- 2 days ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:29Transcription by CastingWords
00:59Transcription by CastingWords
01:28Transcription by CastingWords
01:58Transcription by CastingWords
02:27Transcription by CastingWords
02:59Transcription by CastingWords
03:13Transcription by CastingWords
03:15The really effective thing about napalm is that when they stick it to you, they really stick it to you.
03:21When a 100-gallon drop tank filled with sticky napalm hits the ground within an area 30 by 90 yards,
03:28everything is toast.
03:47It's ironic that toasting effect that napalm has, considering where it all starts.
03:52On toast, with this stuff, invented by an obscure Frenchman named Mej, to solve a crucial problem facing France at
04:02the time.
04:02A rapidly rising population of people too poor to have breakfast.
04:08What little food they can afford is a lousy dyes anyway.
04:14When it comes to energy-giving food that will keep you going all day long in some factory or other.
04:19And as for meat, that's something poor people never see.
04:23Now, butter would give you enough energy for the factory shift, but the only people who can afford butter don't
04:29do factory shifts.
04:32So, Mej comes up with a mixture of beef suet and milk that will spread and is cheap enough for
04:38all those poor, starving factory workers to afford.
04:42And for reasons that mystify me, he sells a patent to a Dutchman, and the world gets margarine, and likes
04:51it so much, there isn't enough beef suet to go round, which, you might say, changes the name of the
04:58game.
05:06This is where they find the substitute for beef suet, here in Sri Lanka, and other places that grow these
05:12palm oil trees.
05:14Palm oil is better and cheaper than suet.
05:17Oh, and incidentally, it's the key ingredient in napalm.
05:20But back in the late 19th century, palm oil is the reason there's margarine on your supermarket shelves today.
05:27And it's so easy to get.
05:29You just reach up and cut.
05:36And then squeeze the oil out of the fruit.
05:39Of course, it's not as straightforward as I've made out, especially that bit about palm oil being used in margarine.
05:46Here's why.
05:47When you process the palm oil fruit, what you get is this.
05:53You will note that being oil, it runs, right?
05:56And margarine doesn't.
05:58So what's the trick?
06:00Well, about 20 years after Mej does his thing, they find a way to harden up the vegetable oils in
06:06margarine, so it'll spread on the bread.
06:08Now, to be perfectly fair, the way they do this is extremely boring.
06:14But I'll be extremely quick.
06:19OK, here are your palm oil molecules, and here are some hydrogen molecules, which don't normally belong together until you
06:27introduce stuff called kieselgur, a fine powder, onto which you deposit a little nickel.
06:33And what the nickel on the kieselgur does is act like a catalyst.
06:37All you have to do is get the whole lot well mixed up, and bingo, the hydrogen molecules stick themselves
06:44into the palm oil molecules.
06:46Because it's getting hydrogen into the oil, the process is called hydrogenation, and it makes the oil stiff enough so
06:54it'll spread on your toast.
06:55And the kieselgur nickel catalyst will do that hardening trick to most oils, including, ironically, fish oils.
07:11Because that stuff with the funny name, kieselgur, is why the fish are where they are to be fished in
07:17the first place.
07:18See, kieselgur starts life as shells on the world's smallest seafood, otherwise known as plankton,
07:25a.k.a. lunch for teeny-weeny shrimps, which get eaten by bigger fish, then eaten by bigger fish, that
07:34you get to eat.
07:36It's called a food chain.
07:40Now, when the tiny plankton die, their tiny shells sink, and zillions of years later have become sedimentary layers you
07:48grind up into kieselgur powder.
07:52And we know this because of a fellow named Victor Henson, who, in 1888, is trying to make more money
07:58for the German fishing fleet.
08:01Henson designed special nets to catch plankton.
08:04There's some in this jar, about 100 million.
08:08Take a look from a satellite, and you can see what Henson discovers.
08:15Here's some time-lapse satellite shots, taken once every month.
08:19OK, watch the green bits. That's living plankton.
08:23And you can see plankton don't much like the tropics, do they?
08:27Up north and down south, where the gales churn up the ocean,
08:30if the plankton eat up all the surface food, there's always more being brought up from down below.
08:36So there's always plenty to eat.
08:38It doesn't happen in the windless tropics.
08:39North and south, with pretty constant strong winds drawing cold, food-rich currents up from the depths,
08:47plankton thrive.
08:50And what that does is explain why you get all those anchovies and tuna off the coast of Peru at
08:56certain times of the year.
08:59See that plankton growth up the Pacific coast of Peru?
09:02The cold Humboldt current runs up that coast, driven by the winds coming in over the Pacific
09:08and pulling food for the plankton up from the deep ocean.
09:14So the anchovies that live on the plankton have a feast, and then the tuna that live on the anchovies
09:18have a feast,
09:19and then we have a feast.
09:21And the reason that current happened at all is discovered by a Dutchman called Ballo.
