Life Beyond the Edge 2 Coast


Life Beyond the Edge 2

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Coast is home.

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Standing on the brink, we dream of going beyond.

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Hoping to reach the magical meeting point of sea and sky.

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Heading out along natural causeways.

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And man-made walkways.

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Leaving the land behind lifts our spirits.

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We're here to explore Life Beyond the Edge.

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There's evidence of how we like to live beyond the edge

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all around our coast.

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Seaside piers reaching from the shore.

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For years we've built these walkways into the sea,

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peninsulas of pleasure that prompt us to push the boundaries

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and reach into the unknown.

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Out here we're free to reinvent ourselves,

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as they know in Southwold.

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Nowadays, piers might seem a little long in the tooth,

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but here a maverick machine maker is re-inventing traditional attractions.

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I'm Tim Hunkin, I'm an engineer and I'm also a cartoonist.

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The last ten years, I've been making machines for my amusement arcade,

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The Under The Pier Show, and I love it.

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This is my arcade. It's all home-made, mostly by me.

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I've made machines all my life,

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but about ten years ago I had a bit of a breakthrough.

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It finally became possible to add video, so I could finally have

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little movies as part of my machines, and this was really exciting.

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Bringing video into my arcade had a sort of strange parallel

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with 100 years ago.

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In 1894, Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb

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and all sorts of things, introduced the Kinetoscope.

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This was a coin-operated movie player, and it was the first time

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that people could see proper movies in arcades.

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As people had never seen a moving... A movie before,

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they were happy to just watch anything that moved.

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One of the reels was just a man sneezing.

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Some of them seem quite bizarre. I mean, the boxing cats...

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You might think it's cruel but nobody was shocked by it at the time.

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There was a continuous loop of film that looped backwards and forwards inside the machine,

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giving a movie that lasts about 20 seconds.

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It was influential, if nothing else, because the size of the film,

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and the spacing of all the perforations,

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stuck, and became the standard for 35mm film.

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I've come to the model village in Great Yarmouth

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to see one of the descendants of Edison's Kinetoscope -

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the Mutoscope.

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They're basically just like flip books.

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Inside...

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..there are 840 cards on this reel...

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..and when you put the money in, the drum rotates.

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This is a good example,

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because most of the subjects involved scantily dressed girls,

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and obviously some people were quite shocked by this.

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Erm, in 1907 there was a case

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involving the display of obscene materials

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involving four Mutoscope titles.

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One was called What The Butler Saw. This is the name that stuck,

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and since then Mutoscopes have been known as What The Butler Saw machines.

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RECORDED LAUGHTER

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Preserving the traditions of life beyond the edge

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is a challenge all around our shores.

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On the west coast of Scotland, old ways of working have been steadily eroded.

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Slate miners quarried away at these islands for generations,

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but eventually the industry ate itself up.

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Others are determined to keep ploughing a lonely furrow,

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working with their livestock, making the most of a marginal existence.

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An age-old lifestyle still survives on the Isle of Lewis.

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Andy Torbet is in search of the sea shepherds.

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The folk of the Western Isles must turn their hands to many trades.

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It's no surprise to find a fishing harbour, but the men I'm off to see

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aren't after catching fish. They want much bigger beasts - sheep.

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Here on Lewis, rearing sheep is an offshore enterprise.

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Uninhabited isles with steep cliffs make perfect natural pens.

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You can put the flock out here and forget all about them.

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A style of farming that's as old as the hills.

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But I'm here to see one of the new boys.

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Sandy Granville spent 25 years as a barrister in London,

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then he swapped sharp suits for woolly fleeces.

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Now I'm signing on for a tour of duty as a sea shepherd.

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-Nice to see you.

-You too.

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Sandy, I didn't expect to be meeting some shepherds on a pier side.

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-Where are the sheep?

-The sheep are all on the island over there,

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only you can't see any of them just at the moment,

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but they're all there in ones and twos and threes, all over that hill,

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probably a lot of them up in the... Up in the mist at the top,

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and they're really wild. These are not sheep as...

