- 14 minutes ago
Tell the story of three of the greatest inventions of all time - photography, moving pictures and television.
一部记录重大创新成果的起源, 兴起及其成效的历史与科学类纪录片, 发明家生活年代顺序编排其生平与科技成果, 涉及的发明均对文明进程产生划时代影响.
一部记录重大创新成果的起源, 兴起及其成效的历史与科学类纪录片, 发明家生活年代顺序编排其生平与科技成果, 涉及的发明均对文明进程产生划时代影响.
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TVTranscript
00:04Hello and welcome to the genius of invention tonight from BBC Broadcasting House.
00:09Now the fact that you are able to actually watch us now is thanks to some brilliant and eccentric inventors.
00:16Among them are many British giants of innovation who had the vision to freeze time through photography and pioneered the
00:23magic of the moving image.
00:24They've made the world smaller, faster and more vivid and they've brought far away worlds to our homes. How and
00:31why did that happen?
00:32We're going to explore the very nature of invention. How blind luck, stubbornness and flashes of genius combined to build
00:40our glorious Technicolor world.
00:51Hello, I'm Michael Moseley. As usual, I'm joined by Dr Cassie Newland. Hello.
00:56And Professor Mark Miodovnik. Hello.
00:59Now, there are so many people around the world vying for a position in tonight's Hall of Fame, but we're
01:05going to focus on three pivotal inventions that changed how we saw the world.
01:11We'll follow a trail of invention born out of our desire to record and share our life stories.
01:18From fixing the shadows through photography, to moving pictures and then sending them across the airways, television.
01:27They all have the capacity to reproduce and reflect our world.
01:31They have the power to capture our imagination in unique and unforgettable ways.
01:38Two hundred years ago, it took eight hours to create a single photograph.
01:43Today, we can conjure up an infinite number of worlds through virtual reality.
01:49Tonight, we celebrate the inventors and inventions that changed our perspective.
01:55Our timeline begins with photography.
01:58And it was William Henry Fox Talbot who succeeded where others had failed.
02:03But his breakthrough was at risk from the occupational hazard of all inventors, competition.
02:09Fox Talbot had been working on his own photographic technique for five years.
02:13And he had no idea that Daguerre was about to unleash this bombshell.
02:18It was an invention from a different field that overcame the barriers to capturing motion.
02:23And it was, of course, a substance, not a technology, that created the movie industry in the first place.
02:31Although, it wasn't just what was on the screen that proved inflammatory.
02:35The next challenge, transmitting pictures at a distance, was resolved by a fiery showdown between a corporate giant and maverick
02:43inventor, John Logie Baird.
02:46At the end of the contest, the best system would be awarded the coveted contract to broadcast to the nation.
02:53The loser would go home with nothing.
02:58And one of our most successful inventors, Sir James Dyson, shares his thoughts on Britain's role in shaping the modern
03:05world.
03:06Part of the reason is we like being eccentric. We're an island race who likes to be different.
03:12And we're quite grand in our thought. I mean, you know, conquering the world and ruining the seas and so
03:18on.
03:18That's deep in our history.
03:27So, Cassie, why do you think these three inventions are so important?
03:30Oh, well, they're just wonderfully descriptive of how we came to be the modern people we are.
03:35You know, that visual image is so primary in the way we view our world.
03:39It's about becoming critically self-reflexive, all those things.
03:43Is this sort of nonsense you expect from a social scientist?
03:45I'm not sure I really agree, because I think the visual image has always been about the material fact.
03:49You know, first it was cave paintings, then it was drawings on canvas and paper.
03:53And then it was photography. Chemistry made photography possible.
03:55And then it was plastics made the cinema possible. We get more and more material. So it's a material story.
04:00I think you're both wrong, I have to say. I think it's down to personalities.
04:04You've got Fox Tolbert. He's got something brilliant, but he hasn't got the personality to sell it.
04:08Whereas Logie Baird has something which, frankly, is not that brilliant, yet he has the personality which makes it happen.
04:14Anyway, this building has been at the heart of the story for the last 80 years. I've been taking a
04:19quick look round.
04:21Broadcasting House is better known as the home of radio, but it was here that the first faint flickers of
04:27television were fanned into life.
04:30In 1932, from the basement here, John Logie Baird, the father of mechanical television, first began broadcasting experimental television pictures.
04:41It was the year Broadcasting House opened, the first purpose-built broadcast centre in Britain.
04:47In the 80 years since, it has expanded to a network of radio, television, internet that now reaches over 240
04:57million people worldwide.
05:03But it's not just the BBC that's changed. Other national and independent companies have combined to help make British broadcasting
05:12amongst the best in the world.
05:16And as the number of channels has grown, so too have the ways we can access them.
05:21But news remains at the heart of broadcasting.
05:25When the BBC first moved into Broadcasting House, newscasters were exquisitely attired and spoke in RP, received pronunciation.
05:34Now, these days, the BBC has gone from dinner jackets to digital and stays in contact with the world via
05:41an extensive network of cable and satellite.
05:45When Broadcasting House opened, it was a feat of audio engineering.
05:4922 radio studios and 50 miles of electrical wiring.
05:54Eight decades later, John Logie Baird's vision of a fully-fledged television service has finally been realised.
06:04The studios here are very buzzy places and they are the product of decades of technological development.
06:11From topical discussion programmes like this one to virtual reality studios where sets appear and change at the touch of
06:20a button.
06:21Today, the only real limit is imagination.
06:26But none of this technology would be possible without understanding our first invention, photography.
06:33And it seems to be an invention whose time had come.
06:36Loads of people were involved in the inventions that paved the way for it.
06:39The camera obscura is at least a thousand years old, but it was a device that only captured a temporary
06:45image while the sun was out.
06:46But this is more of an aid for artists because you can draw around the projected image and know that
06:52you've got everything right.
06:54And the 18th century was all about the mastery of nature, the scientific enlightenment.
06:59Optics and perspective were rational ways of understanding and representing the world.
07:04If only there was a way to fix the pictures.
07:07For me, the father of photography is this man.
07:11Nisophore Niepce.
07:12All images, videos, films, internet, TV.
07:15Everything can be traced back to this heliograph.
07:20Now, heliograph literally means sun writing.
07:23This is a view from Niepce's house in France taken in 1826.
07:27It's made using a camera obscura and the exposure took eight hours.
