:39why Dobreiner should do such a thing,
05:41he just does,
05:43and then does nothing about it,
05:44except to write the usual humongously boring scientific paper,
05:48about which, for 100 years,
05:51nobody else does anything either.
05:52But wait.
05:56Here we are, in the 1930s,
05:58and still nobody cares about poor old Dobreiner's ferforal,
06:01until people start drilling oil wells all over the place.
06:05Bad news for farmers.
06:07Till this point,
06:08most useful chemicals came from plants,
06:11but now,
06:11they're going to be petroleum by-products.
06:14Agri-business better find some new way to use their leftovers,
06:18or they'll be.
06:23One day,
06:24the people at Quaker Oats dig up Dobreiner's stuff,
06:27and discover that if you press,
06:29boil steam,
06:29and shove acid into corn cobs,
06:31and other kinds of organic garbage left after people have had their breakfast,
06:35what do you get but ferforal,
06:36which now turns out to be a chemical that goes into all kinds of good stuff.
06:45So, from the dim recesses of academic life,
06:50Dobreiner's little discovery ends up in every chemical library in the world,
06:53one of the great solvents of all time.
06:57Used in the production of stuff like petroleum products,
07:00synthetic rubber,
07:02insecticides,
07:03herbicides,
07:03and all kinds of pharmaceuticals,
07:05lubricants,
07:05weed killers,
07:06and something in quantum physics I don't understand.
07:09Oh,
07:09and one thing Dobreiner would really have appreciated.
07:13Anti-carbuncle cream.
07:16Which, fortunately for you,
07:17is not the next connection in this program.
07:20Because the other place ferforal gets used
07:23is in making a resin
07:24that is just what people want
07:26for bonding abrasives
07:28to grinding wheels.
07:30A subject you've waited all your life to know about.
07:33I know.
07:33So I won't make light of it.
07:39The light in question
07:40is a quarter of a million bulbs,
07:42lighting up the great
07:43Chicago-Columbia Exposition
07:45of 1893.
07:46All thanks to George Westinghouse,
07:50who gets around Edison's patent
07:52for a one-piece light bulb
07:53with a two-piece light bulb.
07:56Bottom,
07:57an open-necked bulb,
07:58into which,
07:59above,
08:00the filament base fits.
08:02You plug it into the open neck of the bulb.
08:05And you maintain the vacuum
08:06inside the light bulb
08:07because everything's airtight,
08:09thanks to the ground glass collar
08:11that fits perfectly.
08:15Ah,
08:16meet
08:17abrasive American
08:18Edward Goodrich Acheson,
08:21who does all that
08:23ground glass work
08:24for Westinghouse
08:24because,
08:25thanks to an accident,
08:26he owns
08:27a carborundum company.
08:29The accident happens
08:31earlier,
08:31in 1861,
08:33when Acheson
08:34is bashing
08:35a lot of electricity
08:36into a mixture
08:36of coke and clay.
08:38At a humongously
08:40high temperature,
08:40the whole lot melts.
08:42Big deal.
08:43And certainly not
08:44the abrasives
08:45Acheson's trying to make
08:46at the time.
08:47And then he notices
08:49some tiny crystals
08:50in the clay.
08:52He puts a bit
08:53on the end
08:53of a pencil lead
08:54and it scratches
08:55glass like diamonds.
08:58Bingo!
08:59Well,
09:00where else would he go
09:01but here?
09:06Now,
09:06if there's one industry
09:08that needs good
09:08abrasives,
09:09it's the diamond
09:10business,
09:11harder and more
09:12polished than which
09:13there isn't.
09:14Back then,
09:16Tiffany's is where
09:17the bejeweled elite
09:17meet to choose
09:18their sparklers.
09:19So,
09:20not surprisingly,
09:21it's somebody
09:21at Tiffany's
09:22who encourages
09:23Acheson to do
09:24something about
09:24his accident,
09:25like do it again
09:27on purpose,
09:27and market the world's
09:29hardest material
09:30after diamonds,
09:32carborundum.
09:33Chemical name,
09:34silicon carbide.
09:36Carborundum is soon
09:37being described as
09:38an indispensable
09:39tool of industry
09:40by anybody
09:41with anything
09:42that needs an edge.
09:44Like plough shares.
09:46And speaking of
09:47plough shares,
09:48swords.
09:51One spectacular
09:52modern use
09:53of Acheson
09:54silicon carbide
09:54happens in
09:551960s Vietnam
09:57with the invention
09:58of an outfit
09:58called the
09:59Air Cavalry,
10:00whose choppers
10:01are highly
10:02maneuverable,
10:03well-armed
10:03and everywhere.
