Can We Have Unlimited Power? The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion


Can We Have Unlimited Power?

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There are some great questions

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that have intrigued and haunted us since the dawn of humanity.

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What is out there?

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How did we get here?

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What is the world made of?

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The story of our search to answer those questions is the story of science.

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Of all human endeavours,

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science has had the greatest impact on our lives -

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on how we see the world, on how we see ourselves.

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Its ideas, its achievements, its results are all around us.

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So how did we arrive at a modern world?

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Well, that is more surprising and more human than you might think.

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The history of science is often told as a series of eureka moments,

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the ultimate triumph of the rational mind.

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But the truth is that power and passion,

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rivalry and sheer blind chance have played equally significant parts.

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In this series I'll be offering a different view of how science happens.

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It's been shaped as much by what's outside the laboratory as inside.

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Oh!

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This is the story of how history made science

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and science made history,

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and how the ideas that were generated changed our world.

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It is a tale of power...

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..proof...

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..and passion.

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This time, an ancient human ambition -

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the search for limitless power.

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We are the most power-hungry generation that has ever lived.

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Energy is the heartbeat of our civilisation.

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The pursuit of power has created and destroyed fortunes.

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It has raised and toppled nations.

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And it has utterly transformed how we live our lives.

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But this relentless search for more power has an importance

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that is far greater than discovering what it can do for us.

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When people ask themselves "What is power?" as opposed to simply, "Where can I get more of it?"

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well, that led to some of the greatest insights in the whole history of science.

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The 17th century was a pivotal edge,

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when the balance between man and nature began to change forever.

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There was no electricity.

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There were no cars, no trains.

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The most common power sources had to be fed and watered.

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Horsepower meant just that.

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But a remote beach in Holland would provide a glimpse of what was to come.

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If you had been walking along a beach in north-west Holland 400 years ago

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you might have seen a much larger version of one of these zip past.

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It was called the wind chariot.

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Designed to carry heavily armoured soldiers along the coast line...

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..it amazed and terrified in equal measure.

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Here was the power of the wind being harnessed to produce motion on land.

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-It must have been an extraordinary sight.

-Oh, yes.

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The people were afraid of it and they called it a devil's rig.

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The devil's rig. Very dramatic, yeah.

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-How fast?

-It could outpace a horse running.

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Outpace a horse? So that must have made it one of the fastest things in the world at the time.

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Probably one of the fastest things.

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-Using wind power.

-Just wind power.

-Very impressive.

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The wind chariot was designed by an engineer and mathematician called Simon Stevin,

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a remarkable man who would literally change the face of Holland

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and help turn it into a great trading empire.

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Because Stevin's ambitions for wind power went far beyond chariots.

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He wanted to transform his country using mathematics.

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Mathematics was changing.

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For hundreds of years, in the universities,

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geometry and arithmetic had been important theoretical pursuits.

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Practical applications, like building bridges and firing canons, were limited.

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But now, men like Simon Stevin would use maths theory

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to create something much bigger...

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A new, mathematically grounded science.

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And that would help them solve a whole range of complex problems.

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Now, Stevin was clearly a mathematician who didn't mind getting his hands dirty.

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He saw the value of applying mathematical knowledge to the solution of practical problems.

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The problem Stevin turned his mathematics to

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was a crucial one in low-lying Holland -

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How to keep the country dry.

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For over a century, Holland's windmills had been scooping water

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from drainage ditches, tipping it into canals to carry it away.

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But Stevin was convinced that mathematics could make windmills much more efficient.

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We're at the top of the windmill now and this is the gearing system.

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This was the heart of what Stevin did.

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Mathematically it's interesting because what he's done is, there is no whole number relationship.

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It's not like two to one, three to one between this and this. There's no regular relationship.

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Also you can probably see these things are angled.

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It is not a simple vertical plane meeting a horizontal plane.

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It's going at an angle.

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And that is quite difficult to deal with mathematically as well.

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It looks crude, but it is fantastically refined.

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It's very impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing it run.

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Magnificent isn't it? It's like being inside an enormous clock.

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Standing here, you get the impression of

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immense, inexorable power which is sort of just driving round and round.

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And the thing which surprises me is it is so quiet.

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And that is a tribute to Stevin's mathematics because he obviously got it right. The interactions all work.

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There's very little clanking.

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If all that power was being wasted in sound and heat, this whole place would be vibrating.

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But actually it's very smooth.

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This new, mathematically designed windmill

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was three times more efficient than the ones it replaced.

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It's almost poetic.

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I mean, this is a mathematical model realised in a physical reality.

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Stevin designed new paddle wheel shapes, sluices,

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even a chain of windmills that could be used to drain not just fields, but a lake.

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What's more, he patented his many inventions

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to ensure his work would be well rewarded.

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Mathematics made Stevin rich.

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And it wasn't long before it started to change the whole country.