07:32It changed everything.
07:34It's quite hard for us now to appreciate what a huge technical achievement this was.
07:38So we set historical photographer Terry King a challenge.
07:44For those who appreciated the natural world, photography was an invention born of necessity.
07:51Before the 1820s, the only way to permanently recall people and places was through art.
07:58And with a background in lithography, Niepce overcame his poor draftsmanship by using a camera obscura
08:04and obsessively trying to fix the images he obtained with it.
08:09He did all sorts of strange things like trying to introduce new gases like hydrogen actually into the camera obscura.
08:16It didn't make any difference, but he just tried anything to see if it worked.
08:20I think it was a matter of money, just finding something that was industrially more efficient.
08:26Others had already tried and failed to fix images.
08:30In the 1790s, the British scientist Thomas Wedgwood used an earlier discovery that silver nitrate and silver chloride darkened when
08:38exposed to light to make sun prints.
08:40But he couldn't fix them, and his images turned black.
08:44But Niepce's knowledge of light-sensitive chemicals from his printmaking days had shown that asphalt,
08:49which hardens when exposed to sunlight, might hold the secret to permanent pictures.
08:55And after six years of trial and error, his persistence paid off.
08:59He finally cracked the formula.
09:02Essentially, a svelteum, which is the stuff we get on the roads that was called at the time bitumen of
09:07Judea,
09:08is dissolved in a thinner, lavender oil or turpentine,
09:14and you get exactly the right consistency that is then coated onto a piece of metal
09:21and then exposed to light in a camera obscura, and that produces the image on the plate.
09:28Niepce discovered that the areas where the paste was exposed to light
09:31turned hard, and the dark areas stayed soft and could be washed away,
09:36leaving a permanent image directly from nature.
09:40But Niepce took the first ever photograph in the south of France,
09:43not during an English winter.
09:46So Terry's exposing his plate for several days in the hope of his own eureka moment.
09:52Just leave it there to see what happens.
09:58And Terry will be joining us later to show us the results of his experiment.
10:02I must admit, Mark, this is not what you expect to...
10:05Lavender, yeah?
10:06Yeah.
10:07I mean...
10:08What's incredible about it is that if you look at these ingredients,
10:10they're all quite readily available.
10:12They're kind of mundane, lavender, bitumen, pewter,
10:14and he's creating something really extraordinary.
10:17A photosensitive chemical that can create the first photographic image.
10:21And that is very marvellous.
10:23Yeah.
10:23But his story does not end well.
10:25To find out how his discoveries were soon to be overshadowed,
10:28I visited Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire.
10:36Like most breakthroughs, the birth of photography reveals as much about the inventors as their inventions.
10:44Niepce was secretive, and for years guarded his process.
10:48It might have stayed that way, but for the persistence of a flamboyant lighting designer called Louis Daguerre.
10:55Daguerre persuaded a reluctant Niepce to share his secrets,
11:00and in 1829 they signed a formal agreement to work together.
11:05Unfortunately, Niepce then died.
11:08Now this left Daguerre, who had no scientific training, to go on working alone.
11:16But Daguerre continued experimenting, this time using silver-coated copper plates,
11:22sensitised with iodine which were exposed in his camera.
11:25The story goes that having broken a thermometer,
11:27the mercury vapour caused a beautiful, sharp image to develop on the plate,
11:32which he fixed with salt solution.
11:35Daguerre had finally achieved what so many before him had failed to do.
11:39He'd captured and permanently fixed an image.
11:42The announcement that Daguerre had perfected a process came in January 1839.
11:51And of course, with typical brashness, he named the method after himself.
11:58The French government rewarded Daguerre with a pension for life,
12:02and made the process free across France.
12:04Daguerre from day one was the centre of the universe.
12:08The Daguerre type, Daguerre mania, you know, took hold of the world.
12:13But in a small corner of Britain, this announcement was unhappily received.
12:18News of Daguerre's breakthrough was a horrible shock to the owner of this place,
12:23Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire.
12:25I imagine gentleman scholar William Henry Fox Talbot pacing around agitatedly
12:31as he read about it in a French newspaper.
12:33This was such a shock because Fox Talbot had been working on his own photographic technique for five years,
12:40and he had no idea that Daguerre was about to unleash this bombshell.
12:47And like his rival, Talbot was a keen scientist,
12:51and had produced an entirely different method, using paper instead of metal plates.
12:56Can you take your coat off?
12:58OK.
12:59It's important that you remain completely motionless.
13:02With just a minute's exposure, small particles formed a faint image on the paper,
13:07which could be developed and fixed.
13:11One, two, three.
13:13He named his process the callotype.
13:19But Talbot, a perfectionist, thought his invention wasn't ready to be unveiled,
13:23so he kept it to himself.
13:26So you have these two great rivals.
13:28Yes.
13:29And what is the critical difference between the processes?
13:32They're almost like day and night.
13:34I mean, a callotype, you hold it up and you look and you see that dark is light
13:38and light is dark.
13:39It's obviously reversed.
13:40It's a negative.
13:41From that, you can make as many prints that look exactly like this as possible.
13:46You can make a hundred, you can make a thousand.
13:48With a daguerreotype, it's on a metal plate.
13:52The plate that goes in the camera is the plate you take home,
13:55and it's a one-off, direct positive image.
13:58And do you think it's because of their different personalities that their inventions kind of emerged in different ways?
14:04Daguerre was a well-known man about town.
14:06He loved going to parties.
14:08He loved entering parties, walking on his hands.
14:10He was an artist who came late to science.
14:14Talbot, on the other hand, was awkward in crowds, awkward in public situations.
14:19He was the scientist who took a scientific approach to the invention of photography.
14:25Although Talbot couldn't match his rival's quality one-offs,
14:29he had moved photography into the world of printing and reproduction.
14:32A huge step forward.
14:35Well, there you go.
14:37So that's the paper.
14:40But instead of being celebrated, Talbot was condemned for being too slow off the mark.
14:45Under pressure to make up for his earlier mistake,
14:48he quickly published and slapped a tight patent on his invention.
14:53Now, that is rather good, actually, isn't it?
14:55I'm beginning to see it now.
14:58The issue was about priority.
15:00He wanted to show that he had also perfected a method at the same time, if not before.
15:06That was all purely a matter for him of his scientific integrity,
15:10of how his colleagues in the scientific world viewed him.