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-you know them.

-As we know it!

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'If the sheep are intimidating, then so are the shepherds,

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'a close-knit clan of Gaelic speakers.'

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MEN SPEAK GAELIC

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'Sandy's family were from Lewis,

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'but it's taken him years to earn his spurs with the sheep men.'

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What was it like coming into this community from the outside?

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The people on the hills aren't always so keen to have newcomers,

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cos nobody wants complete incompetents,

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and, of course, as a beginner that's just what you are, so they...

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To start with it's rather difficult,

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they don't tell you when the sheep are going to be gathered cos they don't want you there.

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'The sheep we're after have spent a year living alone

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'beyond the edge, running wild on the island of Seaforth.

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'Our mission is to round them up for market.'

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'Everyone seems to know their place - except me.'

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'As soon as we arrive, the shepherds take off.'

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SHEPHERDS WHISTLE

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'The plan was to split up and stay in sight.'

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'That's a bit tricky in the fog.

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'Soon I'm alone, just like the sheep.

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'No sign of them or my guides.'

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Obviously the shepherds know this land like the back of their hands,

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so we've only just started, but because the mist closed right down...

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I might have mislaid myself already.

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But I think I heard whistling over in that direction

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so I'm going to crack on.

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'No sheep, but a familiar figure emerges through the mist.'

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-I lost you for a bit, Sandy.

-Hi, Andy.

-How are you doing, mate? Mist is...

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Sometimes you can see, and sometimes you can't.

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It's quite a wild, rugged placed. How do the sheep cope out here?

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They've been bred to it. They're Lewis Blackfaces - love this, and they thrive on it.

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So why keep them on an island at all?

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You know they're here. You're going to find them if they're hiding behind a rock.

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Do you ever lose any?

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Well, you sometimes don't get them all in the gather.

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If we get them all today it will be a miracle.

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It's a bit tricky in the mist, I expect one or two sneaked past us.

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'I think it's more than a few that have sneaked past me.'

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'Fluffy white fleeces in a world of fog?

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'Hmm, tricky.'

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I've not seen a sheep yet at all.

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I have seen one sheepdog somewhere down there

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and I can just make out one of the shepherds through the mist.

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'And then, he's gone again.'

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'I could do with a sheepdog to round up the shepherds.

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'When the mist does lift, it's clear they've been busy

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'while I've been looking for them.'

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'The sheep are being sorted, some for market, some for shearing.

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'With no electricity, they have to be clipped by hand.'

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'Have I got the knack?'

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I think you must have a bit of crofting blood in you.

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It's just coming naturally to you.

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They're much kind of wilder than your normal sheep.

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-They're wild animals, really.

-Hardy breed.

-They don't have a great deal to do with people.

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This is real freedom food, but it's always been a hard life,

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it's never been easy, no more easy or difficult now than it ever was.

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'The ones staying get a once-over, ready for another year alone.'

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'The ones going for mutton get a boat ride, but they don't seem too keen.'

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Hold on, hold on, hold on.

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HE SPEAKS GAELIC

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They're much more feisty than I think you'd normally get.

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They've got a fair amount of power as well, they just run up and down the mountain free the whole year around,

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so they're a lot stronger, I think, than your average sheep, and not always the most co-operative either.

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'To persuade them, you've got to get hands-on...and legs.'

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'Negotiating the slippery rocks on a sheep is as hard as it looks.'

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'I'd rather ride a quad bike than a quadruped!'

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'We're cutting it a bit close with the tide, but after a final tussle

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'to get it off the rocks, the last boatful of sheep leaves the island.'

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'For the ones staying, it's back to freedom.'

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Off they go, that's them back to their hill.

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MAN SPEAKS GAELIC

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'But what does the future hold for the sea shepherds?'

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This may be the last generation that you'll see working out here.

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That's why they're an endangered species,

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there's not many of them left.