09:26One last satellite shot.
09:31Ballo discovers that Humboldt current exists because of that west-to-east South Pacific weather you can see
09:38that happens because of the way the Earth rotates.
09:40Those west-to-east winds pull the Humboldt current in their train.
09:46And I make that bad joke because of another Ballo experiment he does in 1845.
09:52Here's Professor Ballo, and here's his experiment.
10:00And here are Ballo's experimental subjects.
10:08Now, I know this looks goofy, but please try to remember that back then, this is rocket science stuff.
10:20OK, here they go.
10:23And they're off.
10:31Meanwhile, down the line, the waiting research assistants.
10:35Their job, to record with exact precision what they and you are about to hear.
10:40The note, played by the travelling trumpeters.
10:43And here they come.
10:50And here is their note.
11:10The pitch of the note rises, proving to Ballo what some guy in Prague has said,
11:16that pitch rises as a sound approaches you and falls as it departs.
11:30Thank you, gentlemen.
11:32Now, that guy in Prague I mentioned, Christian Doppler.
11:36Well, as well as sound waves, he's also talking about light waves.
11:40Here's what he means by that bit of it.
11:44If this were a light approaching at a zillion miles an hour, its light waves would get to you increasingly
11:49frequently.
11:50Higher frequency light is bluer, so the approaching light source should look bluer.
11:59If the light is departing, light waves from it hit you less frequently, low frequency lights redder.
12:05So Doppler reckons the red stars, astronomers see, must be stars moving away from us, and the blue stars coming
12:12towards us.
12:15Six years later, in France, a guy called Armand Fizeau comes up with the same idea, only he takes it
12:21a bit further.
12:22Look, he says, if the speed of light is constant, this red-blue thing means you can work out the
12:28speed the stars are actually going at in order to make that colour change happen.
12:32If you knew the speed of light, right?
12:35And he works that out with a cogwheel.
12:40The cogwheel has 712 teeth.
12:43Fizeau shines the light from a precise distance through the spinning teeth.
12:47When the wheel's going at exactly 12.6 revolutions a second, the teeth, watch the bottom, pass at exactly the
12:55same time as the light wave crests and block the light.
12:58Fizeau does the math, wheel spin rate, light wave frequency, distance to the light, and announces light speeds 190,000
13:07miles a second.
13:08Everybody's delighted.
13:10Bouquets all round.
13:14Meanwhile, time for a quick catch-up.
13:19On our way to hitting the water, palm oil is hardened for margarine, with a process using that stuff called
13:25kieselgur, made from shells of dead plankton, that live in currents identified by Ballot, who also tests the Doppler effect
13:33that happens with moving sound and moving stars, so Fizeau works out the speed of light.
13:43Fizeau marries the daughter of a spectacularly boring French flower freak, about whom virtually nothing has been written, you'll be
13:50happy to hear.
13:51Not even by his best pal, who lives here in Paris and writes a lot.
13:58The scribbling friend is the greatest French romantic novelist nobody's ever heard of, named Prosper Merrimay.
14:06Here's his greatest work.
14:08The Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX.
14:12I had to read it at school.
14:14Try it.
14:15It'll cure your insomnia.
14:18Thing is, I bet you know Prosper Merrimay, but didn't know you did, on account of the fact that somebody
14:23more famous stole one of his stories and turned it into something more famous.
14:28A tale of flowering passion.
14:40Mary May's story is better known in the musical version, Carmen, the story of a gypsy girl who stabs her
14:46lover in a jealous rage.
14:48Mind you, the idea isn't Mary May's in the first place.
14:51He gets told the story when he's travelling in Spain and bumps into an aristocratic Spanish family and becomes a
15:00good pal of them all, and, especially, the little daughter.
15:15That friendship with the little girl turns out to be one of the best things that ever happens to Mary
15:20May.
15:20Years later, when he's back in Paris, so is she, grown up and Empress of France.
15:44Oh, baby!
15:46Oh, hi!
15:48Oh, baby!
15:55OK, we fast forward to 1834, when Merrimay's back here in Paris and his little pal is Empress.
16:02And Merrimay gets to be the great saviour of Notre-Dame Cathedral, because the Empress gets him the job of
16:08Inspector General of Monuments, most of which are falling down, and he saves about 4,000 of them, including Notre
16:15-Dame.
16:15You enjoy the architectural treasures of France, thank Merrimay.
16:22Of course, sometimes they replace a bit, so some of what you're admiring as Gothic isn't.
16:30Like this bit.
16:31Or this bit.
16:33Or these bits.
16:36Or this bit.
16:38Mind you, most people are fooled.
16:42And speaking of getting away with it...
16:45At one point, Merrimay gets mixed up with a criminal Italian type named Libri, who's living in France and is
16:52Inspector General of French Libraries.
