- 49 minutes ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:22You
00:23Absolutely
00:42This program is about something you wouldn't think you could make a TV program about.
00:47One of these.
01:18An invisible object.
01:21Funny how we use the word light to mean not heavy, isn't it?
01:26I mean, this flashlight is light.
01:28These programs are light, even though this kind of light, according to Einstein, is heavier
01:35than you might think.
01:37So if light does have weight, as Einstein said, then it ought to be affected by gravity.
01:43And if that were true, black holes should be possible.
01:50Black holes, dead stars so big their gravity pulls in light, stops it from bouncing off
01:56them.
01:56I mean, that's why you can see me now, light bouncing off me.
02:01If it didn't bounce off, you couldn't see me.
02:05That's why you can't see black holes.
02:10But you can see their effect.
02:12This gas jet is streaming out from one.
02:16This cloud of gas is spinning around at such colossal speed, you know it's being driven
02:21by a black hole at its center.
02:26But the weirdest thing about space is that a lot of what you're looking at isn't really
02:31there.
02:31there.
02:32The light from the most distant stars has taken such a colossal time to get here, the real
02:37stars are long dead.
02:39It's as if the telescope that produced these pictures were a kind of time machine showing
02:44you a view of the universe as it once was, billions and billions of years ago.
02:59But maybe the most spine tingling of all these ancient pictures is this one.
03:16thing is, one day, will we see past that outer edge back to before the bang?
03:23And if we do, what will we see?
03:29This is the time machine that took those pictures, a model of the Hubble telescope, orbiting 400
03:34miles up, searching for what it looked like out there, before the beginning of time.
03:47Here's Hubble, launching aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990.
03:54And then in 1993.
04:08And again in 1997.
04:10Two more flights to carry out some of the most spectacular repair and maintenance jobs you've
04:16ever seen.
04:23Here's one and a half billion dollars worth of telescope floating in space, which is why
04:28getting close to Hubble like this with your 78-ton space shuttle is something nobody wants
04:34to do in a hurry.
04:37So when your docking arm reaches out towards the docking target on Hubble, you're bringing
04:43your shuttle in there with all the delicate precision of a mother reaching out for her
04:47baby.
04:51And then orbiting Earth at 17,000 miles an hour, the scene that still excites people to the
04:58core.
05:13This incredible flying fix is all down to the amazing capabilities of the space shuttle and
05:18the way she flies.
05:20To start with, getting up here to rendezvous with Hubble involves some very strange rules
05:25of orbital dynamics.
05:27Catch up doesn't just mean firing your engines, because that puts you up into a higher orbit.
05:32Braking drops you into a lower orbit.
05:35So you don't get there in a straight line like this, but something more like this.
05:45Now, you remember that inch by inch stuff as they came into dock with Hubble?
05:50You do that with tiny thrusters all round the shuttle, pointing up, down and sideways.
05:55Here's two sets of them, see?
05:58There are 44 of them in all, shooting minute puffs of a fuel called hydrazine that gives
06:04you more bang for your buck than anything around.
06:07But shuttle pilots aren't the only people who use hydrazine.
06:11You have too, in medication, plastics, photography, rubber, all kinds of stuff.
06:17And one rather special use.
06:20Because long before hydrazine got used to spin a shuttle in space, one of the greatest crises
06:25in history triggered the need for that other thing hydrazine can do.
06:35Here we are in the beautiful Medoc wine country near Bordeaux in the southwest of France.
06:41This is a tough assignment.
06:44Anyway, hydrazine and all that.
06:49Back in the 19th century, if you live in a bijou little residence like this and you get fungus,
06:55you go whatever the French for ape is, right?
06:58But I don't mean fungus in there, in the ancestral woodwork.
07:02I mean out here.
07:03Well, out there.
07:07See, this is hydrazine country, because that's the other thing hydrazine does.
07:11Knocks off the fungus growths that can spoil your agribusiness day.
07:17Which is what happens here, over a hundred years ago, when something comes along to spoil
07:22their agribusiness day.
07:24Something that looks like, how shall I put it, the end of civilization as we know it.
07:29I mean, of course, a fungus on the vines.
07:31So, maybe, no more French wine.
07:34The cause of this potential apocalypse is affectionately known as downy mildew.
07:41Now, there's one thing guaranteed to galvanize the French into action, the threat of a national
07:46wine shortage.
07:47So, in 1882, in the Bordeaux vineyards, here comes a professor of botany from the local
07:53university, worrying about the end of civilization as we know it.
07:59And then he notices something strange that gets the little grey cells doing overtime.