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Because they're not young, these chaps, and who's coming next?

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I suspect when... when we've finished,

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there'll be no sheep on these hills.

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'It's a stark assessment of a harsh way of life beyond the edge

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'that could soon disappear.

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'When the boats of the sea shepherds will be seen no more.'

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Adventures beyond the edge

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to cross wild oceans

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have inspired engineers to greatness.

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One such story of a mighty ship

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lies forgotten in the mud of the Mersey at Liverpool.

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Mark is here to give an old friend

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the sendoff she deserves.

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A little while ago,

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I was part of a remarkable discovery.

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Hang on, there's a trowel for you.

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Isn't that wonderful?

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There it is...

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as fresh as it comes!

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Buried ironwork

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from a mighty ship scrapped here over 100 years ago.

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The Great Eastern was once the largest vessel on earth.

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She was built for non-stop passage to Australia,

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but ended up being sold off

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as a floating billboard,

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before being broken up.

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But I won't let the old girl die in such disgrace.

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Before she ended her life here in the mud

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on the banks of the Mersey,

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she was responsible for one of the great engineering triumphs

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of the 19th century.

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It's a story that's seldom told, until now!

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This great ship launched the information age.

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It's a dazzling tale of astonishing audacity.

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Her mission -

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to lay a telegraph cable across the entire Atlantic,

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to send messages from continent to continent.

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This is the story of how the Great Eastern

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wired Britain to America.

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MUSIC: "Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key

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The celebrations for the Transatlantic cable were sweet,

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because of the failures that went before.

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Messages used to travel

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at the speed of sail.

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Then, in 1858,

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after an extraordinary effort,

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the first telegraph cable

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was stretched across the Atlantic seabed.

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In an age before the telephone,

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the new wire promised to send Morse Code messages

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between continents.

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But as soon as they began transmitting,

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there was trouble.

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The electrical messages were getting weaker and weaker.

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The first telegraph cable was dying.

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Cassie Newland, from Bristol University,

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is here to show me what went wrong.

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What they've got is a very badly insulated cable.

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They've got little manufacturing defects

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because they're inventing it as they go along,

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and tiny little faults are appearing and interfering with the signal.

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And as a layman, what I would have thought is,

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just put more power down the wire.

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And that's exactly what they did.

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At one point, they're putting 2,000 volts down the wire.

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So we can do something like 24 volts,

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so off we go, look, it burns a lot more brightly.

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What you are now doing,

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is making those faults worse and worse,

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with this big hefty voltage that's going down the cable,

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until finally, it just shorts.

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And look, our light's gone out.

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So how long did it actually last for, this cable?

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-Two weeks.

-How much did it cost?

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£700,000.

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By 1866, they were ready to try again,

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with a new design.

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To lay the first cable,

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they had to use two vessels -

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the weight of the wire was too massive for one alone.

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What they really needed was one big ship

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capable of carrying 2,000 miles of Atlantic cable

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in one go.

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Such a ship didn't exist before,

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but now it had been launched.

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Only the Great Eastern could carry the new cable

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in one trip.

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She was five times bigger than any other vessel,

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but this one is a little smaller.

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This perfect scale replica is the work of Bob Abell,

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who used the original blueprints.

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You've got every detail,

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-however long did it take you to build it?

-About two years.

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You've got the rivets all beautifully shown on the side of the decks.

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-This is the Captain's deck.

-There we are.

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There's the cable.

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And this is how it goes down the bottom.

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I mean, this will be about the closest I'm ever going to get to see

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-what she was like, you know.

-I think it's the only one in the land.

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Can I have a go?

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I never thought I would steer the Great Eastern!

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You're doing a good job.

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On the 13th July, 1866,

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she steamed away from the coast of Ireland,

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to cross the Atlantic.

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Her precious cargo spooled out behind.

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The Transatlantic cable was no ordinary wire.

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This is the Great Eastern's successful cable.

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-What's it actually made of?