16:56Well, he is, until they start noticing that every time he inspects a library, valuable books kind of go missing.
17:04Chased by the cops, he escapes to England.
17:09Where another Italian book lover offers him a job.
17:13No danger of Libri stealing this guy's books.
17:16I know.
17:16I've spent most of my life waiting for days just to get my hands on one.
17:24Here, at the British Museum Library.
17:30Libri's pal, Antonio Panizzi, becomes the head librarian in 1856,
17:35and he's the guy who designs the great main reading room, beloved of readers and snoozes the world over.
17:42It's Panizzi who turns the library into a major institution.
17:46The library has the greatest collection of rare volumes in the world today,
17:50thanks to bookworm Antonio Panizzi.
17:56You can imagine him, can't you, in retirement, settling down in the evening over a nice cup of hot chocolate
18:04and thanking the fellow who made it all possible, the guy who invented hot chocolate.
18:10Dr. Hans Sloan.
18:12Fortunately for Panizzi, the guy who got the British Museum built in the first place.
18:18So let's hear it for doctors who invent hot chocolate drinks and help to cure beautiful women.
18:25Well, she was beautiful until the unfortunate event.
18:33The unfortunate event occurs not long before the aristocratic lady in question sets off in 1715 for Turkey.
18:43What that doctor, Hans Sloan, has done back in London is save the life of Lady Mary Walkley Montague
18:50from a disease that nearly always kills and always disfigures.
18:55Smallpox.
19:00Lady Mary heads straight for Turkish High Society, places like the Sultan's Harim,
19:05where she meets the wives and concubines and gets to know all about life and love in Istanbul.
19:21One day, on one of her visits, Lady Mary gets the word about something the Turks are up to
19:26that interests her a lot more than the art and architecture stuff.
19:31She discovers that smallpox in Turkey isn't the killer disease it is back in England.
19:36So she takes a closer look, and what she discovers puts her in the medical history books.
19:43Turns out, the Turks are taking the liquid from the pustules of people with smallpox
19:48and inoculating healthy children with it, who then never catch smallpox.
19:54This turns Lady Mary on so much, eventually back in England,
19:58she persuades the medical profession to start inoculating.
20:02The other thing she does here is write flowery letters home about her experiences,
20:07including how Turkey is covered in tulips.
20:10At the time, there's a tulip craze among the Turkish aristocracy,
20:14so they're worth a fortune, and there are 1,300 varieties.
20:27Tulips have been a rarity in the West since the 1560s,
20:31when Europeans get their first glimpse of them in a book by a Swiss guy,
20:36Conrad Gessner, who's also the first person to classify plants by their structures and seeds.
20:44But Gessner's real claim to fame is a modest work he comes up with in 1555,
20:49entitled The Universal Collection of Books.
20:53Every author since the printing press 100 years before,
20:56and dictionaries, encyclopedias, grammar books, and the Lord's Prayer in 22 languages.
21:03And something complicated on how to analyse the real meaning of ancient texts.
21:09That last thing endears him to his godfather,
21:13who's keen on that kind of approach to the Bible,
21:15and partial to sausages.
21:25What happens next is a rare case of history being changed,
21:29thanks to Conrad Gessner's godfather,
21:31by somebody's eating habits.
21:35Point is, Gessner's godfather is a Swiss sausage-eating Catholic priest
21:40about to turn Protestant
21:41and persuade many other Swiss Catholics to do the same.
21:44So we're talking the theological importance of sausages.
21:47Because if you were about to lead a Protestant revolt against Rome,
21:51one way to rally others to your cause could be with sausages.
21:56Thing is, Gessner's godfather is one Ulrich Zwingli,
22:01and he eats the sausage in question in 1522 in Zierich in Lent.
22:07Lent being a time when Catholics aren't supposed to eat meat,
22:10which is bad enough.
22:12Except Zwingli's a priest at Zierich's biggest church.
22:17And it gets worse.
22:18He's also secretly married.
22:21And worse again, he's a fan of Martin Luther,
22:25the guy just recently excommunicated by Rome.
22:30And then Zwingli goes totally ape.
22:33I mean, he gets up in the pulpit...
22:38He gets up in the pulpit and lets the Pope have it.
22:42Down, he says, with celibacy for priests.
22:47Down with the mass.
22:49Holy images.
22:52Music.
22:55Latin.
22:59Clerical clothing.
23:00Clerical clothing.
23:02Church taxes.
23:06And baptism.
23:09The Zierich town council love it.
23:13By 1525, Zwingli is flavor of the month.
23:17Anything he says goes.
23:21So when he says turn Protestant, they all do.
23:25And go for a new Puritan lifestyle.
23:27No more late nights or boozing.
23:29As their spiritual leader, Zwingli comes on pretty strong.
23:34But when he says roll up the sidewalks, they roll them up.
23:37And anything else he asks.