08:07There is mildew and rotting vines everywhere, except, zut alors, he discovers some vines which
08:13appear to be painted blue and which appear not to have the mildew.
08:25So he pops into the local chateau du Cru Bucayou to ask why.
08:31Well, why not?
08:33And voila, there's the answer.
08:35It's them doing it, painting bright blue stuff on their grapes to stop tourists from snitching
08:40them.
08:42So, our professor hightails it back to Bordeaux and comes up with a modified version, the first
08:48ever fungicide you can spray on, the ancestor of all fungicides, like hydrazine, in the modern
08:54world.
08:57Now this is not the first French wine crisis, but the third.
09:03The downy mildew fungus having been brought into France on American vine shoots to solve
09:07the second crisis.
09:08A kind of bug, found on American vine shoots, brought into France to solve the third crisis.
09:14Another kind of fungus called powdery mildew, brought into France on American plants.
09:19Had enough?
09:20Point is, the real killer diller was that second crisis, caused by something that still causes
09:27French nightmares, something that could bring the end of civilization as we know it.
09:33That's why I am telling you this under surveillance.
09:37Because I would be instantly in the handcuffs if what I am about to show you were alive.
09:45Insects called aphids, causing a disease called phylloxera.
09:49And the last time this got loose in the vineyards, it was jump out of the window time, mes amis.
10:00By 1880, half the vines in France are dead from phylloxera, and panic isn't the word.
10:05They try urine, tobacco juice, buried toads, magnetism, electricity, and nothing works.
10:10Until, as I said, imported American vines do the trick and stop all that mayhem.
10:20Turns out it's all because of technology.
10:23The latest steamboats are crossing the Atlantic to France from America fast enough for the
10:28little aphids to get to their new French home, still alive.
10:32Well, guess what won't be crossing any frontiers after that?
10:41The phylloxera epidemic is why, when you fly into certain very clean places, like Switzerland
10:47these days, if you happen to be arriving from somewhere that the squeaky clean Swiss authorities
10:52regard as not squeaky clean, that's lots of places, more is going to happen to your plane
10:57than an oil change and a topper.
10:59As everybody knows, hygiene is practically a religion in Switzerland.
11:03So the phrase you're likely to hear next is, let us spray.
11:13This is one result of the International Plant Quarantine Convention signed here in Switzerland
11:18in 1878, after that wine disaster, so as to stop those little aphids from travelling at
11:24all costs.
11:30One minor consideration, that the little aphids actually have wings, seems to pass these guys
11:36by.
11:36But no matter, the idea is basically a good one, and eventually it catches on.
11:41And that is why all over the world today, your plane is often much cleaner than you think
11:45it is.
11:46And everything on board.
11:47And even a letter from your old granny.
11:53OK, let's hold the mail for a moment and see where we are.
11:56Black holes in space are seen by Hubble, serviced by the space shuttle, fuelled by hydrazine that's
12:04also a fungicide, first invented during the French phylloxera disaster, caused by these little
12:10aphids, the reason for the 1878 Swiss Quarantine Convention, which is why your plane gets sprayed
12:17these days, and everything on it, including a letter from your old granny.
12:21Which is only there at all, thanks to something else to benefit, back then, from the conventional
12:25Swiss.
12:26Yet another convention in 1874, when they sought out the international mail.
12:3919th century mail is like 20th century airline baggage, destination uncertain.
12:44So everybody agrees on the big issue.
12:47They can each keep the money they make from selling their own stamps.
12:50With the money thing settled, that leaves only the money thing.
12:54How to send money through the mail.
13:01Well, in 1874, they standardized that, and four years later, an American organization
13:08comes up with the first ever crime-proof money order form that isn't a rip-off, because it's
13:14a rip-off.
13:15Look, here are the amounts you might want to send, all the way from big sums like $10, down
13:21in 5 cent bits, to $1.05.
13:26Say you wanted to send $2.25.
13:29All you do is tear down to the amount you have expressly bought, throw the rest away, and that's
13:38it.
13:40Expressly crook-proof, because it stymies any criminal at the other end, who might have the
13:45express intent of getting more than you had expressly sent.
13:48Good idea, no?
13:50And because right from the start you can expressly pick one of these up almost anywhere, it's
13:56a raving success for the American organization that expressly thinks it up.
14:01Mm-hmm.
14:02American Express.
14:10American Express starts life as a delivery business run by a couple of guys you'll know,
14:15Henry Wells, Henry Wells, and William Fargo.
14:18So guess what the original company's called?
