I downloaded this series towards the end of 2014 from 'teevee', it
was/is a 6 part series from PBS.
Steven Johnson was also the main man.
The episodes were/are labeled and described...
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Part 1: Clean
Dirty water has killed more humans than all the wars of history
combined, but in the last 150 years, a series of radical ideas,
extraordinary innovations and unsung heroes have changed our world.
Steven Johnson plunges into a sewer to understand what made a maverick
engineer decide to lift the city of Chicago with jackscrews in order
without authorization, he added chlorine, considered lethal in 1908,
flat screen TVs and even the two piece swimsuit are the result of the
valiant efforts of the unsung heroes of clean.
Part 2: Time
Board a submarine with Steven Johnson to discover what a lack of
control. The story of getting a grip on time is full of curious garage
tinkerers. One of them, railway clerk William F. Allen, was so
exasperated by the chaos caused by the hundreds of local times zones
in the U.S. that he fought tirelessly to standardize time into four
zones. Learn how advancements in navigation, the way we work,
technology and travel would have been impossible without the unsung
heroes of time.
Part 3: Glass
Join Steven Johnson and consider how the invention of the mirror
spurred on the Renaissance, how glass lenses allow us to reveal worlds
within worlds and how, deep beneath the ocean, glass is essential to
communication. Johnson learns about the daring exploits of glassmakers
who were forced to work under threat of the death penalty, a physics
teacher who liked to fire molten glass from a crossbow and a scientist
whose tinkering with a glass lens allowed 600 million people to see a
man set foot on the moon. The link between the worlds of art, science,
astronomy, disease prevention and global communication starts with the
little-known maverick innovators of glass.
Part 4: Light
Steven Johnson relates the story of people who take us out of the dark
actually invent, and learn how an 18th-century shipping community
head. See how a French scientist accidentally discovered how to create
neon light, leading to a revolution in advertising. Dispelling the
and collaboration led the way to the most transformative ideas.
spectator sports, revolutionizing how global business is done or
triggering one of the great social reforms in American history, the
pioneers of light have made themselves indispensable throughout human
history.
Part 5: Cold
Only in the last 200 years have humans learned how to make things
cold. Steven Johnson explains how ice entrepreneur Frederic Tudor made
ice delivery one of the biggest export business in the U.S. and
describes the place where Clarence Birdseye, the father of the frozen
food industry, experienced his eureka moment. He also travels to Dubai
to see how mastery of cold has led to penguins in the desert. From IVF
to food, politics and Hollywood to human migration, the unsung heroes
of cold have led the way.
Part 6: Sound
Imagine a world without the power to capture or transmit sound.
Journey with Steven Johnson to the Arcy sur Cure caves in northern
France, where he finds the first traces of the desire to record sound
made in the civil rights movement and reveals the Hollywood star who
designed a WW2 weapon that would make possible the modern cell phone
network. During an ultrasound on a pregnant dolphin, he realizes just
how big a role sound has played in medicine. The unsung heroes of
sound have had an impact on our working lives, race relations, saving
lives and the radical alteration of cities.
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Why is this now labelled BBC/2015 and has lost an episode ?
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