23:39He says, for two centuries, our biggest export has been mercenaries
23:43fighting for Catholic countries like France.
23:45Now we're Protestant.
23:46Forget it.
23:48OK.
23:49Time for a quick catch-up.
23:55You remember Mary May, who writes the original story of Carmen
23:59and his pal who works in the British Museum,
24:01first opened to house the collection of Dr Hans Sloan,
24:05who treats Lady Mary Walkley-Montagu for her smallpox
24:09before she heads off for Turkey, land of tulips,
24:12first drawn by Gessner,
24:14whose sausage-eating godfather Zwingli
24:16cancels a contract to supply mercenaries to the French,
24:19who couldn't care less,
24:21because they've just got a radical new idea,
24:24establishing a permanent professional army
24:26from people like these,
24:28the oldest English regiment, the Coldstream Guards,
24:31who move with precision in battle with this new trick.
24:44The new idea of manoeuvring on the battlefield in close ranks like this
24:48means they also drop big hats and wide cloaks
24:52in favour of combat outfits.
24:55The French also pick up on ideas,
24:57like the new flintlock weapons,
24:59providing their soldiers with pensions,
25:01hospitals and retirement homes,
25:03the whole system of ranks,
25:05and organising their new professional army
25:07into different regiments,
25:10each with their own uniforms and traditions.
25:16And then, in the 1660s,
25:18the French come up with an idea of their own
25:20that everybody else copies,
25:22the idea of doing all this stuff to music.
25:26None.
25:28By the left!
25:53The guy who introduces marching bands
25:56also goes on to put music and movement together
25:59in a very different way.
26:01His name is Lully,
26:02and by 1673,
26:04he's master of music for Louis XIV,
26:06and he's putting on
26:07some of the very first versions of this,
26:10ballet.
26:11Lully writes ballets,
26:13starring the king himself.
26:16No fool he!
26:18And then, in 1681,
26:20he does the unthinkable.
26:22This.
26:24He includes women dancers on the stage.
26:26What they do there
26:27is the business of the king's superintendent of dance,
26:30one Pierre Beauchamp,
26:32who invents choreography,
26:34which is taught by this ingenious method.
26:37The idea really catches on,
26:39and soon dancers are, so to speak,
26:41towing Beauchamp's line.
26:54The technique's called track notation,
26:56from the line you follow
26:58to the different positions of the feet.
27:02So, using these notations,
27:05here for the first time,
27:06is what early ballet must have looked like
27:09when they put it on stage in London in 1717.
27:13Something like this.
27:35You see how much more limited the movements are
27:38than in ballet today.
27:49The first time ballet and drama are put together,
27:52it's a smash hit called The Beggar's Opera,
27:54by a guy named John Gay,
27:56who does most of his scribbling
27:59behind closed doors.
28:02Whom does he write letters to?
28:04Himself!
28:06Whom does he dream of?
28:08Himself?
28:09Himself?
28:09Whom is he ogling at yonder?
28:11Why, himself in his looking glass!
28:13John Gay is a minor writer
28:15nobody ever hears from again.
28:17But for a few months back in 1714,
28:20he's secretary to a club of literary biggies.
28:28The name of the game
28:29is to publish anonymous articles
28:31attacking public figures
28:32without getting caught.
28:34What divides good Christians
28:37but the words transubstantiation,
28:40consubstantiation,
28:41and no substantiation.
28:43That's brilliant!
28:48Of course, none of this makes any sense today,
28:51but back then,
28:52these guys really dipped their pens in vitriol,
28:55aided and abetted by the only one among them
28:57who can afford to wine and dine everybody
28:59because he's the Queen's doctor.
29:02John Arbuthnot.
29:04OK, get ready to be bored out of your skull.
29:08Arbuthnot is crazy for statistics,
29:10and he does an analysis
29:11of the register of births and deaths
29:13and finds out
29:14that over a period of 82 years
29:16are you still awake?
29:18more boys are born than girls.
29:20Divine providence, he calls it.
29:23Sounds dull and uneventful to you?
29:25Music to the ears
29:27of a dull and uneventful young mathematician
29:29in Holland.
29:35And that's all I want to say about him,
29:38except to say his name is Willems Gravesand,
29:40and he's writing an analysis
29:42of Isaac Newton's work.
29:45Fortunately, Willems not the only one
29:47doing a version of Newton.
29:48Everybody and his dog is.
29:50But in this case,
29:51one of these guys visits Willems in Holland
29:53to get his opinion.
29:55This, however,
29:56well before the Frenchman in question
29:58becomes a famous hotshot philosopher,
30:00international scientist
30:01and literary lover.
30:14Here we are in France,
30:16where the literary lover
30:17does his literary loving.
30:20I'll get to the literary in a minute.
30:22First, the loving,
30:24about which it's difficult to be precise.