14:20Anyway, Henry and William blow away their competitors because they invent the cash on delivery idea,
14:26and because they have the fastest route to the west coast by ship and cutthroat prices.
14:30So, by 1859, Wells and Fargo are, so to speak, alone in the field.
14:49And you can't get much more alone than America in 1859.
14:57Anywhere between St. Louis, Missouri, here, and Sacramento, California, here.
15:06The reason you might be here in the emptiness is because of the Colorado gold strikes, and
15:12because the people here, and the guys in the California gold fields, want to hear from back
15:16east more than once every few months.
15:19So the overland route starts to look more attractive to Messrs Wells and Fargo, and this is what
15:24they do about that.
15:27They go looking for young, skinny, wiry fellas, willing to risk death daily, orphans preferably.
15:40In 1859, they find a few lunatics in bars in the middle of nowhere, happy to ride hell for
15:45leather to some other middle of nowhere.
15:52Places like this, right?
15:54All the required orphans need, besides a touch of insanity and a six-gun, is a good horse,
15:59and an undeveloped sense of self-preservation.
16:01Well, they find such people, and all of a sudden, your letters start coming and going.
16:07All of a sudden.
16:09Snail mail, this ain't.
16:23The Pony Express only lasts for 16 months, but it becomes a legend.
16:3020 riders cover the 2,000 miles to Sacramento and back at full gallop, risking death every
16:36step of the way.
16:38The company mission statement, the mail must go through.
16:48The greatest legend of them all is a 15-year-old kid who rides the most dangerous stretch.
16:58Coming into Three Crossings Wyoming one day, he hears that the rider for the next stage has been killed.
17:04So he changes horses, the way they did, hardly touching the ground, and rides on.
17:10384 miles non-stop.
17:12The longest Pony Express ride ever recorded.
17:22And then the telegraph comes along and spoils all the fun.
17:27And that's it for the Pony Express.
17:30So that 15-year-old moves on, to scout for the army, and then to shoot meat for the Kansas
17:35Railroad people.
17:37And because he's so good at it, I mean, 5,000 animals in just over a year, if you're into
17:43that kind of thing,
17:44he gets the name you know him by.
17:48Buffalo Bill.
17:54In 1883, Bill hits the big time all round the world with his all-star Wild West show,
18:00bringing the thrills of frontier life to the city's slickers.
18:04He features hundreds of Indians playing hundreds of Indians,
18:07buffalo hunts, cavalry attacks on Indian villages, bucking broncos,
18:12even a full-scale rerun of Custer's Last Stand.
18:15And the greatest sharpshooter of them all, Annie Oakley.
18:22These amazing spectaculars give a whole new meaning to the idea of vaudeville.
18:27Mind you, nobody knows the real meaning of vaudeville anyway.
18:30Not surprising, since it comes from France.
18:3315th century France.
18:35This river valley...
18:37It's called the Vire Valley.
18:39In French that's Vaux Valley de Vire of the river Vire.
18:44Vaudevire.
18:45OK, you mispronounce those words, vaudevire,
18:48and you get vaudeville.
18:50The kind of entertainment that starts here in the 15th century.
18:54Drinking songs.
18:59The same kind of naughty stuff that turns up 300 years later in American vaudeville acts.
19:17The most famous writer of these numbers is a guy called Olivier Basselin, who tops the charts because he writes
19:23about the same thing every time.
19:25Wine, women and song, and people having a good time.
19:31Unlike Basselin himself, who has a really bad time, when he comes to a sticky end just down the road
19:37from Vire in this area.
19:40At a place called Formigny in 1450, where he gets mixed up with and killed in a battle.
19:46Where the French beat the English because, surprise, surprise, the French have cannon and the English have bows and arrows.
19:54Here's how it all goes.
20:03Here's the English army patrolling like they've been doing since they invaded this bit of France 300 years earlier, when
20:10a French army suddenly comes out of nowhere.
20:14Now, English bowmen have the laser weapons of the period, so this is going to be a crucial event, when
20:20suddenly the French produce a couple of the very latest cannon and start pounding the Brits.
20:28The English send out their green beret types to grab the cannon.
20:32They're on their way back with them when French reinforcements turn up.
20:36The English archers can't open fire because they'll hit their own guys, so the French attack and massacre nearly 3
20:42,000 English troops.
20:46It's a bloodbath.
20:52Mind you, by this time, the English are through in France anyway. They just won't give up and move out.
20:57But like it or not, Formini turns out to be one step from final defeat.
21:02And then, it's adieu, English.
21:08OK, where are we?