15:16But vociferous opponents claim Talbot was trying to profit from a process that was not even his own invention,
15:23merely an advance from the work of others.
15:25He was vilified and received nothing but abuse.
15:29That's the irony of history.
15:31Sometimes the real heroes of invention aren't necessarily the ones who are celebrated.
15:37There are so many heroes in that wonderful, fertile period of exploration in photographic methods who are still unsung.
15:48And the real heroes of invention were still the most popular.
15:48Daguerre became rich and famous.
15:51And when he died in 1851, his technique was still the most popular.
15:56Talbot, well, he got terrible press and was always seen somehow as second rate.
16:01And that is terribly unfair because it's his invention of the negative which would form the backbone of photography, up
16:09to the digital age.
16:15Would you like to see your picture?
16:17I would love to, yep.
16:18Are you ready?
16:22Oh dear, my first reaction is that I look about 120, don't I?
16:27150 actually.
16:29It looks like it was kind of an original taken there.
16:32Do you think that looks like me at all?
16:33It looks like you will be in about, yeah.
16:35It looks like your granddad.
16:37Yeah, yeah.
16:38Can you print that off?
16:39I want to take that home.
16:41I do think that is an extraordinary photograph, taken using Talbot's method.
16:45And it makes you wonder, why didn't Talbot get more recognition?
16:50Was it really just down to his personality?
16:52With me is Professor Brian Winston, who is a historian of the media.
16:57So, is it about personality?
16:59I think personality does play a role in this, but not, I think, in ways that are generally accepted.
17:04I think the last thing personality has any effect on is the actual device, the technology, right?
17:11It seems to me that's a very much hit and miss affair.
17:14But the effectiveness with which a thing acquires the name of a person is really a bit like becoming a
17:22star actor.
17:23You know, it's more luck than anything else.
17:26Coupled with a great deal of commercial acumen, how much of a motivator do you think fame is for an
17:34inventor?
17:34I don't think, I'm not sure that fame is as big a motivator as making a buck, frankly.
17:40I think that a lot of these guys were just trying to make a living.
17:43I mean, you know, you look at some of the things we've got on the table here, Rubik's Cube.
17:47I mean, the man's an architect.
17:48Presumably there weren't that many buildings going up in Hungary, right?
17:51I mean, I don't know.
17:52There's no question that people would benefit enormously if their name was attached.
17:57How important is public relations in this, having a good PR machine, a good story to tell?
18:01There's no question about that. Edison once said, invention is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.
18:08Well, it's actually, I think it's probably 97% perspiration and 1% inspiration and 2% PR.
18:14There's all that national competition, personal competition, show business, luck, et cetera, et cetera.
18:20All of this comes into that 2%.
18:22Thank you very much, Brad. It was fantastic.
18:24Thank you, Michael. Thank you.
18:25So, perhaps all Talbot needed was better PR, but fantastic though his method was,
18:30it still lacked the magic ingredient that could bring photography in from the dark,
18:35as Mark's about to find out.
18:38I'm outside for this part because I don't want to be responsible for burning down one of the BBC buildings,
18:43and I'm joined by Andrea Seller, Professor of Chemistry at UCL,
18:46and he's going to take us through some demos involved in early photography.
18:50Well, the big problem in photography in the 19th century was really doing things indoors.
18:55Sometime around 1830, someone discovered that if you took carbon disulfide
19:01and you mixed it with nitric oxide, then you could get a really quite amazing mixture.
19:07Now, put your specs on.
19:09Yeah.
19:09But we'll bring...
19:11Terrible stuff.
19:12It does stink. I agree.
19:14God.
19:14So, open it up at the top. You ready?
19:18Yeah.
19:19Yep.
19:19Pour it in.
19:21And now, it's going to build up some pressure.
19:24Woof.
19:25I can feel that. I can smell that.
19:28Yep. Well, you're downwind.
19:29Yeah, yeah.
19:30Bad place to stand.
19:32Okay, and now I've just got to mix it.
19:33Yeah, yeah.
19:34Okay, just to make sure that everything is well mixed in the tube.
19:38Okay, so we're kind of ready to go.
19:41Okay.
19:42Just release the last of the pressure.
19:45Yeah.
19:45Okay.
19:46And now, we're going to light it up at the top.
19:50Um, this always makes me just a little nervous.
19:57You ready?
19:58Yeah, go on.
19:59Whoa!
20:00Whoa!
20:03So, you can imagine...
20:04That's what I call a flash.
20:06Well, you can just imagine, you know, why it is that some of those 19th century photographs,
20:11they look kind of shell-shucked.
20:12Yeah, they're expressions.
20:13Okay.
20:14Now it all makes sense.
20:15Probably one of these.
20:17Photography had two huge effects.
20:19Firstly, it allowed everybody to create images of themselves that would outlive them.
20:23And that was previously only available to the rich and powerful.
20:27And secondly, it shrunk the world.
20:28And Michael's been finding out how photography is still at the heart of the modern newsgathering machine.
20:36As photographic equipment became ever more portable, photography moved from capturing portraits and landscapes
20:42to documenting events across the globe.
20:45Photographic journalists began using pictures to tell news stories more vividly than any headline.
20:51The appeal of photographs to news organisations is they can deliver a real emotional punch.
20:57They make you feel happy, sad, outraged.
21:01And when you get the right picture with the right story, then the effect is really potent.
21:06Today, the BBC News Picture Desk receives a stream of 10,000 photographs a day
21:11from journalists and agencies around the world.
21:14The Royal Wedding, for instance, you know, pictures were arriving.
21:16So the kiss on the balcony, the pictures arrived within two minutes of it actually happening
21:20because they're all set up to transmit.
21:22And bang, they come in.
21:23You know, go back 20 years.
21:25We used to get 30 pictures a day would come in on the wires.
21:27They were printed out on various machines, which were a bit like photocopiers or fax machines almost.
21:32The fact that it took 10 minutes for a picture to arrive didn't actually matter.
21:36Is this one here? What's this?
21:37This is an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.
21:39It's a wire photo that was transmitted in black and white.
21:44Tell me through it then.
21:44Sure, yeah. And these would come across as a yellow and a blue and a red.
21:49All right.
21:50And then you'd reconstitute them by putting them under a copy camera
21:53and you'd photograph them with the appropriate filter, one after the other.