30:29Rough count,
30:30apart from too many casual dalliances to name,
30:33all about 14 different amorous affairs,
30:36with everybody from embassy secretaries
30:38to lonely aristocratic wives
30:40to his own niece.
30:45The only affair that matters happens here,
30:48at the Chateau de Sire in eastern France.
30:54This is where our lover,
30:56name of Voltaire,
30:58ends up spending several years of unwedded bliss
31:01with the lady of the house.
31:03The beautiful Emily de Châtelet,
31:06whose husband is in the military
31:07and permanently somewhere else.
31:12Now, for the literary bit.
31:15Most men think Emily is beautiful and brilliant,
31:19which is what most women think Voltaire is.
31:21So, they're made for each other.
31:24Besides which,
31:25they're both doing the same thing
31:26at the same time.
31:28Different translations
31:29of Newton's new blockbuster bestseller.
31:35Voltaire's doing the Reader's Digest version
31:37for general readers,
31:38and Emily's tackling the math
31:40for the propeller heads.
31:41I guess the best way to describe
31:42this amorous couple is
31:44compulsive workaholics.
31:47And, I suppose,
31:49control freaks.
31:51Because when you come here to visit these two,
31:53which I suppose half of European brainpower does,
31:56it doesn't matter
31:58what kind of intellectual big cheese
32:00you might be back home.
32:01Here, you live by the bell.
32:04Excuse me.
32:08Time for the next bit.
32:15Which might be
32:16being woken up at four in the morning
32:19for a poetry reading,
32:21or at six o'clock
32:23for a little philosophy
32:25at ten o'clock
32:28being woken up
32:29for a political discussion group.
32:34Now and again,
32:35you might get to go on a picnic.
32:42Naturally, you take the books with you.
32:44Voltaire and Emily
32:45wouldn't want to waste time
32:46at a picnic
32:47just eating.
32:57Mind you,
32:58in spite of all the egghead intensity,
33:00life in the country's pretty relaxing.
33:02So Voltaire and Emily
33:03have a constant stream of guests.
33:07After the hustle and bustle of Paris,
33:10and all those husbands
33:11he might run into,
33:12Voltaire settles down here
33:13for a few years happily
33:14at Cire.
33:17and for the rest of his life
33:18takes things at a snail's pace.
33:21Small wonder,
33:23years later,
33:24long after Emily's dead
33:25and Voltaire is still living
33:27at the same snail's pace
33:28in Switzerland,
33:29somebody sends him a long
33:31and earth-shattering report
33:33on some experiments
33:35involving snails.
33:39Okay, time for that bit.
33:47This is the northern Italian city
33:49of Pavia,
33:50centre of the universe
33:51for contemporary snail research
33:53by a towering intellect
33:54of Italian science
33:55who is also into worms
33:57and bugs at the time.
34:04The worm and bug man
34:05works in the hallowed halls
34:06of the University of Pavia
34:08where they still remember him.
34:10Name of Lazzaro Spallanzani,
34:12the man who turns the lowly worm
34:14into a science star.
34:17Back in the 1760s,
34:19Spallanzani is putting the knife
34:21into certain very important
34:23and pompous science types,
34:25especially one in England,
34:26with what can only be described
34:27as cutting remarks,
34:31which I will get to in a moment
34:33when we will hear about Spallanzani
34:35opening a whole can of worms,
34:38life sciences-wise.
34:40But first, this.
34:42You know,
34:43it's a pity so few people
34:45know about Spallanzani,
34:48mainly because
34:50somebody else got all the credit
34:52nearly a hundred years later
34:54for a nifty idea
34:55that was really Spallanzani's.
34:58Pasteur is that other guy's name,
35:00and I bet you've heard of him.
35:02Well, here's what Spallanzani does
35:03way ahead of Pasteur
35:05and never gets the credit.
35:08Here's a flask full of dirty water,
35:11full of little whizzer
35:14microorganisms
35:14that Spallanzani sees down a microscope
35:17like this.
35:18OK, here we go.
35:25See all the little whizzers?
35:27OK, here's another little flask.
35:31Same little whizzers in it.
35:33Spallanzani boils it up
35:34to kill all the little whizzers,
35:36seals it shut,
35:38leaves it for a while,
35:39cracks it open,
35:41and takes an instant sample.
35:46Shoves it under the microscope
35:48and sees that all the boiled whizzers are dead.
35:51Well, he expected that.
35:53But hold it, folks.
35:54Suddenly,
35:55new little whizzers appear,
35:57but only
35:58after the flask is cracked.
36:03So, the microorganisms
36:05must be
36:06in the air.
36:10Which is what Pasteur
36:11discovers
36:12a hundred years later.
36:14Meanwhile,
36:14on with the story
36:15and the ticklish religious question
36:17of where souls come from.
36:26OK.
36:27Remember that jar of worms
36:28I was carrying?
36:30Spallanzani solves
36:31a theological riddle
36:32with worms.