10:08Now,
10:10taking the wounded
10:10out or dropping
10:11green berets in
10:12and delivering
10:13supplies,
10:14doing reconnaissance
10:15or conducting
10:16rocket attacks,
10:17chopper people
10:18are constantly
10:19and acutely
10:19aware of one
10:20minor problem.
10:22One of the reasons
10:23choppers are so
10:24clever is because
10:25they can sit still
10:25in mid-air,
10:27which kind of
10:28makes them a target
10:28it is difficult
10:29to miss.
10:30So it's the
10:31chopper people
10:32who think up
10:33a use for
10:33Acheson
10:34silicon carbide
10:35as a protective
10:36lining for their
10:37vulnerable machines.
10:38Thing being,
10:40silicon carbide's
10:41a lot tougher
10:42than most of the
10:43stuff shooting up
10:44at them
10:44from the jungle
10:45below.
10:55One of the
10:56nicest things
10:56you can say
10:57to somebody
10:58fighting a war
10:58on the ground
10:59in the jungle
11:00is put this on
11:01and you won't
11:02get hurt.
11:03So what starts
11:04up there with
11:05the chopper pilots
11:06very soon comes
11:07down here with
11:08the grunts
11:08where the fighting
11:09is very close
11:10quarters,
11:11spoil your day
11:12type of stuff.
11:18So in no time
11:19at all what
11:20the well-dressed
11:20dogface is wearing
11:21is some
11:22helicopter protection
11:23for humans
11:23called a flak jacket
11:27which has some
11:28very interesting
11:28features to it
11:29like if you're
11:30wearing one
11:30you can throw a
11:31grenade just a few
11:32yards, turn and
11:33hunch up and
11:34survive your blast
11:35while others do
11:36not.
11:36And more than
11:38half of all wounds
11:39that were previously
11:39lethal become no
11:41longer lethal.
11:42You still get a
11:43real pain in the
11:44chest maybe but
11:45that's a lot better
11:45than getting taken
11:46seriously dead by
11:47somebody's armour
11:48piercing ordinance.
11:49Speaking of which
11:50let me give you
11:51some hard facts.
11:52It all started
11:53with cornflakes
11:54made from corn
11:56cobs that de
11:57Brine attended to
11:58furfaral to bond
11:59silicon carbide
11:59abrasives that
12:01Westinghouse used
12:02to grind light bulbs
12:03and that also
12:04ended up as
12:05protection for
12:06choppers and
12:07in flak jackets
12:09to protect against
12:10armour piercing
12:10ammunition which
12:12originally got
12:13developed for use
12:14against something
12:14that first appeared
12:16in World War One.
12:25The main snag for
12:26World War One
12:27infantry is getting
12:28snagged and then
12:30shot on rows of
12:31barbed wire.
12:32So here's the
12:34solution.
12:35Named because it
12:36looks just like a
12:37water tank, a
12:38tank.
12:39main job, roll over
12:41and flatten the
12:42barbed wire so the
12:43troops can get
12:44through okay and
12:45then act as
12:46protection for the
12:47troops as they go
12:48on into the
12:49advance.
12:50Small wonder the
12:51tank soon becomes
12:52everybody's favourite
12:53war machine.
12:55Except for the
12:56people inside where
12:58it can get up to
12:59125 degrees cramped
13:01and smelly.
13:02But what a ride.
13:04It can handle six
13:05foot vertical slopes
13:06and 15 foot vertical
13:08drops.
13:09Only question is
13:10can the crew?
13:16Tanks are a
13:17smash success and
13:19nothing can stop them
13:19except as I said the
13:21armour piercing ammunition
13:22which is now invented.
13:25Meanwhile, tanks win the
13:27war for the Allies.
13:28In 1918, 59 British
13:30divisions beat 99
13:32German divisions because
13:33the Brits have tanks and
13:35the Germans have no
13:36chance.
13:37Tanks also offer a
13:38bright future to one
13:39particular bunch of
13:40soldiers who take them
13:42over.
13:42The old sabre-wielding
13:44cavalry and, speaking of
13:46swords, plough shares.
13:54Now, if you take a
13:55close look at this
13:56picture, you'll see two
13:58things that caused the
13:59tank to happen in the
14:00first place.
14:03The soft soil here in
14:05the beautiful San
14:06Joaquin Valley, California.
14:09That and the fact that
14:10all the horses are about
14:12to be taken off the
14:13farms to be sent to
14:14Europe for the war
14:22effort.
