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Coast is home. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
Standing on the brink, we dream of going beyond. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:49 | |
Hoping to reach the magical meeting point of sea and sky. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:56 | |
Heading out along natural causeways. | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
And man-made walkways. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
Leaving the land behind lifts our spirits. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:11 | |
We're here to explore Life Beyond the Edge. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
There's evidence of how we like to live beyond the edge | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
all around our coast. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
Seaside piers reaching from the shore. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:37 | |
For years we've built these walkways into the sea, | 0:01:49 | 0:01:54 | |
peninsulas of pleasure that prompt us to push the boundaries | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
and reach into the unknown. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
Out here we're free to reinvent ourselves, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
as they know in Southwold. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
Nowadays, piers might seem a little long in the tooth, | 0:02:12 | 0:02:16 | |
but here a maverick machine maker is re-inventing traditional attractions. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:23 | |
I'm Tim Hunkin, I'm an engineer and I'm also a cartoonist. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
The last ten years, I've been making machines for my amusement arcade, | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
The Under The Pier Show, and I love it. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
This is my arcade. It's all home-made, mostly by me. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:44 | |
I've made machines all my life, | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
but about ten years ago I had a bit of a breakthrough. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
It finally became possible to add video, so I could finally have | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
little movies as part of my machines, and this was really exciting. | 0:02:55 | 0:03:00 | |
Bringing video into my arcade had a sort of strange parallel | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
with 100 years ago. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:09 | |
In 1894, Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
and all sorts of things, introduced the Kinetoscope. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
This was a coin-operated movie player, and it was the first time | 0:03:17 | 0:03:22 | |
that people could see proper movies in arcades. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:27 | |
As people had never seen a moving... A movie before, | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
they were happy to just watch anything that moved. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
One of the reels was just a man sneezing. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
Some of them seem quite bizarre. I mean, the boxing cats... | 0:03:42 | 0:03:47 | |
You might think it's cruel but nobody was shocked by it at the time. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:52 | |
There was a continuous loop of film that looped backwards and forwards inside the machine, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:57 | |
giving a movie that lasts about 20 seconds. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
It was influential, if nothing else, because the size of the film, | 0:04:00 | 0:04:05 | |
and the spacing of all the perforations, | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
stuck, and became the standard for 35mm film. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:12 | |
I've come to the model village in Great Yarmouth | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
to see one of the descendants of Edison's Kinetoscope - | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
the Mutoscope. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
They're basically just like flip books. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Inside... | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
..there are 840 cards on this reel... | 0:04:34 | 0:04:39 | |
..and when you put the money in, the drum rotates. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
This is a good example, | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
because most of the subjects involved scantily dressed girls, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
and obviously some people were quite shocked by this. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
Erm, in 1907 there was a case | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
involving the display of obscene materials | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
involving four Mutoscope titles. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:06 | |
One was called What The Butler Saw. This is the name that stuck, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
and since then Mutoscopes have been known as What The Butler Saw machines. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
RECORDED LAUGHTER | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
Preserving the traditions of life beyond the edge | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
is a challenge all around our shores. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
On the west coast of Scotland, old ways of working have been steadily eroded. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:37 | |
Slate miners quarried away at these islands for generations, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
but eventually the industry ate itself up. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:46 | |
Others are determined to keep ploughing a lonely furrow, | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
working with their livestock, making the most of a marginal existence. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
An age-old lifestyle still survives on the Isle of Lewis. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:08 | |
Andy Torbet is in search of the sea shepherds. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
The folk of the Western Isles must turn their hands to many trades. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:26 | |
It's no surprise to find a fishing harbour, but the men I'm off to see | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
aren't after catching fish. They want much bigger beasts - sheep. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
Here on Lewis, rearing sheep is an offshore enterprise. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:43 | |
Uninhabited isles with steep cliffs make perfect natural pens. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
You can put the flock out here and forget all about them. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:54 | |
A style of farming that's as old as the hills. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
But I'm here to see one of the new boys. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
Sandy Granville spent 25 years as a barrister in London, | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
then he swapped sharp suits for woolly fleeces. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
Now I'm signing on for a tour of duty as a sea shepherd. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
-Nice to see you. -You too. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
Sandy, I didn't expect to be meeting some shepherds on a pier side. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
-Where are the sheep? -The sheep are all on the island over there, | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
only you can't see any of them just at the moment, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
but they're all there in ones and twos and threes, all over that hill, | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
probably a lot of them up in the... Up in the mist at the top, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
and they're really wild. These are not sheep as... | 0:07:39 | 0:07:43 | |