21:10The Swiss postal convention helps to kick off American Express, who in their early years as Wells Fargo start the
21:17Pony Express, starring a 15-year-old who becomes known as Buffalo Bill, whose showbiz life starts in vaudeville, but
21:25really begins back in medieval France with drinking songs written by that guy who gets killed in a battle between
21:30the French and the English.
21:32OK?
21:35Now, the French finally chuck the English out of France because they're led to victory by a crazy woman.
21:42Nobody's ever successfully diagnosed her condition, but one thing's certain, she was hearing things.
22:03This is a particularly unusual case. The file on her says,
22:08This illiterate peasant girl turns up out of the blue and convinces a bunch of sophisticated, backstabbing, highly political French
22:15aristocrats to stop their infighting and follow her and kick out the English.
22:25Interesting.
22:27She's having visions and hearing the voices of what she describes as saints.
22:36There is one version of that condition that would produce hallucinatory symptoms of this type.
22:42She's also fanatically religious.
22:49Well, you'd expect that, really. They're a superstitious lot back then, burning witches pretty much every afternoon.
22:57There have also been prophecies about a young girl saving the country.
23:09She's also apparently a virgin.
23:13Well, that's pretty mystical back then, for a start.
23:17Background, political situation.
23:20France is in a total mess.
23:22They're at each other's throats.
23:25She dresses like a man and is hot stuff with a sword.
23:30And the would-be king of France is a knock-kneed, yellow-bellied wimp.
23:35And this girl turns up, saying things like,
23:38I will lead you to victory.
23:42And my voices are telling me what to do.
23:46Well, nobody talks like that, unless they're nuts.
23:49So they think, why not?
23:51Nothing else is working.
23:53Let's give it a go.
23:55Well, she wins all the battles and puts the wimp on the throne.
23:59And the backstabbers sell her down the river to the English.
24:05History isn't like Hollywood every time.
24:07And, of course, who fingers her but the church?
24:11Because all that person-to-person communication with the saints stuff she's up to
24:15is giving French peasants ideas about their station, isn't it?
24:20So, instead of a psychoanalyst, she gets the Inquisition.
24:25They make mincemeat of her at what we would call a mistrial,
24:29so she goes to the stake and is burnt to death in 1431.
24:40And that's it for Joan of Arc.
24:43Of course, true to the loony psychology of the time,
24:46as a servant of the devil, she's better off dead, right?
24:51For the Inquisition, it's just another case closed, questions answered.
25:08The reason the Inquisition are so good at getting answers out of people
25:11is because the way they ask questions is straight out of a museum of horrors.
25:22Top of the league in this kind of friendly persuasion are the Spanish.
25:28Of course, they've had a lot of practice on the well-to-do Jewish community.
25:33See, back in 1492, the uptight northern Spanish Christians
25:37take over southern Spain from the laid-back southern Spanish Muslims.
25:41Now, the new Christian rulers prevent Jews from working in anything but finance,
25:47so guess what? Jews make money, like what else would they make?
25:51Which the Christians then borrow.
25:54But don't pay back, because all you have to do
25:57is tell the Inquisition a Jew is eating meat on a Friday,
26:00and he and his family get torched, or worse,
26:05and your debts go up in the smoke.
26:11By 1490, Thomas Torquemada is top Spanish torturer.
26:15When he's on a winning streak, he can burn 13,000 in one year.
26:19Not houses you understand, but people.
26:22Well, you're Jewish. What do you do?
26:25Get out!
26:44A lot of the Jews head up into northern Europe,
26:47but the vast majority of them come here,
26:49where they know they'll be treated like human beings,
26:52even like talented and valuable human beings.
26:55Because, although in here this place is Jewish,
26:59out there this place is Islamic,
27:02and tolerant,
27:04and in deep trouble.
27:14The economy in Turkey is so bad, they've been advertising for help.
27:18So, in the 16th century,
27:20quarter of a million exiled Jews turn up here.
27:26One of these guys is a fellow called Joseph Narzi,
27:29born in Portugal, chucked out,
27:32spent some time in Holland in a family bank.
27:351554, he comes here to Istanbul,
27:37meets up with his Aunt Grace, who is a financial hotshot,
27:40and already willing with the Turkish sultan,
27:42Suleiman the Magnificent.
27:44And more important, with his influential favourite wife,
27:47Roxalan.
27:58So, with Aunt Grace's help,
28:01Joseph Narzi is in like Flynn.
28:04See, Suleiman is running the biggest empire since Rome,
28:08on three continents.