21:56And as long as you didn't jog them, you ended up with a perfectly registered colour picture at the end
22:00of it.
22:00It's curious how driven we are by pictures, isn't it?
22:02Yeah, yeah. I mean, the demand for pictures now is much, much higher.
22:06It's not always drama that you're after. Sometimes it's the human side of things.
22:10And people are always the strongest.
22:12You know, it's just that it's getting that connection with the people in the picture.
22:16The rise of user-generated content and readers sending in pictures has made a lot of difference to us.
22:21It's often said, but everyone's a photographer now.
22:24Most people have that in their pocket these days with their phone.
22:28I guess the change now that you've got user-generated content is almost as profound as the original photographic revolution.
22:35It's kind of been called the second revolution of photography, if you like, from the one a hundred or so
22:39years ago
22:39when the Box Brownie put photography in the hands of the masses.
22:42And now it's once again in the hands of the masses, but not just the ability to take pictures.
22:46It's also the ability to actually publish them and share them and not just with your mates down the pub
22:51or your friends from a shoebox under the bed. You know, you can put them up there.
22:55And obviously, you know, the world is there to view them.
22:59Most of the thing that strikes me is how quickly it all happened.
23:03Because 20 years ago, I was the director on Tomorrow's World, I was in Japan.
23:07I had these new prototype digital cameras.
23:09I told the world the digital camera is coming. It cost 10,000 quid then.
23:15And I had no idea it was going to take off like that.
23:17Well, yeah, that's the thing, isn't it?
23:19I mean, you just, you can't know which, which inventions are going to suddenly, are going to be the future
23:22and which ones are going to be history.
23:24You can see that with photography, can't you?
23:26I mean, no one could have really predicted the evolution of that technology.
23:30And our next invention is similarly so.
23:32A new material comes in from left field and completely revolutionizes the way we see ourselves.
23:38The motion picture has its origins in the 19th century with scientists who are far more interested in understanding movement
23:44rather than trying to create it.
23:46And it begins with this man, Edward Muybridge, the father of cinematography.
23:51Now, Muybridge had been charged with discovering whether a horse's feet all left the ground at the same time
23:55when it was trotting and galloping. And he did it in a very clever way.
23:59This is his machinery. It's a row of cameras all operated by trip wires.
24:04And what happens is the horse gallops towards the trip wires and as it hits them, every camera in the
24:09row takes a tiny picture.
24:11The trip wires operate a shutter, click, click, click. And that is the fundamental part of this invention.
24:18What it produces is a set of photographs which quite clearly demonstrate that a horse's feet do leave the ground.
24:24But more importantly, when you project them at the magic rate of at least 12 frames per second,
24:29fool the human brain into thinking that it's seeing motion.
24:33Yes, but the pictures were exposed on glass plates and this had an obvious disadvantage.
24:37It severely limited the number of photos that could be taken in a sequence.
24:42And his work was scientific anyway. I mean, he wasn't trying to create motion pictures as we know them.
24:47It was a dead end. There was a flurry of breakthroughs in the second half of the 19th century.
24:53By the 1880s, experimenters understood the principles of moving pictures.
24:57They understood lenses, movement and projection.
25:00But it would take the invention of an important new material for cinematography itself to take off.
25:07Although early experimenters had made great strides studying movement, they could go no further with existing materials.
25:13Glass plates were heavy and fragile and paper tore easily.
25:18Neither met the demands of capturing the moving image.
25:22As a scientist and a massive film fan, I've always been fascinated by the role of materials in the making
25:27of movies.
25:28And it was, of course, a substance, not a technology, that created the movie industry in the first place.
25:35And that substance is this. Celluloid.
25:40Like many wonder materials, celluloid was originally conceived for a very different purpose.
25:46It was developed in 1870 as a substitute for ivory in billiard balls by American John Wesley Hyatt.
25:53But it was its versatility that ensured its continued use.
25:57Throughout the 1870s, it was used widely for a whole range of applications.
26:01You could buy celluloid shirt collars, shirt cuts, even celluloid false teeth.
26:08It was the British manufacturer John Carvert who discovered that this colourless, light, durable plastic had a more illuminating purpose.
26:18Photography.
26:19He coated thin sheets with photographic emulsion and used them instead of glass plates.
26:25But it was only when Kodak boss George Eastman produced celluloid in rolls for his new stills camera that its
26:31potential for filmmakers was unleashed.
26:35They'd seen how roll film revolutionised stills photography and realised it might also unlock the secrets of capturing motion.
26:43And celluloid rolls drove early film pioneers to design new camera technology that took advantage of this wonderful flexible plastic.
26:54It would influence the design of the film camera for years to come.
27:00The perforations and sprocket rollers enabled the film to flow through the camera.
27:05A spinning shutter allowed for rapid exposures.
27:08And the claw mechanism ensured the film could be moved and stopped for each frame up to 20 times a
27:13second.
27:14The claw, which is really the Lumiere's contribution, was inspired by the sewing field.
27:21So it's very interesting that you're actually taking an idea from one application and putting it into another.
27:27And this is the way that advances happen.
27:32In 1895, the filmmaking pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere introduced their cinematograph.
27:38A camera and projector in one.
27:40And unveiled the world's first cinema performance of moving pictures on celluloid.
27:46It's to a paying audience, only about 30, 35 people.
27:49Within a week or so, they're having 2,000 people a day coming through the doors.
27:53As other experimenters rushed to exploit the union of machines and materials, the film industry was born.
28:00Some of the results of those pioneering experiments are housed in the British Film Institute's master film store in Warwickshire.
28:07At this former nuclear defence facility, they have one of the largest collections of early celluloid nitrate films in the
28:14world.
28:15Hello there. Hello.
28:18What would it have been like going to an early cinema? What would we have seen?
28:21At the birth of cinema, you're probably talking about a minute or less for most films.
28:25They kind of slowly build up in length.
28:28So, by 1905, our most popular film hit was a film called Rescue by Rover that ran to six and
28:34a half marvellous minutes.
28:37The film was so popular that the negatives were worn out because so many prints had to be struck from
28:43it.
28:43What happened at the end of the life of these films?
28:46Most of them were simply chucked out.
28:48And I think what's important to remember was then they were not seen as art or culture in any way,
28:53shape or form.
28:54They were purely product.
28:56And actually, a lot of them were just melted down to get the silver content out of them.