14:24This critical situation
14:26inspires an enterprising
14:27type called Ben Holt, who
14:29lives here in the San
14:30Joaquin Valley, to invent
14:32one of those amazing
14:33labour-saving devices for
14:35which America has always
14:36been famous, set to the
14:37stage for the development
14:39of the tank, and change
14:40the whole nature of
14:41farming, here on the local
14:43fields, and then all over
14:44the world, virtually at a
14:47stroke.
14:51Introducing the machine
14:53that turns America into the
14:54world's breadbasket and
14:56solves the problem of
14:57horselessness, the
14:59horseless tractor.
15:00Take a look at this
15:01wonderful thing.
16:26Turn on a dime.
16:28Well, a quarter.
16:29But you can see why the generals back in Europe jump at the idea, though.
16:33You can use one of these things to haul army supplies night and day, thick and thin.
16:38And it doesn't need hay.
16:40And you can also turn it into a tank, which they do.
16:43Well, that's World War I in the bag.
16:45Drinks all round.
16:48One last thing about tractors.
16:50They're engines, which is why I mentioned the drink.
16:54Beer, as it happens, because that's what it takes for Holt and everybody else in the US to get to
16:58hear about diesel engines.
17:00You know, history's funny in some ways, because the fellow who helps to make tractors synonymous with diesel engines is
17:07a brewer from St. Louis called Gustavus Adolphus Busch.
17:10You can still buy his stuff today.
17:12See?
17:13Anyway, Bush buys the US rights to diesel engines in 1897, because the technical director at his brewery is a
17:20German who was at school with a fellow called Rudolf Diesel.
17:28And diesel gets his first job with a fellow who kind of invents refrigeration, and he does that to keep
17:37beer cool.
17:38Anyway, diesel.
17:40Lonely childhood grows up obsessed with mechanical efficiency.
17:44What can I say?
17:45It takes all sorts.
17:46Besides, it does end up making Rudolf rich and famous.
17:50So let's hear it for mechanical obsessions.
17:54Now, the really clever thing about a diesel engine is it's not a gasoline engine.
17:58And the reason that's clever can only be described as a lot of hot air.
18:07First, because a gasoline engine compresses the air and the fuel spray mix, and then a spark explodes the mixture.
18:14So you have to get the timing just right, or the spark will happen when the mixture's not ready.
18:19And if you let the air compress too much, it'll ignite the fuel spontaneously.
18:24But that's just the point with a diesel engine.
18:28Here, there's no mixture, just air, which you compress.
18:32And when you do, its temperature rises to about 8,000 degrees Celsius.
18:38At the top of the cycle, at maximum pressure and temperature, you spray in some fuel.
18:44The hot air ignites it and pushes the piston down.
18:48What you're getting here is extremely efficient use of fuel because a very high compression gives you more bang for
18:54your buck.
18:54And because it's so efficient, you save fuel.
18:58And what that does is save you money.
19:04But the really brilliant thing about diesel's idea is that his engine will run on almost anything.
19:09And that's great news for Europeans, because since the engine doesn't explode the fuel the way a gasoline engine does,
19:15it doesn't need refined petroleum product.
19:17And that's good, because back then in Europe, with almost no oil industry to speak of, that kind of stuff
19:23costs an arm and a leg.
19:27Anyway, sometime around 1893, diesel gets a contract from a big engine factory here in Germany.
19:34And in no time at all, diesel engines are in everything from battleships to fancy cars.
19:43And what makes all this happen for a man with a lonely childhood is the fact that one of the
19:48fuels diesel says the engine might be able to use, there's lots of in Germany.
19:52It's coal.
19:54So all you have to do is dig a big hole.
20:02Now, there's one man who owns more coal mines than anybody else in Germany.
20:06And shipyards, steelworks, armaments factories, and practically the whole German industrial machine.
20:13What am I saying?
20:14He is the whole German industrial machine.
20:16And his name is Krop.
20:23Krop comes in on that engine deal with diesel I mentioned, and it helps diesel make enough for a comfortable
20:29old age.
20:30Come to think of it, as you'll see, the Krop's are rather good at that kind of thing.
20:34So Krop is the reason why the next stop on our journey is the coal fields of the German Ruhr.
20:40Thanks to the fact that corn cobs make adhesives to bond carborundum, otherwise known as silicon carbide, to grinding wheels
20:47used to grind light bulbs.
20:49Silicon carbide is also then used as protection against armour-piercing shells, developed to hit tanks that start life as
20:56American tractors, which use diesel engines, developed thanks to funding from Krop.
21:05Okay, enough of this hole.
21:10By the 1860s, the Krop's are well on their way to running everything in Germany.