28:09And the problem is his bureaucrats are A, corrupt,
28:13and B, wouldn't know a balance sheet if they fell in one.
28:17So, what Suleiman needs is the 16th century equivalent of an MBA.
28:22Enter Joe Narzi.
28:26By 1560, Joe is virtually Suleiman's foreign minister,
28:30living in a posh palace here on the Bosphorus,
28:32and with his eye on greater things.
28:37Like being king of Cyprus,
28:38where the best wine comes from,
28:40and where he wants the booze export monopoly.
28:45In 1566, Suleiman kicks the bucket,
28:48and his wimpy son Selim takes over,
28:51which means that Joe Narzi is really running the entire show.
28:54So, four years later,
28:58he's got his wine deal,
28:59and he's calling himself king of Cyprus,
29:01because he's persuaded the Turks to take the place over,
29:05and living in an even bigger palace.
29:08Not bad for a guy who started with nothing, right?
29:13Mind you, if you can survive the intrigue here at the Sultan's Topkapi Palace,
29:18you can survive anything.
29:20So, by this time, Joe Narzi is flavour of the month.
29:25His only mistake is that business about persuading the Turks to grab Cyprus.
29:29Because that gets the Europeans so ticked off,
29:31they set up a league to do something about it.
29:34And, basically, what that means is,
29:36any minute now, everything, for the Turks,
29:39is about to hit the fan.
29:41Because one of the European allies
29:44is a bunch you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night.
29:47The Turks have already had a run-in with them.
29:49That time, the Turks won,
29:50and threw them off the island of Rhodes, here,
29:52where these guys were headquartered at the time.
29:54So, now, they're holed up in Malta, here.
29:59And, militarily speaking, these people are Top Gun stuff.
30:10Meet the Knights of Malta, and their new home, the island of Malta.
30:14By 1565, these guys have made so much trouble for the Turks,
30:18that they decide enough is enough,
30:20and send in a humongous military force to wipe them out.
30:24And fail, because the Knights have nothing to lose and nowhere to go.
30:28And, besides, they're sitting inside the last word in defence technology.
30:33See these walls?
30:34So, eventually, the Turks give up and go home.
30:38Leaving the Knights to enjoy their posh new grid-patterned city,
30:41and look after their wounded in the 16th century equivalent of a high-tech emergency clinic.
30:50This Knights of Malta hospital is way out on the cutting edge.
30:54I mean, they have separate wards for separate diseases, and one patient per bed.
31:00They even use anaesthesia.
31:02Useful stuff to know if you spend the other half of your time slicing people up.
31:07Ironic, that.
31:08Because the Knights get their medical know-how from somebody else
31:12who makes a specialty of slicing people up.
31:20His name is Andreas Vesalius, and in 1527, he's professor of surgery here at the University of Padua,
31:27in Northern Italy.
31:29Which, if you want to be a doctor, is where you want to be for two reasons.
31:34One, Vesalius is the best anatomy whiz there is.
31:37And two, the University is about to build the amazing Padua Anatomy Theatre.
31:49All the students stand around up there in the galleries,
31:53while down here in the well at the bottom,
31:55the lecturer does interestingly new things to corpses.
32:01See, up to the time of Vesalius, anatomy is pretty much anybody's guess.
32:06You can't operate without killing people,
32:08so there hasn't been much interest in how your body actually works.
32:14So, the new anatomy they're about to teach here, thanks to Vesalius,
32:18is a much bigger deal than you might think.
32:21See, up to now, about all they've been able to teach is what the Greeks and Romans knew,
32:24which wasn't much.
32:26That's why 16th century doctors are still into cures like boiled puppy, lily oil, and minced earthworms.
32:35So the recovery rate is not too high.
32:37So, in 1543, when Vesalius comes out with what is effectively a multimedia show-and-tell
32:44all about the insides of sliced humans,
32:48well, it's the biggest thing to hit medicine since sliced bread.
32:51Vesalius deals with every little bit, brain, blood vessels, muscle, bone.
32:56He's read everything he can get his hands on, and then found out for himself,
33:00thanks to a helpful judge here in town,
33:03who executes criminals just in time for Vesalius' lectures on how to dissect.
33:09And this, copiously illustrated, can't put it down, give it to your doctor friend's book, is the result.
33:16This, centuries before the computer, is what you see is what you get.
33:21No wonder medical students kick off a wave of body-snatching to check him out,
33:25because in Vesalius' great book on the structure of the human body,
33:30it's all there in glorious graphics, drawings of every little gory detail.