29:02It's not just their historical value that demands such high security.
29:06There was a dangerous flaw in the properties of early celluloid film.
29:11Flammability.
29:14And this demonstration reveals why the invention of cinema itself was under threat.
29:19OK. Yeah, we're getting there.
29:21You ready? Let's go for it.
29:31That's amazing.
29:33It's just the sense that that's like a tiny bit of a reel.
29:36Just imagine a whole archive.
29:40Reports of cinema fires ignited fears about public safety.
29:44And in 1909, the Cinematograph Act was passed requiring the careful handling of film.
29:50But it would take another 40 years before the development of non-flammable celluloid,
29:55appropriately called safety film.
29:58Celluloid reigned supreme for over a hundred years.
30:02And even in our digital age, it remained a symbol for the magic of the moving image.
30:08At its heart, cinema consisted of images that were projected onto a screen.
30:13And you need a material.
30:15And that material was cellulite.
30:17So, without the invention of cellulite, there would have been no moving pictures
30:21and no cinema as we know it today.
30:27And cinema in the UK was introduced just down the road from here by the Lumiere brothers.
30:32Now, surprisingly enough, Louis Lumiere said,
30:34the cinema is an invention without any future.
30:37Well, he got that wrong, didn't he?
30:39And that raises an interesting question.
30:41How long do inventions take to really catch on?
30:44Or the diffusion rate, to use the jargon.
30:47I'm joined by Dr. Jonathan Liebener from the London School of Economics.
30:52Well, Jonathan, I have a graph here.
30:55And it shows years to reach 50% household ownership.
30:58And here we go.
31:00It's electricity, 40 years, 50 years.
31:02And the telephone has taken an impressive 71 years.
31:06What do you think are the most significant factors which determine whether something takes off?
31:10Well, first of all, whether people appreciate the invention.
31:15Whether it fits into what they understand about their needs and aspirations.
31:20It also has to be affordable.
31:22And it has to be legal.
31:23And legal doesn't just mean that it's not illegal,
31:27but that it's governed by a system where people can feel that they trust
31:32the way in which their money is spent, their time is spent,
31:35and the tools that they use are going to be properly fitting in together.
31:42Do you think it's predictable?
31:44Now it depends on whether you're talking about really novel changes,
31:49in which case it's very difficult to tell,
31:51or whether it's an incremental change where it fits into a system that is in place.
31:57The telephone needed a whole new system,
32:00not only a system of telephone connections,
32:03but a system of ways to use the telephone,
32:06and it also fit in pretty quickly to a government-regulated form.
32:12Whereas the Internet was built on top of the telephone system,
32:15it already was in place,
32:16and there was an opportunity for it to diffuse very quickly
32:19once people had an idea of what its utility would be.
32:22So what sort of technology out there should I be putting my money into?
32:25Well, I'm not going to give you financial guidance,
32:28but I think that the electric car is something
32:31that if you had patient capital, that it would be a good thing to invest.
32:37How patient?
32:37Perhaps on the order of 15 years or so,
32:40in terms of paying off your investment.
32:43I'll have you on the sofa in 15 years' time and we'll find out.
32:46Thank you, Jonathan.
32:47Now, with all the technological elements for cinema in place,
32:51it was time to turn to what was actually being shown and to whom.
32:54Now, we asked film historian and broadcaster Matthew Sweet
32:57to investigate the murky world of early film censorship.
33:03The extraordinary power of the cinematic moving image
33:06to enthrall, amaze and move the audience meant its popularity,
33:11particularly among the urban poor,
33:14could no longer be ignored by the authorities.
33:16And with the introduction of the 1909 Cinematograph Act,
33:20the British film business became official, regulated.
33:24Out went screenings in tents and converted shops,
33:27and in came purpose-built, legitimate picture houses
33:30with usherettes and drinks on sticks
33:33and quite a lot of official opinion
33:35about the disgraceful things going on in the auditorium.
33:39Like many new inventions,
33:41cinema came with its own army of naysayers and doom-mongers.
33:45Chief constables and teachers groups blamed the movies
33:49for poor eyesight, headaches and an increase in the suicide rate.
33:53The Catholic Church even banned its priests from attending.
33:57So what was it about cinemas that people felt was so awful?
34:01Obviously they were dark, dirty, smelly places,
34:04places where you could catch diseases,
34:06and there was this general kind of patrician sense
34:09that working-class people would sit there in the dark
34:11and they'd get up to stuff.
34:13What kind of stuff?
34:15Well, sex, basically, kissing,
34:18a general sort of immoral activity.
34:22But while you could sanitise a cinema and its audience
34:25with a jolly good spray of cleaning fluid,
34:28upon the screen was something beyond the reach of disinfectant.
34:33There were a lot of films that were being made
34:35which had sexual content,
34:36but we're not talking about hardcore pornography here
34:39in any way, shape or form.
34:40What we're talking about is a mild form of titillation at best.
34:45The other thing that we're talking about is petty crime.
34:48And there was this worry about people sort of seeing
34:50what kind of crimes could be done and saying,
34:52oh, that's a good idea, let's try that.
34:57It's a familiar argument.
34:58The impressionable, who are generally never the people
35:01who want to censor things,
35:03had to be protected from what they saw in the cinema.
35:06It was all too inflammatory.
35:08So local councils got together
35:10to impose certain conditions
35:12on what could be shown in their area.
35:15And that didn't go down very well
35:17with the people who were putting this stuff on the screen.
35:22The film companies suspected state censorship was on its way.
35:27So in 1912, to pre-empt any government meddling,
35:31they founded the British Board of Film Censors.
35:34In the very beginning, the BBFC only had two real problems.
35:39One was nudity and the other was the realistic portrayal of Christ.
35:44At the time, it was obviously seen as a real issue.
35:48It was a question of taste and not offending churchgoers,
35:52which was most people.
35:54But soon, the list of objections grew.
35:59In these ledgers are recorded all the titles of the films
36:03that were put out and the ones that were censored.
36:07A film called The Baboon's Knife has had its title changed to
36:11The Baboon's Revenge on the Conscience of the Great Unknown.
36:16The ways of the censor are strange.
36:18But the BBFC soon came under fire
36:21for its seemingly heavy-handed responses.
36:24So in 1916, it published a 43-point list
36:28explaining exactly when content would get the chop.