21:18They own all the bits of the jigsaw, steelworks, to make the machinery they own, to dig out the coal
21:26they own, to be sent around the country on railroad rolling stock they own, carrying the fuel essential to the
21:33running of the steelworks they own.
21:35It's what's known as a win-win situation.
21:39But I didn't come here to get covered in coal dust just to tell you about boring industrial machinery, but
21:45because there's another, more intriguing side to Krop.
21:49The real reason Krop is so successful is the way he treats his workers, because he hates socialism.
21:59To put it in a nutshell, Krop reckons that if the workers are going to go on strike for better
22:03working conditions, then give them just that.
22:05So he gives them just this.
22:12Krop invents company benefits, with showers and changing rooms, work uniforms, and everything to make a Krop worker want to
22:20stay a Krop worker.
22:26He also provides a canteen, hospitals, a pension fund, and all kinds of other goodies.
22:32And across the road from the mine or the factory, he also builds company housing.
22:39And in the pleasant company suburb, there's also a company school, a company church, a company kindergarten, and, of course,
22:50there's always a company store.
22:54Working for Krop is womb-to-tomb.
22:57Now, what with all that armament stuff, Krop is called the cannon king and gets to know all the Prussian
23:03military biggies, and they don't come any bigger than Bismarck, who loves a good war and is running the country
23:09at the time.
23:12And who is so impressed by Krop, among other things, they both vastly prefer trees to people, that he, Bismarck,
23:19tries out the Krop welfare thing on a national scale.
23:23In 1889, he starts the world's first-ever state pension scheme, by which the average person gets enough to live
23:31on.
23:31Once, that is, Bismarck knows what constitutes the average person.
23:36A concept, naturally enough, thought up by a Belgian astronomer.
23:45Meet Alphonse Quetelet, who is about to turn the kind of bodies astronomers observe into the kind of bodies governments
23:52observe.
23:54See, the trouble with planets and such is that sometimes, if you don't see them frequently enough, you lose track
24:00of them.
24:02So 19th-century astronomers use probability math to predict where you should look, even if all you've had are a
24:09few sightings.
24:10Ketelet's bright idea is to use the same probability math to work out another kind of prediction.
24:16The kind governments want to make about people, even if they're only able to keep their eye on a few
24:23of them.
24:27We call Ketelet's math for people statistics.
24:30And with it, he invents an amazing new concept you and I take for granted today.
24:35The average person.
24:37And what average people do.
24:47No wonder Bismarck jumps at this new way of analysing how people behave.
24:51Because it lets you predict how they'll react to events.
24:54Their voting patterns.
24:56How effective propaganda might be on them.
24:58The new math is great for manipulating people.
25:02And before you start feeling smug about repressive Prussians and what else would you expect from countries where things get
25:08violent.
25:10The place Ketelet's new numbers are about to make a real splash is in the ever-so-genteel surroundings of
25:16the University of Cambridge in England.
25:18Mainly because, as is so often the case in these programmes, things are not quite what they seem.
25:24In this case peaceful.
25:28Behind the elegant façade of early 19th century British society, the living and working conditions of the average factory employee
25:36are so horrendous as to make the government of the day just a touch perturbed.
25:47Ah, come in.
25:50Now, it's in this room in Trinity College in 1833, while everybody's up here for a science conference in Cambridge,
26:01that Ketelet gets together for tea.
26:03Oh, a muffin?
26:05With a bunch of academics whom he persuades to set up what eventually becomes known as the Royal Statistical Society.
26:15Of course, the real statistical aim of every middle-class Victorian tea is to gather data on the population of
26:24the growing industrial cities.
26:25People living in stinking, overcrowded, diseased squalor, so as to turn them into decent, obedient, hard-working, thrifty, non-revolutionary
26:38workers.
26:39Milk?
26:41Essential statistical facts are then discovered.
26:44How many ragged families can sing a jolly song?
26:48How many starving mothers can knit?
26:53The number of inspiring prints hanging on the walls of their filthy hovels.
26:58How often this kind of person gets their hair cut?
27:03Speaking of which, one of the guys at this uplifting Cambridge chit-chat gets his life changed by French hairdressers.
27:19Now, before we get to French hairdressers, where are we?
27:23Apart from France, that is.
27:25Krupp's welfare benefits got Bismarck keen on statistics that Ketelet persuaded the Cambridge people to get into.
27:32Right.
27:33Now, why we're here?
27:35French weights and measures.
27:37If you aren't metric, how do you know your shoe size in centimetres, for instance?
27:44Sit down for a drink.
27:45Do you know you can drink 75 centiliters of wine?
27:49Well, it's easy enough for the locals.
27:51But once upon a time, they were in exactly the same mess.