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Simon Stevin had shown what really well designed windmills were capable of.

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And people now began to ask themselves, "If they could drain lakes, what else could they do?"

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Holland was already an emerging European force.

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Now the power of windmills helped turn it into an industrial power house.

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Seeds and nuts were ground to extract their valuable oil.

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Paper mills became mechanised.

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Wood could be cut 30 times faster and with greater precision than by hand...

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..helping to turn this small country into the biggest ship builders in western Europe.

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To the sound of mathematically designed mills whirring in the wind

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Holland became an even more dynamic trading nation...

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..and Amsterdam one of the richest

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and most cosmopolitan cities on earth.

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Here, you could buy almost anything -

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diamonds, furs, exotic spices.

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Amsterdam was enjoying a golden age.

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The city produced the first central bank, the first stock exchange

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and the first economic crash.

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The growth of Holland changed the power map of Europe.

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It had been helped by advances in windmill design

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and new mathematically based science.

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And a belief amongst men like Simon Stevin

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that science should be useful.

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It was obvious what power could do.

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But what was still missing was any scientific understanding of what power actually is.

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That would only begin to emerge far later, on the other side of the Channel.

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The English country house of the 18th century was a place of intrigue,

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romance and gossip.

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But, between visits from dashing cavalry officers,

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these bastions of high society

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also hosted the occasional visiting experimenter.

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The home of an unlikely alliance

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that marked the birth of a world changing new source of power.

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Science had become popular entertainment for the drawing room.

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Most of these contraptions had been developed to explore the wonders of the age,

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like static charge and magnetism.

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Oh!

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Now that really is impressive.

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Now, this was a real crowd pleaser.

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The vacuum trick. What you do is you take an alarm...

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set it to go off...

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then put it in here...

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and pump out the air.

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Right.

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The alarm clock goes off...

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..and you hear...absolutely nothing.

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No-one fully understood the science behind these demonstrations.

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But the ability to dazzle and intrigue helped bring new ideas

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to a new and attentive audience.

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Matthew Boulton was an entrepreneur

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who belonged to the Lunar Society,

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so called because they met on the night of the full moon.

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They were industrialists,

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experimenters and natural philosophers

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who all shared a love of practical knowledge.

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A leading lunar man was Scottish engineer, James Watt.

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For some years Watt had been working with prototype steam engines.

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And this prompted Matthew Boulton to invite him to take part in a joint business venture.

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He had heard that Watt was trying to develop a new type of steam engine.

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As he later wrote to Watt, the reason for backing were twofold -

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love of you and love of a money-getting ingenious project.

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Now, the plan was clear.

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Boulton had the capital, Watt had the idea.

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Together they would get seriously rich.

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This was capitalism in action.

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The steam engine had enormous global impact.

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And yet the surprising thing is, there was hardly any scientific theory behind it.

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That would come later.

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This is a Boulton and Watt steam engine.

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And this the familiar bit - man, coal, furnace.

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But what you might not expect is it is stationary and it is vast.

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This single machine occupies the whole building.

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So vast that this engine, originally built to keep the nearby canal topped up with water,

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boasts its very own driver.

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-Hello.

-Hello.

-Nice to see you.

-You're the driver?

-Yes, I'm the driver of this engine.

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I am amazed. This is still working, isn't it? Actually doing the job.

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This, at this moment, is actually maintaining the canal. The electric pumps British Waterways

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normally use are switched off and we're actually doing that job.

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-Can I have a go at driving?

-You certainly can. Step round this lever.

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Always wanted to drive a steam engine.

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This wasn't quite what I'd imagined it. Right OK.

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-So..

-Turn that lever to the left, about a quarter of a turn.

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There's a sort of narrow window between...

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There is. There are indeed.

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What drove the engine was not so much the power of the steam directly,

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rather an industrial version of that country house trick - the vacuum.

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The steam is injected, then cooled, creating a vacuum.

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It's this which drags the piston head down

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providing the engine with its lifting power.

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Close it another quarter of a turn.

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-What's happened?

-Well, you actually closed it too far.

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This is not good.

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I was thinking it was really quite simple and then within 30 seconds of taking charge of this machine

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I managed to stop it, which is quite bad.

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That's looking good.

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James Watt didn't invent the steam engine

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or even the idea of using a vacuum.

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Engines had been powered this way for decades.

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Watt's fame, and that of his machine,

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rests instead on one small modification

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located here, right at the bottom of the engine.

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It may not look like much, but down there

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is James Watt's unique contribution to the story of power.

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It's called a separate condenser.

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It's where the steam was cooled to create the all-important vacuum

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well away from the hot cylinders, a small but ingenious technical innovation with enormous benefits.

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The Boulton and Watt steam engines were far more efficient than their rivals.

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They used a quarter of the amount of coal.

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The potential savings were enormous.

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Something any business man could understand. Over to you.