36:33Excessively passionate love scenes.
36:35Bathing scenes passing the limits of propriety.
36:39Scenes tending to disparage public characters or institutions.
36:44It's like an all-you-can-eat menu of early 20th-century anxiety.
36:50We have a kind of image of the censor as a man
36:52with a big pair of scissors cutting bits out of films.
36:55So we imagine that somewhere
36:57all these lovely little bits of films will exist.
37:00But there isn't, regrettably,
37:03a lovely archive of little clips of naughty scenes
37:06that were taken out of films.
37:07Wouldn't it be lovely?
37:10By 1917, anxiety about cinema had become so great
37:15that a special commission was set up to examine its impact.
37:19After months of investigation, they delivered their verdict.
37:22Tighten censorship and turn up the lights.
37:25But here's the most important conclusion that they reached.
37:28The cinema couldn't be reformed out of existence.
37:32The machine couldn't be uninvented,
37:34despite the flea-biting and the snogging and the copycat crime.
37:38The movies were more powerful than moralism.
37:41And they still are.
37:45I love the fact that, as we've seen right across the series,
37:48new inventions can set off some sort of moral panic.
37:52When the steam engine first came along,
37:54people thought it would make their heads explode
37:56or their wounds fly out.
37:58Now, do you think all inventions create this moral panic?
38:02Well, sometimes. I mean, I think the thing is about inventions,
38:05we're talking about things that will revolutionise the world.
38:07They do revolutionise the world.
38:09And sometimes a moral panic is justified.
38:11I mean, much as I like cars,
38:13they are the biggest killer of young people worldwide.
38:15But they don't actually produce moral panic, do they?
38:18Well, they should. They should, that's my point.
38:20But we see that with all of the visual innovations.
38:23You know, computer games, video nasties, social networking sites.
38:27We must look after children.
38:28We must look after the working classes in the cinemas in the dark.
38:32And I see here, TV is to blame.
38:34And that is our final invention, the television.
38:38Few things could shrink the world
38:39as much as the ability to see live images in our own homes.
38:43Celluloid had given us moving images at the cinema.
38:46The next step was to discover a way of transmitting them live over distance.
38:51By the 1930s, there had been over 50 serious proposals for television.
38:56The competition was international
38:58with inventors working in 11 different countries.
39:01Right from the start, the ideas for how a television would work
39:05broadly fitted into two camps.
39:07Mechanical techniques using a spinning Nibkov disc
39:10and electronic techniques.
39:12And this was a fight that would last for decades to come.
39:17Mechanical television was first out of the blocks,
39:20thanks to an obsessive Scottish engineer, John Logie Baird.
39:24Baird had been a prolific, largely unsuccessful inventor since childhood.
39:30But it was here in Hastings that he had the idea that would change his life.
39:34Why not convert pictures into signals and send them through the air?
39:39Baird actually didn't invent any of the component parts
39:42that went together to make television.
39:45But his strength lay in the fact, as an inventor,
39:48that he could look at these disparate inventions
39:50and pluck together the bits that he needed to get what he wanted.
39:58Baird created his first prototype using a combination of recycled parts
40:03and four key inventions from other people.
40:07So this is what he started with.
40:09He got a hat box, cut some holes in it, made it spin to scan the image.
40:15The thing he made it spin with was this, an adapted fan engine.
40:20And then he wanted to focus the image, so he used the lens from a bicycle lamp.
40:27Next, he takes that image and he passes it through this.
40:32Now this is a selenium cell which he got from a local army surplus store.
40:37And that creates an electrical signal.
40:39Electrical signal goes into this, which he also bought from a army surplus store.
40:43This is an amplifier.
40:44And that creates a bigger signal, which then passes into this, a neon lamp,
40:50which kind of glows depending on the signal it gets.
40:53And that in turn is projected through another spinning disc.
40:58He mounts this whole ramshackle device onto what's called a coffin board,
41:02which was actually used by local undertakers to carry dead bodies on.
41:09Despite appearances, this homespun equipment was about to make history.
41:15Hi there.
41:15Hi. Good to meet you.
41:17I've got this idea that he's got all these funny little bits of apparatus.
41:21Did it really work?
41:22Originally, he could show just basically a black cross.
41:25It's a bit flickery and a bit wobbly.
41:27And he could just about, with some special focusing,
41:30just about get a white blob of a face with a blob for each of the eyes
41:34and a third blob for the mouth.
41:35And he said, if the person spoke, you could just see the bottom blob wiggling a little bit.
41:39But he knew this is going to work.
41:43But as a lone inventor, Baird needed support.
41:46He placed an advert in The Times and later met businessman Wilfred Day,
41:51who sent him funds and equipment.
41:53He rented a studio in this Hastings Arcade
41:56and threw himself into achieving that elusive clear picture.
42:01On one occasion, he actually blows himself up.
42:03He's joining all these batteries up. Not a good idea.
42:06He gets a 1200 volt shock.
42:08And he's found with burns on the other side of the lab.
42:11And the landlord here is not very happy.
42:15And eventually, he tells Baird he's got to go.
42:19So in 1924, Baird moved to London and set up a lab in an attic studio in Soho.
42:26He was using better amplifiers, better valves.
42:29He was putting more light on the subject.
42:31In fact, he was putting so much light on the subject
42:33that he actually set fire to someone's hair.
42:36And after that, no one would sit in front of his camera.
42:38So he bought an old ventriloquist dummy's head, which he called Stooky Bill.
42:44And Stooky Bill would sit under these very hot bright lights for hours on end without complaining.
42:52But finally, after months of frustration, his hard work paid off.
42:57On the 2nd of October 1925, he finally managed to get the image of Stooky Bill transmitted across the room.
43:05It was blurry. It was out of focus. But it was a recognisable face.
43:17In 1926, John Logie Baird demonstrated his mechanical television for the first time.
43:22And we've got a reconstruction of that here.
43:25Now, he invited members of the Royal Institution.
43:29But we've invited Cassie, who's just as good, I think, if not better.
43:32And this is how it worked. So you had a model who could be seen to be moving in real
43:37time.
43:38You had a camera with a spinning disc in it, and that has 30 holes.
43:42Now, those 30 holes, by spinning around, they scan Cassie's face into 30 lines of dark and light,
43:47which are captured on a photosensitive cell here at the back.