27:57Which is why this is one of those very rare occasions when the course of history is changed by a
28:02haircut.
28:03Because that fellow from Cambridge I mentioned, a mathematician called Charles Babbage,
28:08takes a trip to France and turns up here not long after they've had a revolution and gone metric.
28:15Every single calculation they previously done in Paris feet or Marseille gallons or whatever,
28:21now has to be done in centimetres and litres and kilos and so on.
28:25Every table of calculation for every shop and factory and profession has to be recalculated.
28:33As it happens, at the time, French fashions and hairstyling have gone all revolutionary.
28:39And apart from the fact that half the aristocrats in France have lost their heads,
28:43so there's not much work around for people like Pierre Gilles here to do anyway,
28:48the new revolutionary cut is kind of short back and sides.
28:51So most places like this in France have so little work to do,
28:57they are, to put it mildly, tearing their hair out.
29:03Well, wouldn't you know it, the French solve their metric problem
29:06and their out-of-work hairdresser problem with typical panache.
29:11They let one problem solve the other.
29:14As Babbage discovers when he gets here,
29:17they've used 60 unemployed hairdressers sitting there for months,
29:20struggling with pencil and paper to work out every single sum needed
29:24to turn the country's old-fashioned measurement system on its head.
29:29Mind you, the thought of all that amateur arithmetic is enough to make your hair curl.
29:33And to make matters worse, on average there's hundreds of mistakes in every table they churn out.
29:38Merci.
29:40Well, thinks Babbage, there's just got to be an easier way.
29:43So he comes up with an absolutely amazing invention
29:46that for anybody from then on who wants to do complicated mathematical tables,
29:51will make all the difference.
29:57Babbage's difference engine does sums.
29:59And this is a really simple version of something so complicated,
30:02he never actually makes one.
30:05Say you want to add three on the right to seven on the left.
30:09Turn the little cog on the right three places,
30:12and that does the same to the cog on the left.
30:15And when it gets to ten,
30:16it moves a lever that moves a cog above, with tens on it, to one.
30:22So the sum of seven and three is ten.
30:28Then Babbage automates the process with the use of a punch card.
30:33Whichever rod gets through whichever hole in the card activates a selected set of levers
30:38that moves whichever cog you want to use for the sum.
30:42Now, Babbage never builds this thing.
30:44But since you know what a punch card is, you know something happened.
30:50Well, in 1845 this does.
30:53The Britannia Bridge between England and Wales.
30:56Two giant 1500-foot tubes, each big enough to take a train,
31:01and each needing two million rivets.
31:03All done by a riveting machine controlled, you've guessed it, with punch cards.
31:10Engineer in charge Robert Stevenson also thinks up the idea
31:13of floating the massive tubes into position.
31:16An idea that causes ripples in more ways than one.
31:21See, one of Stevenson's close pals
31:24is the fellow who masterminds the floating delivery of the tube girders for the bridge.
31:29He's also a hotshot engineer in his own right,
31:31and he's done everything from bridges in Australia to railways in Italy.
31:36Eisenbard Kingdom Brunel's his name, and he's got two problems.
31:40And as it happens, both of them will be solved by the Britannia Bridge.
31:46The first problem is rivets,
31:48because Brunel is planning to punch in no fewer than three and a half million of them.
31:53The second problem is what he's planning to punch them into.
31:57Yet another Victorian mega-project.
32:01It is Brunel's modest aim to build only the biggest ship ever in the history of the whole world,
32:06and use it to take thousands of people out to Australia
32:09without having to stop off in several places like Singapore on the way to refuel.
32:14Coal.
32:15Which, back then, is the main thing you see on the dock sides on the way out from Europe.
32:21Coal. Mountains of it.
32:23But Brunel's new monster ship is going to be so big,
32:25it'll carry all the coal it needs.
32:28Well, it never actually happens.
32:30But for sheer effort, you've got to take your hat off to Brunel.
32:34Here's Brunel wearing his famous hat.
32:37And behind him, his monster ship, the Great Eastern,
32:41built of the same tube girders as the Britannia Bridge,
32:44and a zillion rivets.
32:50And, as I said, the wrong ship in the wrong place at the wrong time.
32:54Just too big too soon.
32:56Mind you, she does totally change trans-oceanic communication,
33:00but not in any way Brunel could have ever foreseen.
33:07See, as I said, life in Victorian times is lived on the grand scale
33:13if you're ambitious and you like to think big, and they all did.
33:17Well, they don't come much bigger, if you think about it, than the Atlantic.
33:23Three miles deep in some places,
33:25and the shortest way across is 2,000 miles of some of the worst weather in the world.