36:34If you cut a worm
36:35into two bits,
36:36after a while,
36:37both bits
36:39become two worms.
36:41Now,
36:42if a worm has a soul,
36:43and it's supposed to,
36:44but you can't cut a soul
36:46in two,
36:47where did the other soul
36:48come from?
36:49Because both worms
36:50have got one.
36:52Spallanzani says,
36:53no problem,
36:53it was there all along
36:54in an egg of some kind,
36:55and kicks off
36:57the whole of modern
36:57reproductive physiology.
36:59So,
37:00let's hear it for worms.
37:02And on that note,
37:03where are we?
37:06The French invent military music
37:08written by Lully,
37:09who also writes ballets
37:11staged in London
37:12by John Gay,
37:13whose pal Arbuthnot
37:14does statistics
37:15that impress that Dutchman
37:17who meets the great Voltaire,
37:19who gets sent a report
37:20about snails
37:21from Spallanzani
37:22who slices up worms.
37:25Spallanzani is the big hero
37:26of a German scribbler
37:28named Hoffman,
37:29who writes a story
37:30where a Spallanzani-type figure
37:32is the science wizard
37:34who creates a life-sized
37:35living doll,
37:37Coppelia,
37:38seen here with her inventor
37:39in the ballet
37:40made from Hoffman's tales
37:41and titled
37:42The Tales of Hoffman.
37:43It's a weird plot.
37:45The doll behaves
37:46just like a human being
37:47until young men
37:49start messing with her
37:50when she goes
37:50completely haywire
37:51and can't be controlled.
38:05Ernst Hoffman's life
38:06goes a bit like Coppelia,
38:08full of fits and starts.
38:09He's a lawyer,
38:10then a playwright,
38:12then a theatre impresario,
38:13then out of work,
38:14and in 1819,
38:16a judge
38:17and the author
38:18of the first weirdo
38:19psychological novels.
38:21As judge,
38:22he's investigating
38:23a bunch of nationalists,
38:25one of whom,
38:26name of Carl Follin,
38:27decides he won't
38:29get a fair trial.
38:31So in 1820,
38:33he runs away,
38:34vaulting the border
38:35to France,
38:35then vaulting the border
38:36to Switzerland,
38:37then vaulting the Atlantic
38:39to the USA.
38:45Where the other side
38:46of his nationalism
38:47takes him over
38:48every obstacle
38:49because he's also
38:50deeply into this stuff.
39:00Modern gymnastics
39:01kicks off
39:02back in the Germany
39:03of 1820 or so,
39:04but back then,
39:05it's a political thing,
39:07a symbol of the new Germany
39:08the nationalists want.
39:10Ready for conflict,
39:11united,
39:12everybody working in unison,
39:14order is everything,
39:15obedient to discipline.
39:17Heard that stuff
39:18somewhere else?
39:18Right,
39:20Nazism is the ideology
39:21that grows out of
39:22German gym.
39:27Meanwhile,
39:28in Harvard,
39:29Carl Follin,
39:30the runaway radical,
39:31remember,
39:31turns up and gets a job
39:32and opens the first
39:34college gym in the US.
39:36Gymnastics then
39:37gets taken up
39:38by the American YMCA
39:39and in 1852,
39:41the first YMCA
39:42World Conference
39:43is organized
39:44by Henry Dunant
39:45of Switzerland
39:46and then,
39:48things for Dunant
39:49take a really nasty turn.
40:01One day in 1859,
40:04the French and the
40:05Austrians fight a battle,
40:06naturally enough
40:07neither in France
40:08nor Austria,
40:09but just outside
40:10a small village
40:11in northern Italy
40:12called Solfervino.
40:16The day before the fight,
40:18Henry Dunant,
40:18that guy from Switzerland,
40:19turns up at the village
40:21of Solfervino
40:21above the battlefield
40:23just before they kick off.
40:32What happens next
40:33is what you get
40:34all over the world
40:35when they have
40:36some heroic battle
40:37or other
40:37and scabs of people die
40:39and it's all for the glory
40:40of some cause or other.
40:42A few years later,
40:43long forgotten.
40:45This one
40:46is worse than most.
40:48In the fields out there,
40:50today, peaceful and quiet
40:52under the Italian sun,
40:54350,000 people
40:55hack and shoot
40:56and bayonet each other
40:58and 40,000 of them
41:00are seriously wounded
41:01or die.
41:09of course,
41:10it's all sanitised now
41:11as you can see.
41:12Tourists come here
41:13and take pictures.
41:14But on that day,
41:16this neat little square
41:17is full of young boys
41:19crying for their mothers
41:20as they die.
41:27The wounded crawl away
41:28to shelter.
41:29Back then,
41:30it takes them all day.
41:31Today,
41:32you can drive it
41:33in 10 minutes.