33:39And the reason why you couldn't buy the original book today for a million bucks
33:43is because back then, Vesalius gets his illustrations done at the studio of an unknown young painter,
33:51a guy who is so good at flesh tones, he'd turn on a mortician.
33:56Titian.
34:00OK, time for another catch-up.
34:04Joan of Arc leads the French to victory and is then burnt by the Inquisition,
34:09who make life in Spain so difficult for the Jews that most of them run away to Turkey,
34:14where one of them, Joanazi, persuades them to attack the Knights of Malta,
34:20who look after their wounded in the best hospital around at the time
34:24because of the know-how that Vesalius comes up with in his great anatomy book illustrated by Titian,
34:29who's coming up next.
34:35This is Titian, and he lives here in 16th century Venice,
34:40a knock-out city with more liquid assets than it has water.
34:46Now, the thing about having lots of money is that Venice is so rich and powerful,
34:51it doesn't really give a rat's ass about what the Pope thinks.
34:55So, Venetian wannabes commissioned people like Titian to come up with portraits
35:00that will make them good-looking.
35:02That's why Titian's portraits are a totally new kind of thing.
35:06Because what he does is dump the old medieval dead body style the Church recommends
35:11in favour of a new touchy-feely approach.
35:18This is what got Vesalius, that surgeon, remember, so hot for Titian,
35:22because this is real flesh-and-blood stuff, isn't it?
35:26And take a look at something else new Titian springs on everybody.
35:30His backgrounds are 16th century virtual reality.
35:38Now, back then, this kind of stuff makes Titian instantly famous,
35:42and in no time at all he's graduated from naked models to the real movers and shakers.
35:48His portrait of Pope Paul III makes it a cinch that he's going to do the ultimate biggie,
35:54Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who invites Titian to come visit.
36:101548, and we're in Augsburg, Germany, and so is Charles V,
36:15who's here for a shindig with fellow Catholic royals
36:18after they've beaten a bunch of Protestant royals at a battle.
36:21Now, as they say in the tourist brochures,
36:25Augsburg is in the mineral-rich mountains of southern Germany,
36:29so they've got all the metal they need for people like Charles V to go to war with.
36:34Including, strangely enough, metal to make armour with.
36:42I say, strangely enough, because what would you be doing on a battlefield wearing armour
36:46when by this time the name of the game is shooting people with guns?
36:50Answer, you don't wear armour.
36:52Well, not to fight anyway.
36:56To watch, top people like the Emperor Charles V get to wear posh tailor-made metal suits,
37:02called parade armour, while enjoying the show.
37:06Sorry, bloody massacre from the crest of some nearby hill.
37:10So, Titian, the painter, remember him?
37:12Does Charles' portrait, after the battle, kind of come as you are?
37:17Like this.
37:21And as you can see from Charles V here,
37:23you'd never make it to battle in parade armour.
37:26I mean, they screw you into it.
37:30Which is another reason why we're here.
37:33Because it is another little-known tourist fact about Augsburg
37:37that it is the home of the metal screw.
37:39In places like this.
37:45They're tiny jewellery screws, originally,
37:48because the other thing that Augsburg is full of, besides iron,
37:51is precious metal.
37:53So the other thing you come to Augsburg for, besides a portrait,
37:56is jewellery.
37:58Or both.
38:09In 1550, one of Augsburg's famous goldsmith shops
38:13gets a commission from King Henry of France
38:15to send somebody to Paris to help with a little monetary scam Henry's dreamed up.
38:20The idea being that the shop also sends along one of their new screw-operated
38:25coin-making machines as well,
38:27so that Henry can turn out new coins of the realm
38:30that are not what they appear to be, called Henry's.
38:36This is one.
38:37The scam I mentioned is that these coins have less gold and silver in them than they're supposed to.
38:44But who will know? And the King will save a bundle.
38:46Point being, he's in Sirius Hock.
38:49Well, it works.
38:51Nobody notices the new Henry's are only half Henry's.
38:54So the real Henry makes enough from this sneaky little devaluation
38:58to keep his new queen in the gastronomic style to which she is rapidly making France accustomed.
39:05Because the lady in question, Catherine de' Medici,
39:07is the person who kind of invents the reason, every woman needs jewellery.
39:24Catherine de' Medici is the woman who thinks up the modern dinner party.
39:28When she marries King Henry in 1533, she turns France into the food capital of the world it is today,
39:35with rave new ideas like forks, table settings, good wine, pasta and fancy sauces.
39:45Then, when dinner is over, another amazing new indulgence, of which Catherine is also probably the first user.