33:30Not exactly the kind of place anybody sane
33:32would want to do delicate precision engineering.
33:35But, hey, these are Victorians and they can do the impossible,
33:38which is what is now proposed by an American gent called Cyrus Field.
33:43He's a millionaire which helps when you're thinking big.
33:47Now, Cyrus has an ocean crossing in mind,
33:50but one with a bit of a difference.
33:55This is the Atlantic I was talking about.
33:59Us, America.
34:01And in between, a lot of nothing heaving up and down.
34:06Cyrus checks the place out with another American,
34:09Atlantic weather guru Matthew Morey, who says,
34:12go in August and do it like this.
34:15From Valencia Island off Ireland
34:18to
34:20Harts Content Bay, Newfoundland,
34:23because it's flat all the way.
34:25The bottom, Morey means.
34:27Because what we're into here is
34:30the first transatlantic submarine telegraph cable.
34:34Now, you know there's only one ship in the world
34:37capable of carrying what is needed for all this madness,
34:40which is 2,000 miles of cable weighing 6,000 tons,
34:44600 tons of equipment,
34:46and above all, 11 million tons of coal.
34:50Yes, the out of work, and by now up for auction, Great Eastern.
34:58In July 1866, they're off, at about 8 miles an hour,
35:03paying out the cable from gigantic drums in the hold,
35:06with a crafty bit of equipment to control the tension
35:08as the cable disappears over the stern,
35:11and they go up and down.
35:14Somehow, they inch their way painfully across the Atlantic.
35:1713 days later, they're hauling the cable ashore in Newfoundland.
35:22So now you can send a cable, along the cable.
35:25The first day, they transmit $10,000 worth of messages.
35:31So, as with so many great acts of technology,
35:35at one stroke, the world is changed.
35:37Thanks also, above all in this case,
35:39to something that changes your stroke.
35:42The one thing that allows the transatlantic cable
35:44to operate three miles down
35:46in the incredibly hostile environment of the ocean floor.
35:49The stuff wrapped round it.
35:51The cable insulation.
35:53Which turns out also to change this kind of stroke.
36:04Well, I never said I had a good drive, did I?
36:10The underwater cable insulation is a new wonder gun
36:13that comes, as it happens, from these trees.
36:16And in 1840, it's being used by the locals here in Singapore,
36:19when a young assistant surgeon called Montgomery
36:22happens to stumble across it.
36:24It's a sap.
36:25You slash the tree and milk it,
36:27much the same way as you tap rubber.
36:29And it's called gutta percha.
36:38Now, you know how useful and everywhere plastic is today?
36:42Well, gutta percha is like that for people back in 1840.
36:47You dip it in boiling water so it softens
36:49and you can shape it, and then it hardens again.
36:52So gutta percha turns up just like plastic today
36:55as a substitute for wood, leather, cardboard, paper, metal.
37:01And in the weirdest places, stethoscopes, false teeth, ink stands,
37:07flower vases, and of course,
37:10wrapped around Cyrus Field's transatlantic cable.
37:16But the real reason for all this palaver with me and the clubs
37:19is what gutta percha does to the ancient and exclusive game of golf.
37:30And if you're a golf fanatic, get ready to take a picture of your TV screen now and frame it.
37:38Because gutta percha goes into golf balls and makes them cheaper, fly straighter, and last longer than once around the
37:46course.
37:46And this is an original gutta percha ball.
37:54Of course, the new ball has to pass the old buffers at St Andrew's Royal and Ancient Golf Club in
38:00Scotland,
38:01where, after all, the 18-hole golf course was invented.
38:05Well, after a lot of buffing, the old buffers finally agree,
38:08the new ball is introduced and Scottish golf really takes off.
38:14I mean, all sorts of ordinary people turn up and want to play.
38:25So, a quick catch-up.
38:27Krupp Welfare uses statistics calculated by Babbage's engine
38:32using punch cards that rivet bridges and the Great Eastern.
38:38that lays a cable insulated by gutta percha
38:42that gets used to make cheap golf balls
38:44so now ordinary Scotsmen can get to play.
38:48Thank you. Thank you.
38:49And the reason they do that is because there's a wonderful new thing called leisure time.
38:57All that trade with America is boosting the Scottish economy
39:00and the powerful and straight-laced Scottish church
39:03would rather the newly affluent workers spent their money on sports
39:07and family holidays by the sea
39:09instead of drinking it away in the pub outside the factory.
39:13So, in pulpits all over Scotland,
39:16a lot of hot air is being talked about the evils of industrialisation.
39:21Ironic, since hot air is the cause of it.
39:27The hot air in question is the business of a guy called Nielsen,
39:31the manager of the gas works in Glasgow, Scotland.