41:34Shelter
41:35is the nearby little town
41:36of Castiglione
41:38dell'Estiviere.
41:43It's still a little town today.
41:49And it's still dominated
41:50by the cathedral,
41:51where the next bit
41:52of the story
41:53takes place.
41:57See,
41:58Henry Dunant
41:58is so appalled
41:59by the unspeakably
42:01dreadful things
42:01he's seen and heard
42:02that he helps
42:03to get as many
42:04of the wounded
42:04as possible
42:05back to the cathedral,
42:07where they drag
42:08as many as they can
42:09inside.
42:14And then,
42:15together with the priest
42:16and the townspeople,
42:18Dunant tries
42:19to do something,
42:20anything,
42:20for soldiers
42:21lying in pools
42:23of their own blood.
42:24For three straight
42:25days and nights,
42:26everybody works
42:27like hell,
42:28with nothing but water
42:29and strips of cloth
42:30for bandages.
42:33And what do you know?
42:34Some of them survive,
42:36lying here,
42:37stacked against the walls.
42:43Over the next five years,
42:45Henry bends the ear
42:46of anybody who is anybody
42:47all over Europe,
42:48kings, princes,
42:49emperors,
42:49you name it.
42:50And finally,
42:51in 1864,
42:52he persuades 15 countries
42:54to get together
42:55to set up
42:55battlefield medical teams,
42:57cross the lines,
42:58help the wounded,
42:59go anywhere.
43:03Henry's little meeting,
43:04which they have in Geneva,
43:06agrees on a convention.
43:07Today we call it
43:08the Geneva Convention.
43:13The convention brings
43:14into existence
43:14an organisation
43:15that takes as its symbol
43:17the Red Cross,
43:18for at least a couple
43:19of reasons.
43:20You can't really miss it,
43:21and it reminds people
43:23of the colour
43:24of spilt blood.
43:26Speaking of which...
43:33World War I and major blood problems.
43:36Some wounded guy
43:38is losing blood like crazy.
43:39You join his blood vessel
43:41to somebody else's,
43:42a crude transfusion
43:43takes place,
43:44and the guy dies.
43:46Nobody knows why,
43:48till it is discovered
43:49that blood contains things
43:50that mean all bloods
43:51don't necessarily mix well.
43:53These things turn out
43:55to be factors
43:55that put blood
43:56into identifiable groups,
43:58A, B, AB, and O,
44:01blood types.
44:02You do transfusions
44:04between compatible blood groups,
44:05and it's no problem.
44:07The guy who discovers this
44:09gets a Nobel Prize
44:10for his work,
44:11back in 1900,
44:13because it makes possible
44:14modern surgery.
44:15Well, almost.
44:17There is still
44:18that messy business
44:19back then
44:19of getting the blood
44:20from one person
44:21into another,
44:22and at the time
44:24that means
44:25joining up blood vessels.
44:34This is the guy,
44:35Alexis Carroll,
44:37who gets the blood vessel
44:38problem all sewn up
44:39with a new stitching technique
44:41he's soon demonstrating
44:42to surgical staff.
44:51The technique's simple.
44:53Your assistant
44:54holds the blood vessels together
44:55and pulls the edges taut,
44:57and you sew in a straight line.
44:59Then you repeat
45:00that trick twice,
45:01so temporarily
45:02you've turned
45:03the vessel tube
45:03into a triangle shape,
45:05easy enough to sew.
45:07And when you've done
45:08the three sides,
45:09the vessel springs back circular
45:10and joined all the way round.
45:18Next thing Carroll wants
45:19is to be able
45:20to pump replacement blood
45:22and nutrients
45:22into organs
45:23removed for treatment
45:24so they'll survive
45:25to go back.
45:26This pump,
45:27designed by a pal of his,
45:29does that.
45:29So now Carroll can work
45:31towards his real goal,
45:33organ transplants.
45:40The pump takes its designer
45:42many lonely hours
45:43of total concentration
45:44day and night.
45:45But then he's used to that.
45:47He's Charles Lindbergh,
45:49and he's just done
45:50the first solo
45:51transatlantic flight.
45:56He's also just flown down
45:57to Mexico to get married.
46:03Lindbergh's new father-in-law
46:04is an American ambassador,
46:06and in 1930 he's in London
46:09at an Allied conference
46:10trying to get a grip
46:11on disarmament.
46:12And the conference decides
46:14that Germany will be limited
46:15to three new battleships,
46:16each one at 10,000 tons,
46:18over three times smaller
46:20than Allied battleships.
46:23On January 6, 1936,
46:26the Germans launch the first.
46:27It's called
46:28the Admiral Graf Spee,
46:30and it blows everybody away.
46:39Graf Spee is only 10,000 tons,
46:42but what a package.
46:4332 guns,
46:44special armour,
46:45fastest battleship afloat,
46:47and goes 12,000 miles
46:49without refuelling.