39:51Tobacco.
39:52Because Catherine has always suffered from migraines, and in one form, tobacco is supposed to be good for migraines.
40:00Snuff.
40:01Anyway, in no time at all, smoking tobacco is the cure for everything.
40:06Toothache, flatulence, sores, pregnancy pains, itching, halitosis, tetanus, and believe it or not, a bad cough.
40:18Now, the great news for the governments of Europe is that the new commodity is apparently addictive.
40:25You just know what's going to happen next.
40:28Colonies, where you can grow the stuff, ship it back as a state monopoly, and watch the money roll in.
40:35By the 17th century, the English have found just the place to grow their new drug.
40:40America.
40:41And in particular, Maryland, America.
40:56Most of the immigrants getting off the boat in America in the 17th century are single young men with no
41:03jobs back home in England, where life has been real fun.
41:07I mean, you mention out loud words like freedom of movement, religious tolerance, justice for all, a chance to get
41:15ahead in life, and you can find yourself getting taken seriously.
41:19And hanged.
41:21So the next word that floats to your mind is transatlantic.
41:25But where?
41:26New England is posting no vacancies.
41:28The Barbados plantation owners only want slaves.
41:32Which leaves places like this.
41:38Historic St. Mary's City in Maryland.
41:41The only place for a fellow with no resume to make a buck.
41:47All you need is a case of severe desperation.
41:50And a hoe to clear the weeds, a few seeds, a lot of luck, and 18-hour days.
41:55All you do is plant and crop and move on, living in one-room wooden huts.
42:02You sleep on the floor, eat meat and vegetable stew and cornbread, and drink booze.
42:11And that's all you do.
42:13Night and day, summer and winter, till you die.
42:17At around age 45.
42:20So, where are we?
42:22Titian, great portrait painter, goes to Augsburg, home of great jewellery, where a goldsmith helps King Henry of France make
42:30enough money to pay for his wife's dinner parties, where they first smoke tobacco, that the English eventually get from
42:36Maryland, where they set up a tobacco-growing colony, where colonists get to work themselves into an early grave.
42:42Well, back then, life is pretty nasty.
42:48Except for the people at the other end of this economic process, making a million, the internal revenue.
42:55Once somebody makes the math to work out the taxes as easy as falling off a log.
43:01Dead easy.
43:03OK, look at the bottom of the screen.
43:06Two times two times two, five times, gives you 32, right?
43:13Do the same thing four times, and you get 16.
43:19OK, to multiply 32 by 16, add the little numbers, and look this up in your log tables.
43:26To do division, you do the same, but subtract the little numbers.
43:38In 1618, this is automated by the amazing new slide rule, invented by William Orchard.
43:44Find your numbers by swivelling the pointers like this, and bottom right is the result.
43:53Orchard's slide rule is made for him by one of the hottest instrument makers of the 17th century.
43:58His name is Elias Allen, and he also happens at one time to be a mover and shaker in the
44:03clockmakers' company of London.
44:06Who never get round to building their own banqueting hall, so they have their little annual dinners in the Lord
44:11Mayor of London.
44:14Now, the clockmakers start up just when the timekeeping business is really getting into the swing of things.
44:19With the amazing new high-tech wonder machine from Holland, invented by that swinging genius Christian Huygens, the pendulum clock.
44:27The thing about this is, the pendulum swing lasts the same time every swing, see?
44:34So it's an extremely accurate way to control the clock.
44:41So now you can time anything to the second.
44:45Like, you're cooking.
44:47Just as well, given the way Huygens' assistant puts any chef under pressure.
44:56Huygens' assistant is called Denis Papin, and he's French.
45:00So, being French, he turns his genius to vitally important matters, like food.
45:05And comes up with a gizmo you'll love if you love steamed potatoes.
45:10Papin's previously fooled around with steam engines, so he knows all about stuff like air pressure and steam, right?
45:18Hey, man, let's have the vegetables.
45:20OK, here's the deal.
45:22You're going to boil the water, and you're going to boil the food.
45:25But you're going to do it with the lid screwed down tight, under pressure, with a pressure escape valve.
45:32Food cooks twice as fast.
45:34Things called a pressure cooker makes boring food.
45:38And 200 years later, solves another French crisis about drink.
45:42In this case, beer, and why isn't French beer as good as German beer?
45:50This national disaster becomes an obsession for the paranoid French chemist Louis Pasteur,
45:55who, back in 1864, is doing what Frenchmen usually do, drinking wine.
46:05Which he discovers to be bad.
46:07Well, gone bad.