43:50That's turned into electricity, and that electric signal of dark and light is recreated over here in the receiver,
43:57which is essentially just the opposite of the camera.
43:59A light is turned on and off due to that signal.
44:03And this spinning disc has 30 holes.
44:06And if those two are synced together in the right way, you get lines and actually a full picture.
44:10And that is television for the first time.
44:14At the time, it must have been an absolutely marvellously extraordinary moment to see.
44:19The Baird company was really taking off. They could transmit across a room.
44:25They could transmit down the 400 miles of telephone cable between London and Glasgow.
44:29But what they really wanted to do was broadcast on the airwaves. They needed a transmitter.
44:34So the next move was to take the system to the only official broadcaster in the UK, the BBC.
44:44All inventions, if they are to change our lives, need to find supporters beyond the workshop.
44:49For television, that meant attracting an audience.
44:55In 1932, Baird began test transmissions from Broadcasting House.
45:00But he soon had competition from a rival system, electronic television, led by the powerful corporation EMI.
45:08The government had to select the best invention.
45:12They asked the BBC to conduct an extraordinary experiment in which mechanical and electronic television would compete head to head.
45:20And this is the site of the battle, Alexandra Palace in North London,
45:24which in November 1936 would play host to the world's first television talent contest.
45:30A former Victorian entertainment venue, the site had the height and range for the transmitter
45:35and space for two separate studios.
45:38Baird Television Limited's mechanical system was given Studio B, while in Studio A were the newcomers, now called Marconi EMI.
45:48Their system employed electronic technology, which had been proposed by Scottish scientist A.A. Campbell Swinton in 1908,
45:56based on the recently invented cathode ray tube.
46:0076 years ago, this studio would have been full of the people and equipment of the Marconi EMI team.
46:07Both teams were given six months to prove themselves.
46:10At the end of the contest, the best system would be awarded the coveted contract to broadcast to the nation.
46:17The loser would go home with nothing.
46:21Transmission started on the 2nd of November 1936.
46:25The opening ceremony was broadcast twice.
46:28First with the Baird cameras, and then again on the Marconi EMI system.
46:34To the viewer at home, the picture quality was evenly matched, but Baird knew he had a battle on his
46:40hands.
46:41The mechanical systems that Baird was using had been refined over 10, 12 years, and really had got as far
46:51as they could possibly go.
46:52Whereas the EMI electronic system was still in its infancy.
46:57Despite this, EMI's Emetron camera showcased the latest advances in electronics.
47:04The camera pointed towards the host, and the picture focused onto a light-sensitive plate inside a cathode ray tube.
47:12The plate was then scanned using a beam of electrons, which was directed in lines across the image by electromagnets.
47:20This produced a series of electrical signals, which were sent to a transmitter.
47:24The brighter the area on the picture, the stronger the signal.
47:28At the other end, another cathode ray tube converted the signal back into an electron stream.
47:34This was directed in parallel lines onto a fluorescent TV screen, and the successive scans built up as a picture.
47:42EMI had three cameras in the studio, and you could take a picture from any one of the three cameras.
47:48You could put the camera on wheels, it was relatively light, and you could wheel it around the studio.
47:54It was television as we understand it today.
47:58Under pressure to match the quality of this slick new system, Baird devised an incredibly complicated technology, based on celluloid.
48:07They filmed what happened in the studio on film.
48:12The film came straight out of the bottom of the camera, into developer, into fixer, and then into water.
48:19And while still wet and underwater, about 54 seconds later, it was scanned to produce a television picture.
48:28Baird's system, while offering good picture quality, was flawed.
48:32The cameras couldn't move, the developing process required dangerous chemicals, and it wasn't live.
48:39It soon became clear that Baird's mechanical system had reached the end of the road.
48:43Whereas for electronic television, it was just the beginning.
48:47Marconi EMI offered superior performance and were improving every day.
48:50As one of the producers said, it was like using Morse code in one room, when you knew next door
48:55you could telephone.
48:58It is in the nature of invention that first is not always best.
49:03The incremental improvements and adaptations of rival systems can take an invention further than the original inventor ever could.
49:11After three months, Marconi EMI was declared the winner.
49:15Baird had lost out.
49:19In defence of Baird, to say that his system failed is rather like saying that Trevithick's first steam locomotive in
49:28the streets of Cornwall failed,
49:30and therefore he has nothing to do with the history of the motorised vehicle.
49:35If you go back to the beginning of any invention, it bears no resemblance to the state it's now in.
49:41But that shouldn't really detract from the fact that he was the person who proved to everyone that it could
49:48be done.
49:53I'm joined by Ian Baird, who's Curator of Broadcast in the National Media Museum in Bradford,
49:59and is the grandson of John Leggebeard.
50:02Your grandfather must have been very disappointed with the outcome of those trials.
50:06He was very upset. He was much more upset than people in his company were,
50:10because they thought, well, we can make money by selling television sets.
50:13But he didn't get too discouraged by it, and he did move forward.
50:17Not only did he invent the first working prototype, but he championed it.
50:22In a sense, that's part of why he's so great, isn't it?
50:25He was a champion of television. He believed in it, and he could see it being used in a broadcast
50:30application,
50:30whereas a lot of people at the time didn't see a use for it.
50:33They said, we have radio, we have the cinema.
50:35And so he took it from being as kind of scientific, almost a science fiction,
50:40a sort of Wellesian device, to being something that by the 50s it had become commonplace.
50:45So what set your grandfather apart from other inventors?
50:48On the surface, he didn't appear to be completely scientific.
50:53He was quite personable. He had a good sense of humor, which he learned from his father.
50:58He had people skills, and he was an inventor. Amazing.
51:00Yeah, at the beginning he seemed a little quiet, but he was actually quite humorous,
51:03so he would be very often working late at night to develop an idea.
51:07And it was his technical enthusiasm, which was quite contagious.
51:10Yeah, I think he was kind of a man of the people in a lot of ways.
51:13A champion of coming from poverty, which was definitely a condition that he had to face during his career,
51:19to develop something that would change the world.
51:22Thanks, Ian.
51:24Now, you'll remember that earlier in the programme,
51:26we set photographer Terry King the task of reproducing the technique Niepce used back in 1826.
51:32It's time to find out how he got on.
51:37Having been inspired by Niepce's experiment with turpentine, asphalt and lavender oil,
51:42Terry hopes to have perfected the formula used to make the world's first photograph.