-you know them. -As we know it! | 0:07:43 | 0:07:45 | |
'If the sheep are intimidating, then so are the shepherds, | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
'a close-knit clan of Gaelic speakers.' | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
MEN SPEAK GAELIC | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
'Sandy's family were from Lewis, | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
'but it's taken him years to earn his spurs with the sheep men.' | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
What was it like coming into this community from the outside? | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
The people on the hills aren't always so keen to have newcomers, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
cos nobody wants complete incompetents, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
and, of course, as a beginner that's just what you are, so they... | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
To start with it's rather difficult, | 0:08:18 | 0:08:20 | |
they don't tell you when the sheep are going to be gathered cos they don't want you there. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:25 | |
'The sheep we're after have spent a year living alone | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
'beyond the edge, running wild on the island of Seaforth. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:35 | |
'Our mission is to round them up for market.' | 0:08:35 | 0:08:37 | |
'Everyone seems to know their place - except me.' | 0:08:44 | 0:08:47 | |
'As soon as we arrive, the shepherds take off.' | 0:08:49 | 0:08:53 | |
SHEPHERDS WHISTLE | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
'The plan was to split up and stay in sight.' | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
'That's a bit tricky in the fog. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
'Soon I'm alone, just like the sheep. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
'No sign of them or my guides.' | 0:09:09 | 0:09:11 | |
Obviously the shepherds know this land like the back of their hands, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
so we've only just started, but because the mist closed right down... | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
I might have mislaid myself already. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:26 | |
But I think I heard whistling over in that direction | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
so I'm going to crack on. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
'No sheep, but a familiar figure emerges through the mist.' | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
-I lost you for a bit, Sandy. -Hi, Andy. -How are you doing, mate? Mist is... | 0:09:43 | 0:09:47 | |
Sometimes you can see, and sometimes you can't. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:51 | |
It's quite a wild, rugged placed. How do the sheep cope out here? | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
They've been bred to it. They're Lewis Blackfaces - love this, and they thrive on it. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
So why keep them on an island at all? | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
You know they're here. You're going to find them if they're hiding behind a rock. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:06 | |
Do you ever lose any? | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
Well, you sometimes don't get them all in the gather. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
If we get them all today it will be a miracle. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
It's a bit tricky in the mist, I expect one or two sneaked past us. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
'I think it's more than a few that have sneaked past me.' | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
'Fluffy white fleeces in a world of fog? | 0:10:23 | 0:10:26 | |
'Hmm, tricky.' | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
I've not seen a sheep yet at all. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
I have seen one sheepdog somewhere down there | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
and I can just make out one of the shepherds through the mist. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
'And then, he's gone again.' | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
'I could do with a sheepdog to round up the shepherds. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
'When the mist does lift, it's clear they've been busy | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
'while I've been looking for them.' | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
'The sheep are being sorted, some for market, some for shearing. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:03 | |
'With no electricity, they have to be clipped by hand.' | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
'Have I got the knack?' | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
I think you must have a bit of crofting blood in you. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
It's just coming naturally to you. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
They're much kind of wilder than your normal sheep. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
-They're wild animals, really. -Hardy breed. -They don't have a great deal to do with people. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:30 | |
This is real freedom food, but it's always been a hard life, | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
it's never been easy, no more easy or difficult now than it ever was. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
'The ones staying get a once-over, ready for another year alone.' | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
'The ones going for mutton get a boat ride, but they don't seem too keen.' | 0:11:44 | 0:11:49 | |
Hold on, hold on, hold on. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
HE SPEAKS GAELIC | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
They're much more feisty than I think you'd normally get. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
They've got a fair amount of power as well, they just run up and down the mountain free the whole year around, | 0:12:01 | 0:12:06 | |
so they're a lot stronger, I think, than your average sheep, and not always the most co-operative either. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:12 | |
'To persuade them, you've got to get hands-on...and legs.' | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
'Negotiating the slippery rocks on a sheep is as hard as it looks.' | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
'I'd rather ride a quad bike than a quadruped!' | 0:12:27 | 0:12:31 | |
'We're cutting it a bit close with the tide, but after a final tussle | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
'to get it off the rocks, the last boatful of sheep leaves the island.' | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
'For the ones staying, it's back to freedom.' | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
Off they go, that's them back to their hill. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
MAN SPEAKS GAELIC | 0:12:48 | 0:12:53 | |
'But what does the future hold for the sea shepherds?' | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
This may be the last generation that you'll see working out here. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
That's why they're an endangered species, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
there's not many of them left. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
Because they're not young, these chaps, and who's coming next? | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
I suspect when... when we've finished, | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
there'll be no sheep on these hills. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
'It's a stark assessment of a harsh way of life beyond the edge | 0:13:16 | 0:13:20 | |
'that could soon disappear. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
'When the boats of the sea shepherds will be seen no more.' | 0:13:22 | 0:13:27 | |
Adventures beyond the edge | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
to cross wild oceans | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
have inspired engineers to greatness. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
One such story of a mighty ship | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