39:35In 1832, he thinks up the idea of blasting hot air into iron-melting furnaces,
39:41making them hot enough to burn even low-grade Scottish coal.
39:46Thus, turning Scotland into an instant industrial country
39:50with factory managers who have enough money and spare time
39:53to go off to St Andrews and play golf.
39:55And in no time at all, the whole of Scottish manufacturing is really on a roll.
40:02And like rolling stones, gathering no moss.
40:06Well, except for one Scottish businessman
40:08who's up here in the wild glens of Scotland, gathering moss.
40:13Why moss?
40:15Well, there's a lot of it up here.
40:17There's not much else.
40:22Now, when you're talking about whether a country makes it to industrial status,
40:27which Scotland now does, as you saw, thanks to Nielsen,
40:31having those iron foundries is the litmus test,
40:35which is what Nielsen's new partner Charles Mackintosh
40:39and his father George here have been doing in the Scottish glens.
40:53Because litmus paper does all that stuff,
40:56like changing colour when you dip it in acid or alkali,
40:59if you recall your school chemistry lessons,
41:01because it's impregnated with this stuff,
41:04a particular lichen or moss that George Mackintosh is looking for.
41:13The moss is one ingredient of a dye called cudbier,
41:16which will colour cloth bright red.
41:18So, since back in 1777, George Mackintosh, who dyes cloth,
41:23has been spending weeks at a time
41:25out on romantic moss-collecting trips among the heather
41:28to get his raw material.
41:41Now, most unfortunately, cudbier dye needs one other vital ingredient
41:47besides Scottish moss,
41:49and it's something that will take us back from these lonely highlands
41:52to that hot-air gas company manager Nielsen,
41:55because the other ingredient for cudbier dye requires the Mackintosh company
42:00to go looking for raw materials in less salubrious places than the Scottish glens.
42:05It's urine, which contains ammonia,
42:08which is why Nielsen and the Mackintosh family got together in the first place,
42:13since ammonia is a by-product of what you get when you make coal gas,
42:17and you'll recall that's what Nielsen made at his gas works.
42:22OK, let's leave George Mackintosh up this mountain,
42:26while I change the subject.
42:28Because at this point in the story, the path of history splits into two.
42:32The first pathway takes us away from moss-collecting
42:36to some pretty weird goings-on a good deal farther south.
42:40In India, to be exact.
42:50This is one of those isn't-it-a-small-world stories.
42:53Back in Scotland, Nielsen's father has been employed by a fellow called John Roebuck,
42:58who owns coal mines,
42:59and Roebuck has been taught in Edinburgh by a professor called Joe Black.
43:05Roebuck tells Black about the water flooding his mines,
43:08and Black tells Roebuck about James Watt of steam engine fame,
43:11and together, Watt and Roebuck make mind-draining music
43:15with Watt's new steam-driven pump.
43:23Roebuck's money sets Watt up in business, and he makes a fortune,
43:26and eventually becomes an amateur scientist like all gentlemen did at the time.
43:34Now, one of Watt's experiments causes a bit of a stir
43:38in the hallowed halls of the British Royal Society
43:40when he crosses swords with an aristocrat called Lord Henry Cavendish.
43:45They're always all about which one of them has done some experiment or other
43:47to find out what water is.
43:52Well, Watt becomes a member of the Royal Society.
43:54The two of them meet and become friends, and that's that.
44:00However, at the time, Cavendish is also sponsoring to the Society a young man.
44:05That's why I'm telling you all this in India, because the young man is a fellow called James Macy,
44:11and his main contribution to science is to investigate...
44:15Hang on a minute.
44:20...to investigate a liquid that appears in the joints of bamboo.
44:24Because in 1791, some of this mystery liquid has been sent back to England from India,
44:29and out here it's used as an eye ointment.
44:32And, well, you never know.
44:35So friend Macy takes this medicinal bamboo juice and does everything but drink it.
44:40Under differing circumstances, it effervesces, turns jelly-like, goes into a glass shape, or becomes a powder.
44:48Now, there is no point in asking why anybody would do all that to this.
44:52He just does.
44:54The upshot is, Macy manages to get the liquid to turn into something resembling a flint pebble.
45:00The point? I don't know.
45:02And that is Macy's stupefying addition to the sum of human knowledge.
45:08Well, not quite.
45:10Macy also happens to be the illegitimate son of one of the oldest aristocratic families in England,
45:15the Dukes of Northumberland.
45:16So the boy is socially well-placed.
45:19As a result of which, he ends up quite rich.
45:22And since he never marries, he leaves it to a cousin,
45:24unless the cousin dies without children, which he does.