46:09So, since he's been doing tests in his lab on why food goes mouldy,
46:13and has seen many little bugs down his microscope,
46:16he decides that these little bugs, he calls them germs, get into the food from the air.
46:21This after he's done tests leaving food lying around.
46:30Pasteur takes his bugs and submits them to every known torture, boiling up, chilling down, sealing in jars, you name
46:38it.
46:39One approach to killing the little bug seems to work best of all.
46:42Heat. So he tries the same trick with the wine.
46:45He cooks it at 55 degrees centigrade.
46:48You can hear the wine buffs all over France are rumphing.
46:51Boiled wine? Mon Dieu!
46:55However, at a later wine tasting, they can't tell which wine has been boiled and which hasn't.
46:59So that's okay. And it solves the problem.
47:02No more bad wine.
47:08In 1870, France has a war with Germany and loses,
47:12and Pasteur's idea of revenge is to make French beer better than German beer.
47:17As part of the process, he's looking at why beer goes bad in summer,
47:21and, guess what, discovers those little bugs again.
47:26So he tries the same boiling trick, and does to beer what he previously did to wine.
47:31Why didn't he think of it first time round? Don't ask me.
47:35Anyway, we call what he did pasteurising, and today we do it to milk products.
47:40And in hospitals, to surgical instruments.
47:42In machines not a million miles away from that thing Papin invented.
47:46Remember, the pressure cooker.
47:47In medical circles, known as an autoclave.
47:52Now, Pasteur's work doesn't alter the fact that in summer, dairy products, and pretty much anything, go bad in the
48:00heat.
48:00So, can science fix summer?
48:11Well, it can make virtual winter, and give me this delicious frosted glass of the amber nectar in high summer.
48:19Makes a job bearable.
48:23And my beer is cold, thanks to beer.
48:27Because, back in Germany, the brewers ask an engineer called Karl von Linde if he can come up with something
48:34to keep their vats cold during fermentation.
48:37And he invents one of those.
48:39A refrigerator.
48:41See, if you compress air, or ammonia gas, or ether, they get hot.
48:47Release the pressure, and they get colder than before, so they'll chill down any liquid.
48:53So there's your coolant, in tubes running through the back of the fridge.
48:58Or an air conditioner, which is why this bar is nice and chilly.
49:07Just what you need when you're working in the steamy tropics.
49:12And the reason I am telling you all this in the steamy tropics, is because when the Australian sheep farmers
49:18first get their hands on refrigeration at the end of the 19th century,
49:22the first place they send their frozen cold meat to is hot countries.
49:26Because now it'll keep, thanks to the fridge.
49:29Now, the biggie, Australian meat exporter, is a fellow called Harrison.
49:34Who repeats that German guy von Linde's freezing trick, but this time on a much bigger scale.
49:40And you can see what he comes up with, here.
49:46Harrison's freezing machines also get used to chill down paraffin oil.
49:51If you get the temperature low enough, some of the paraffin goes solid.
49:55It produces stuff called paraffin wax, a product ideal for making what this bar is full of.
50:02Candles.
50:04And my sandwiches for tonight's beach party.
50:06See this?
50:08Paraffin wax paper.
50:09Does great things to the early food packaging industry at the beginning of this century.
50:15And what that does is make possible something so commonplace that you probably don't consciously see it even when you
50:23use it.
50:24So, here we are about to end the show with an invisible object.
50:31So, how did it go?
50:32Black holes in space.
50:34Hydrazine fuel.
50:36Fungicides on French vines.
50:38Quarantine conventions and money orders.
50:40American Express and Buffalo Bill.
50:42Vaudeville and French battles.
50:44Joan of Arc and the Inquisition.
50:46Jews welcomed by Turks who lose to Maltese knights, with surgeons trained on pictures by Titian, who's in Augsburg, where
50:54goldsmiths make French money to pay for tobacco that triggers logarithms and slide rules made by clock makers, who also
51:01make pressure cookers that sterilize French beer kept cool by refrigerators that get used to freeze meat and chill down
51:07paraffin to produce paraffin wax for invisible objects.
51:13Well, did you notice this?
51:15Wax paper cups?
51:16I mean, when was the last time you really took a close look at one of these?
51:20And yet they're everywhere.
51:22Even here.
51:23In a tropical paradise.
51:27You know, sometimes this job is no picnic.
51:52But not only.
51:55To be continued...
51:58I mean, they're in temptation.
52:01To be continued...
52:01By the way, in the time you want.
52:01In the same way, in the same way.
52:05You
Comments