lies forgotten in the mud of the Mersey at Liverpool. | 0:13:57 | 0:14:02 | |
Mark is here to give an old friend | 0:14:03 | 0:14:07 | |
the sendoff she deserves. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
A little while ago, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:15 | |
I was part of a remarkable discovery. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
Hang on, there's a trowel for you. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
Isn't that wonderful? | 0:14:23 | 0:14:24 | |
There it is... | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
as fresh as it comes! | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
Buried ironwork | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
from a mighty ship scrapped here over 100 years ago. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:36 | |
The Great Eastern was once the largest vessel on earth. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:43 | |
She was built for non-stop passage to Australia, | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
but ended up being sold off | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
as a floating billboard, | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
before being broken up. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
But I won't let the old girl die in such disgrace. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
Before she ended her life here in the mud | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
on the banks of the Mersey, | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
she was responsible for one of the great engineering triumphs | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
of the 19th century. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
It's a story that's seldom told, until now! | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
This great ship launched the information age. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:22 | |
It's a dazzling tale of astonishing audacity. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:28 | |
Her mission - | 0:15:28 | 0:15:29 | |
to lay a telegraph cable across the entire Atlantic, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
to send messages from continent to continent. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:39 | |
This is the story of how the Great Eastern | 0:15:39 | 0:15:42 | |
wired Britain to America. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
MUSIC: "Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key | 0:15:44 | 0:15:48 | |
The celebrations for the Transatlantic cable were sweet, | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
because of the failures that went before. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
Messages used to travel | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
at the speed of sail. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
Then, in 1858, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
after an extraordinary effort, | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
the first telegraph cable | 0:16:09 | 0:16:10 | |
was stretched across the Atlantic seabed. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
In an age before the telephone, | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
the new wire promised to send Morse Code messages | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
between continents. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
But as soon as they began transmitting, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
there was trouble. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
The electrical messages were getting weaker and weaker. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
The first telegraph cable was dying. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
Cassie Newland, from Bristol University, | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
is here to show me what went wrong. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
What they've got is a very badly insulated cable. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
They've got little manufacturing defects | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
because they're inventing it as they go along, | 0:16:49 | 0:16:51 | |
and tiny little faults are appearing and interfering with the signal. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
And as a layman, what I would have thought is, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
just put more power down the wire. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
And that's exactly what they did. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:00 | |
At one point, they're putting 2,000 volts down the wire. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
So we can do something like 24 volts, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
so off we go, look, it burns a lot more brightly. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
What you are now doing, | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
is making those faults worse and worse, | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
with this big hefty voltage that's going down the cable, | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
until finally, it just shorts. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:18 | |
And look, our light's gone out. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
So how long did it actually last for, this cable? | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
-Two weeks. -How much did it cost? | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
£700,000. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
By 1866, they were ready to try again, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
with a new design. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
To lay the first cable, | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
they had to use two vessels - | 0:17:40 | 0:17:41 | |
the weight of the wire was too massive for one alone. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
What they really needed was one big ship | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
capable of carrying 2,000 miles of Atlantic cable | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
in one go. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
Such a ship didn't exist before, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
but now it had been launched. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
Only the Great Eastern could carry the new cable | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
in one trip. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:10 | |
She was five times bigger than any other vessel, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:16 | |
but this one is a little smaller. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
This perfect scale replica is the work of Bob Abell, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
who used the original blueprints. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
You've got every detail, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
-however long did it take you to build it? -About two years. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
You've got the rivets all beautifully shown on the side of the decks. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
-This is the Captain's deck. -There we are. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:41 | |
There's the cable. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
And this is how it goes down the bottom. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
I mean, this will be about the closest I'm ever going to get to see | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
-what she was like, you know. -I think it's the only one in the land. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
Can I have a go? | 0:18:55 | 0:18:57 | |
I never thought I would steer the Great Eastern! | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
You're doing a good job. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
On the 13th July, 1866, | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
she steamed away from the coast of Ireland, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
to cross the Atlantic. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:21 | |
Her precious cargo spooled out behind. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:27 | |