51:49Like his predecessor, Terry's camera has been set to capture the view from a window onto a pewter plate.
51:54I think I have actually got windows coming through. This is the wishful thinking bit.
52:00But can our inventions enthusiast achieve the same success?
52:06So, Terry, how did it go?
52:07Well, because there wasn't much light and there was mist and fog.
52:11Is this a lot of excuses?
52:12It's a lot of excuses to say that, in fact, there wasn't enough light to harden the asphalt and to
52:17make it work for us.
52:18We had a very faint impression on there, but as we tried to develop it in turpentine, it all just
52:26washed away.
52:27Oh.
52:27I mean, apart from anything else, this process shows us quite what an achievement it was for Niepce.
52:31Well, I think it certainly was an achievement. It took him, in fact, six years of hard work.
52:39And then it took everybody else another 30 years to actually achieve what Niepce wanted to achieve.
52:44But he set the whole thing in motion.
52:46And there's a beautiful moment when he cracks it and he writes a letter home to his brother.
52:50And it says, I have the satisfaction of being able to tell you that through an improvement in my process,
52:56I have succeeded in obtaining a picture as good as I could wish.
52:59And I can tell you the effect is downright magical.
53:02Well, I'm sure it was. We have to remember that the first photograph was really what it was.
53:08And he had nothing to compare it with.
53:10And I know how difficult it was to produce an image simply because it took me months and months and
53:17months
53:17to find out what dilution the asphalton should be and how long the exposures could be.
53:23In fact, I've got one here which is done using the Niepce's process.
53:27Oh, but it's obviously not of a view out of a window.
53:30No, this is a contact print which I made putting the leaf on the asphalton under an ultraviolet light.
53:38We had hindsight.
53:40Paul Niepce certainly didn't.
53:42And that makes him the kind of person with a mind that, in my view, we can reasonably call him
53:47a genius.
53:48Terry, thank you so much for coming.
53:49It's been a very great pleasure. Thank you.
53:56So that concludes our story of 12 great inventions that shape all our lives.
54:02It's a tale of how the work of a handful of brilliant minds, together with the discoveries of countless lesser
54:09known inventors,
54:10and the institutions that supported them, combined to make our modern world.
54:17We have seen how critical invention has been in transforming our relationship with power.
54:23How a transport revolution brought us closer together.
54:26How cabled and wireless communication shrank our planet.
54:31And how still and moving images allowed us to record and share the world.
54:38Together, they all show the genius of invention.
54:43The truth is that quite a lot of the inventions we have focused on have British roots.
54:49Do you think we have been incredibly xenophobic, or do you think there's actually something peculiarly inventive about the British?
54:57There is something peculiar about Britain, actually, in terms of inventiveness.
55:00I think it's a very creative culture, and it's quite unusual for that.
55:03You can see it in our humour, and I think you can see it in our engineering.
55:06I think what we're terrible at is making money out of that.
55:08And that we weren't in the 19th century, but we've somehow lost the knack of turning that great inventiveness into
55:13some bugs.
55:14Which brings me neatly onto our final film.
55:17I went to meet Sir James Dyson, one of our more successful inventors,
55:21to see what he thinks about the nature of British inventiveness and what lies ahead.
55:27Like many inventors, Sir James Dyson struggled for years,
55:31before he launched a product that would make his name and his fortune.
55:35The bagless vacuum cleaner.
55:37Since then, he's filed over 3,500 patents,
55:41and played a significant role in keeping Britain's inventive spirit alive.
55:45So, do you think the British are particularly inventive?
55:48Yes, and part of the reason is we like being eccentric.
55:51We're an island race who likes to be different.
55:54And we're quite grand in our thought.
55:58I mean, you know, conquering the world and ruling the seas and so on.
56:00And that's deep in our history.
56:02And that's given us this independence of spirit,
56:05and a desire to, you know, create things that we can ship to the world.
56:11Do you have hero inventors?
56:13Whittle was incredibly inspirational.
56:15I mean, I love his story.
56:17You know, this uneducated person who built model aeroplanes
56:21and ended up getting double first at Cambridge,
56:23whilst at the same time building the world's first jet engine.
56:26I mean, it was the most extraordinary invention.
56:30Sir James believes that we can keep our place as a world leader in design and innovation.
56:36So, do you think everything that can be invented has been invented?
56:39Oh no, now is an absolutely wonderful moment,
56:42where we've got to stop using all these resources.
56:45So, for an engineer now, it's very, very exciting.
56:48You don't build the biggest and the fastest.
56:50You've got to build something that uses less electricity,
56:52less water, fewer materials that last longer.
56:56I think a lot of the inventions will come in materials,
57:00materials that answer that call.
57:02And then engineers and scientists will be able to use that
57:05to create really interesting products.
57:08So, I think now we're just at the sort of start
57:11of what I think will be a glorious age.
57:14If we were to come back in 20 years' time,
57:17what do you imagine we would be talking about?
57:20I would like to think we have cracked the power problem.
57:23So, you know, your family's sunshine holiday becomes a civic duty.
57:27Formula One becomes an eco-sport.
57:30I would love to hear that that's what we're doing.
57:32OK. I'd love to hear it as well.
57:34I'm not optimistic, and you?
57:35Right, I am.
57:35I also think we'll have cracked self-healing materials.
57:38I think we'll be making bridges that heal themselves.
57:41And in doing so, we will have sort of blurred the boundary
57:44between this inanimate world, this stuff, and the animate world.
57:48And that will be a blurred region.
57:49And I think that will be tremendously exciting.
57:51In the same spirit, I'm quite optimistic about 3D printing.
57:55They've already created a trachea, which they put into a human being.
57:59And I can imagine in the future that we will be printing lungs,
58:03livers, maybe even hearts.
58:05That's it from us.
58:06Thank you, Mark.
58:07Thank you, Cassie.
58:08Now, I personally feel better informed and more optimistic
58:12about the future having made this series.
58:14I mean, we have learnt an awful lot about inventions,
58:16but we have also discovered something about ourselves.
58:19We make inventions, but they also make us.
58:23That's the genius of invention.
58:25Goodbye.
58:26Goodbye.
58:37If there's a funny side to anything,
58:39Charlie Brooker and his guests will find it.
58:41The Weekly Wipe is coming up next here on BBC HD.
58:53Goodbye.