45:28In which case, all the money is to go to America.
45:31And there, for a moment, we leave James Macy.
45:34Now we return to moss-collecting Macintosh.
45:37Remember him?
45:38One of his early partners in the cloth dyeing business, David Dale,
45:43builds a textile mill at New Lanark in Scotland,
45:46where he philanthropically employs orphan children aged seven or so to run the machines.
45:55Back then, this is reckoned to be do-good stuff, because it saves the kids from starving to death in
46:01the streets.
46:02Dale even builds them a school, and they get clean clothes once a week.
46:06In return for such generosity, the deal with the orphanage is Dale doesn't have to pay any wages to his
46:13little employees until they're age fifteen.
46:16What a sweetheart deal!
46:19Now, Dale's liberal attitude attracts a young socialist mill manager called Robert Owen, who marries Dale's daughter and takes over
46:27the mill.
46:28In 1824, he leaves here for America, where he sets up a commune at a place called New Harmony, Indiana.
46:39Well, the venture fails, and he comes back here to Britain.
46:43But his four sons take out American citizenship and stay on in the States, where their story and that of
46:50James Macy, the rich bamboo freak, join up.
46:56This is where it all comes together, and when things get to hit the fan in a really spectacular manner.
47:03See, Owen's eldest son is a fellow called Robert Dale Owen, and in 1842, he gets elected to Congress as
47:12an Indiana Democrat.
47:14Well, in 1844, he gets mixed up in the affairs of an Englishman called James Macy. Remember him?
47:20He's the fellow who did all that weird work on bamboo juice. And you remember he left a fortune of
47:26104,960 of these things, English gold sovereigns, to America?
47:34Well, by 1844, they've arrived in the States, been melted down, and turned into US money.
47:40And when I tell you how much money, you'll know why I said things are about to hit the fan.
47:44Two billion and change. Suddenly, it's Washington behind closed doors time.
47:55Turns out, as soon as the money is available in greenbacks, the Treasury has invested no less than $2 billion
48:03worth of it in this interesting outfit, known as the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas.
48:11Let me put it this way. There are criminal charges against some of the bank's directors.
48:16Somebody involved has been knifed. Above all, everybody knows the bank's going to go bust, because its real estate has
48:22been grossly and deliberately overvalued.
48:27And the US government is in bed with these people?
48:35Never mind which moron in the Treasury okayed the deal. By this time, there are now $2.5 billion invested
48:43in these examples of junk.
48:44And how's the Treasury going to get their hands on it?
48:47Never mind the interest the Real Estate Bank of Arkansas hasn't paid.
48:52Well, you can imagine the kind of field day the legislators up here on the hill have with this little
48:59peccadillo.
49:01Gentlemen from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, to be exact, make caustic comments about theft.
49:08Gentlemen from Arkansas make comments about honour and meeting their commitments in due course.
49:14Others wonder when that distant day might be.
49:19The Arkansas people say, in 20 years, when the bonds mature, Arkansas will repay its debts.
49:28Finally, it's agreed the Treasury will guarantee the interest, so the money can do what James Macy wanted it to
49:33do.
49:34And then there's a real row.
49:36Certain members regard the gift as an insult to the American people and say that the United States has humbled
49:46and degraded itself by accepting this money from degenerate aristocrats.
49:53Others argue that the United States should take the money and run.
49:59Eventually, common sense prevails, and in December 1846, Owen's bill is passed, and they get to spend the money the
50:06way Macy wanted.
50:08You know how, of course.
50:10And if you don't, I'll tell you in a minute.
50:13So, winding up this debate, let me summarise.
50:17Corn cobs become resins for diamond polishing with carborundum that protects you from shells fired at tanks developed from American
50:25tractors that used diesel engines built with funding from Krupp,
50:29who inspired Bismarck's welfare scheme based on Ketelet's statistics that inspired the Babbage engine whose punch cards were used to
50:37rivet the Great Eastern.
50:38The monster ship that laid the transatlantic cable insulated with gutter percha, used to manufacture golf balls, for factory managers
50:45in industrial Scotland, where James Watt had a run in with Cavendish, whose protégé was James Macy.
50:54Who caused all the row here in the Capitol building for reasons you know, but maybe don't know you know.
51:01Get it?
51:05You remember I said James Macy was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland.
51:10Well, after his father's death, James took on the father's family name.
51:14Well, what's in a name?
51:16So, the money got used to set up a world-renowned institution named after James Macy's new family name, which
51:24was Smithson, the institution known as the Smithsonian.
51:56Well, at the end, the young race, the story of James Macy explained in that.
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