-You've got a conductor in the middle,

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if you see, there are seven little strands - all copper.

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Then wrapped around that, you've got your gutta-percha insulation.

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-Now what is gutta-percha?

-Oh, gutta-percha...

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It's like a tree sap from the gutta-percha tree,

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which is a massive tall rainforest tree, grown in places

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like Borneo and Malaysia, that kind of tropical forest.

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It's a brilliant natural insulator,

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it only gets better under water,

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it was almost like it was designed for the job.

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Just wrapped around that is jute -

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the same stuff we make hessian sacks out of,

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and then around that you've got bright iron.

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The armour's getting laid on just up there...

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That's the Birkenhead docks.

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The copper's been smelted down there at Widnes.

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So it's kind of ironical that the cables are being manufactured here,

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the very resting point of the Great Eastern itself.

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Yeah, it's a beautifully circular thing.

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By the end of July 1866,

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the Great Eastern and her precious cable

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reached Newfoundland,

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after a voyage of 2,000 miles.

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Over such a long distance,

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telegraph messages were very, very weak.

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Eight years before,

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the first cable had blown when the voltage was boosted.

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So they needed a brighter idea,

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and this is where the story takes a very clever turn.

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Morse Code messages usually communicated by clicking,

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but the transatlantic signal

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was far too faint to make even a click.

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British scientist, William Thomson,

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had devised a solution of genius.

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His bright idea was to use a light beam,

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which even the weakest electrical current could move.

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At the heart of Thomson's machine was a mirror like this,

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which made a small rotation

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in response to the tiny telegraph signal.

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This model of a mirror galvanometer

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was built by scientist, Jonathan Hare.

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So this is the magic device?

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This is the mirror galvanometer,

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which is an exquisitely sensitive way of picking up a signal on a cable, basically.

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So it enabled signals to be sent in really low voltage.

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How does it work?

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So we've wired up the cable. It's going from the UK to here in America,

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and if we press a button on the other side,

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a little current will flow along here.

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On the mirror are fixed two magnets,

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and around the mirror is a coil of wire.

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Now when that current flows in the coil of wire

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it produces a magnetic field,

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which causes one magnet to move out, sort of repels it,

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and causes the other magnet to move in,

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and as the magnets are fixed to the mirror, it twists the mirror,

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but the clever thing was he bounced a beam of light off that mirror,

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and just like if you play with your watch, you know,

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and you reflect the sun's rays from your watch,

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you can actually make the spot move around a lot,

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with very little movement of your wrist.

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Here very little mirror movement,

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will actually cause a big movement in the spot some distance away.

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Now at the other end, in the UK, we're in America here,

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if she keys... She's got two positions on her keyer,

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one will send a dot, and if she flicks the switch

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and presses the button again, it will send a dash,

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and they cause the spot to move in different directions,

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so she can send a dot and a dash and send Morse Code

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and we can read the message.

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Press a key on one side of the Atlantic

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and 2,000 miles beyond,

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a light spot bounced,

0:23:170:23:19

a miraculous method of sending telegrams.

0:23:190:23:23

William Thomson's invaluable contribution

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to the transatlantic telegraph,

0:23:260:23:28

earned him a well-deserved knighthood.

0:23:280:23:31

MUSIC: "God Save The Queen"

0:23:310:23:35

The band struck up in celebration,

0:23:350:23:38

and the message was finally received

0:23:380:23:41

loud and clear in the USA.

0:23:410:23:44

MUSIC: "Star Spangled Banner"

0:23:440:23:48

With the cable laid,

0:23:500:23:52

the Great Eastern was gradually forgotten,

0:23:520:23:55

broken up on the banks of the Mersey.

0:23:550:23:59

But her legacy remains.

0:23:590:24:02

Since 1866,

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we've never been out of contact with America.

0:24:040:24:09

The Times newspaper said,

0:24:090:24:11

"We have become one country - the Atlantic is dried up."

0:24:110:24:16

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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