46:50World War II starts,
46:52and in the Atlantic,
46:53Graf Spee strikes.
46:58Graf Spee sinks nine British ships
47:00in a few days.
47:02The Brits track her down,
47:03there's a battle,
47:04and she gets away
47:05to a neutral port
47:06where the captain scuttles the ship
47:08and she sinks.
47:10Leaving the crews
47:11of those nine British ships,
47:13prisoners somewhere
47:14on the Graf Spee's supply vessel.
47:17There's another chase,
47:19and in a Norwegian fjord,
47:21the Altmark,
47:22the supply ship,
47:23is cornered,
47:24still carrying the 300 prisoners.
47:26There's a brief firefight,
47:28and the Brits board Altmark,
47:30and it's all over.
47:32Except for Adolf Hitler,
47:34who decides the Brits
47:35have come to invade Norway,
47:36so he does.
47:43In April 1940,
47:44the Germans take Norway.
47:46The final link
47:47in the chain of events
47:49I've been following
47:49in this programme
47:50towards the moment
47:51when we hit the water,
47:53remember?
47:55The German invasion of Norway
47:57takes place
47:57in a matter of days.
48:00Three weeks later,
48:01they've got the biggest security ring
48:02you've ever seen
48:03round that place down there.
48:06It's a hydroelectric plant,
48:08and it's the most important
48:09German invasion target in Norway
48:11because it uses the electricity
48:13generated by water
48:15falling from this dam
48:16high in the mountains
48:17to make more water.
48:19But it's water
48:20of a special kind.
48:28Which is why,
48:30three years later,
48:31a small team of dedicated
48:32Allied commandos
48:33and Norwegian partisans
48:35come in over these mountains
48:37and clobber the place.
48:47In spite of the fact
48:48that there's only one suspension bridge
48:49across the gorge to the plant
48:50and there's no other way
48:51to get there,
48:52of course they could go down,
48:55across and up.
48:59Add searchlights,
49:01minefields,
49:02and guards,
49:03machine guns,
49:04and the whole thing's impossible.
49:06Wrong.
49:09The Germans believe the place
49:10is so well protected
49:11they're half asleep
49:12till the explosives go off
49:14after the Allied commandos
49:16have gone.
49:20The point of it all being
49:21that secret water
49:23I mentioned.
49:28Now,
49:30all water has
49:31tiny amounts of deuterium
49:33in it
49:33and with unlimited electricity
49:35from the hydroelectric station
49:37you can kind of
49:39reduce the mix
49:40and end up with water heavy
49:42in deuterium,
49:43which is why they call it
49:44heavy water.
49:46Now,
49:46if you shoot neutrons
49:48through this heavy water,
49:49the deuterium atoms
49:50will slow the neutrons down
49:52just enough
49:53so that when they hit
49:55a bit of uranium
49:55on the other side,
49:56they kick off
49:57a nuclear chain reaction
49:59and boom.
50:00Well,
50:01not quite yet.
50:04Because thanks to napalm
50:05made with palm oil,
50:07also used for margarine,
50:09stiffened with the process
50:10using Kieselgur,
50:11that comes from
50:12plankton living
50:13and currents
50:13Ballot studies
50:14before doing
50:15the Doppler test
50:16that causes FISO
50:17to measure light speed.
50:18FISO's father-in-law's
50:20pal,
50:20Mary May,
50:21who writes Carmen.
50:22His pal,
50:23Panizzi,
50:24who works at
50:25the British Museum,
50:26open to house
50:27the collection
50:27of Dr Sloan,
50:28who treats
50:29Lady Montague's
50:30smallpox
50:31before she sees
50:31Turkish tulips,
50:32first drawn by Gessner,
50:34whose godfather
50:35eats sausages
50:36and cancels
50:36the military contract
50:37with France,
50:38where they invent
50:39military music
50:40and choreography,
50:41used in a London show
50:43by John Gay,
50:44whose friend,
50:44Arbuthnot,
50:45does statistics
50:46that impress
50:46the Dutch mathematician
50:47who knows Voltaire,
50:49who hears from
50:50the worm-slicing
50:50Spallanzani,
50:51who stars in the story
50:53by Judge Hoffman,
50:54who tries German
50:55nationalists
50:56who start gymnastics,
50:57adopted by the YMCA
50:59and the guy
50:59who kicks off
51:00the Red Cross,
51:01who need blood typing,
51:03surgical stitching
51:04and the transfusion pump
51:06invented by Lindbergh,
51:08whose father-in-law's
51:09disarmament treaty
51:10leads to Grafspe,
51:11Altmark
51:12and the German invasion
51:13of Norway
51:14and the Allied commandos
51:16whose mission was
51:17to hit the water.
51:21Thanks to all that,
51:23Hitler is never able
51:24to do
51:24this.
51:31The end
51:54is never able
51:55to do
51:55this.
Comments