The Transatlantic cable was no ordinary wire. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
This is the Great Eastern's successful cable. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
-What's it actually made of? -You've got a conductor in the middle, | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
if you see, there are seven little strands - all copper. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:42 | |
Then wrapped around that, you've got your gutta-percha insulation. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
-Now what is gutta-percha? -Oh, gutta-percha... | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
It's like a tree sap from the gutta-percha tree, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
which is a massive tall rainforest tree, grown in places | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
like Borneo and Malaysia, that kind of tropical forest. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:58 | |
It's a brilliant natural insulator, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
it only gets better under water, | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
it was almost like it was designed for the job. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:04 | |
Just wrapped around that is jute - | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
the same stuff we make hessian sacks out of, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
and then around that you've got bright iron. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
The armour's getting laid on just up there... | 0:20:12 | 0:20:14 | |
That's the Birkenhead docks. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
The copper's been smelted down there at Widnes. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
So it's kind of ironical that the cables are being manufactured here, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
the very resting point of the Great Eastern itself. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
Yeah, it's a beautifully circular thing. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
By the end of July 1866, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
the Great Eastern and her precious cable | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
reached Newfoundland, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
after a voyage of 2,000 miles. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
Over such a long distance, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:47 | |
telegraph messages were very, very weak. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:50 | |
Eight years before, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
the first cable had blown when the voltage was boosted. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:58 | |
So they needed a brighter idea, | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
and this is where the story takes a very clever turn. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:06 | |
Morse Code messages usually communicated by clicking, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
but the transatlantic signal | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
was far too faint to make even a click. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:18 | |
British scientist, William Thomson, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
had devised a solution of genius. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
His bright idea was to use a light beam, | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
which even the weakest electrical current could move. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:33 | |
At the heart of Thomson's machine was a mirror like this, | 0:21:33 | 0:21:38 | |
which made a small rotation | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
in response to the tiny telegraph signal. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
This model of a mirror galvanometer | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
was built by scientist, Jonathan Hare. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
So this is the magic device? | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
This is the mirror galvanometer, | 0:21:55 | 0:21:57 | |
which is an exquisitely sensitive way of picking up a signal on a cable, basically. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
So it enabled signals to be sent in really low voltage. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
How does it work? | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
So we've wired up the cable. It's going from the UK to here in America, | 0:22:06 | 0:22:10 | |
and if we press a button on the other side, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
a little current will flow along here. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
On the mirror are fixed two magnets, | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
and around the mirror is a coil of wire. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
Now when that current flows in the coil of wire | 0:22:20 | 0:22:22 | |
it produces a magnetic field, | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
which causes one magnet to move out, sort of repels it, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
and causes the other magnet to move in, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:29 | |
and as the magnets are fixed to the mirror, it twists the mirror, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
but the clever thing was he bounced a beam of light off that mirror, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
and just like if you play with your watch, you know, | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
and you reflect the sun's rays from your watch, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:42 | |
you can actually make the spot move around a lot, | 0:22:42 | 0:22:44 | |
with very little movement of your wrist. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
Here very little mirror movement, | 0:22:46 | 0:22:48 | |
will actually cause a big movement in the spot some distance away. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
Now at the other end, in the UK, we're in America here, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
if she keys... She's got two positions on her keyer, | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
one will send a dot, and if she flicks the switch | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
and presses the button again, it will send a dash, | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
and they cause the spot to move in different directions, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
so she can send a dot and a dash and send Morse Code | 0:23:05 | 0:23:07 | |
and we can read the message. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
Press a key on one side of the Atlantic | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
and 2,000 miles beyond, | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
a light spot bounced, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:19 | |
a miraculous method of sending telegrams. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:23 | |
William Thomson's invaluable contribution | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
to the transatlantic telegraph, | 0:23:26 | 0:23:28 | |
earned him a well-deserved knighthood. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
MUSIC: "God Save The Queen" | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
The band struck up in celebration, | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
and the message was finally received | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
loud and clear in the USA. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
MUSIC: "Star Spangled Banner" | 0:23:44 | 0:23:48 | |
With the cable laid, | 0:23:50 | 0:23:52 | |
the Great Eastern was gradually forgotten, | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
broken up on the banks of the Mersey. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
But her legacy remains. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
Since 1866, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
we've never been out of contact with America. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:09 | |
The Times newspaper said, | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
"We have become one country - the Atlantic is dried up." | 0:24:11 | 0:24:16 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 |