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Thank you.

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Why some ideas change the world while others languish,

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unloved and unnoticed, is seldom down to their intrinsic merit.

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The success of Boulton and Watt's engine was not just due to new technology,

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but also a clever piece of financial engineering.

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The machines were complicated and needed someone to install them

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and that someone was more often than not James Watt himself.

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In his letters he complains bitterly about all the travelling he had to do.

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Walk on.

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Gee up, boys. Go on. Go on.

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And you can sort of see why, can't you?

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Lots of jolting. Now this is bearable...

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Short trip, middle of summer.

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But imagine there it's cold, it's winter,

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it is absolutely lashing down - completely different experience.

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But the discomfort of 18th-century travel was a price worth paying

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because once his engines had been installed, the money began to flood in.

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This three-page document was the key to Boulton and Watt's wealth.

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It's a patent. It covers Watt's adaptations to the steam engine.

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Now, you had to go on paying royalties year after year, long after the machine was installed.

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Any savings you made from the machine, a proportion went straight back to them.

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I think it's very telling how scientific discovery is rarely far away from the smell of money,

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and that's especially true of the search for power.

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But, for all the riches on offer, there was still no real

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scientific framework to explain what power actually is.

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Science would have to wait till steam power became a force throughout the land.

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HORSE NEIGHS

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The big demand for steam engines was in the West Country,

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pumping flood water from mines.

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Their owners soon became reliant on Boulton and Watt's more efficient machines.

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Some mine owners, fed up with royalties, stopped paying.

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Boulton and Watt got tough and responded with legal writs.

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It's said that a delivery man who came to one of these mines

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was seized by the ankles, hung over the mine shaft and asked if he still wanted to deliver that writ.

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The man behind that particular story was Richard Trevithick.

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To get round of Watt's patent Trevithick began to build his own engines.

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This was his greatest achievement, the Puffing Devil,

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all eight horsepower of it.

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And unlike Boulton and Watt's engine, it moved.

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Trevithick's genius was he built high pressure steam engines where the steam drives the piston.

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So he didn't need vacuums or condensers.

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Instead of being the size of houses, his steam engines were small, powerful, mobile.

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And as an added bonus they produced that wonderful "whoo-hoo" noise.

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That's the sound of high-pressure steam escaping.

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ENGINE WHISTLES

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I'd read that people thought they were incredibly dangerous, and not unreasonably,

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that they would blow up, the high-pressure system.

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You're quite right. They didn't have the knowledge of metallurgy

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we do today, and they did get boiler explosions.

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There's no risk of this one blowing up, I take it?

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Not at all.

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This new steam engine clearly pointed to a better way of moving goods and people around.

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Yet Trevithick has not gone down in history as the father of the modern railway.

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I gather that he actually did, on one occasion, manage to get

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his steam car, if you like, on a track, on a railway. Why didn't it work?

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The engine weighed five tonnes or so, so the rails broke under the weight of the engine.

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-So the problem wasn't the train at all. It was the rail it was running on.

-Absolutely.

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Yes, the engine worked a dream.

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-Right. That is incredibly ironic isn't it?

-Yeah.

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The history of science is full of moments like this.

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Great ideas have to come at the right place and the right time.

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Sadly for Trevithick, the place and time were wrong.

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So why didn't he die rich and famous?

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Well, it's partly because he didn't have his own Matthew Boulton to get his inventions out there

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and to make sure he was raking in the cash.

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But it's also because his ideas were well ahead of their time.

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In the early 1800s, if you wanted to get from A to B, you were better off buying a horse.

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Steam engines would eventually bring unprecedented change

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borne out of a combination of different forces.

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The Lunar Society, where men of science and business

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could meet and exchange ideas.

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Technical innovations, like high-pressure steam.

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The promise of money and the protection of patents.

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From all this emerged a previously unimaginable source of power...

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..the mechanical equivalent of countless horses

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to work the factories and mills of the 19th-century landscape.

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The steam engines, their profits, their owners,

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these were the forces shaping Victorian Britain.

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But the effects of all this power were felt far beyond the world of heavy industry.

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The new aristocracy of factory owners and businessmen knew

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just how they wanted to use their new-found influence.

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Some used their wealth to campaign for social change,

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like the abolition of slavery or the education of women.

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The search for power had given political power to a new group of people, the middle classes.

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The quest for power had produced so much...

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but with no more scientific understanding than had existed a century before.

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Only now, belatedly, came the theorists.

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The Victorians were utterly entranced by the power of steam.

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But the science behind it posed some of the greatest questions of the age.

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It demanded a new theory, a new way of looking at nature.

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Fortunately help was at hand.

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This is Mrs Beeton's Book Of Household Management,

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a Victorian classic which contains pretty well everything you need to know

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about how to run a household efficiently and well,

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including how to sack your servants.

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"Frugality and economy are virtues, without which no household can prosper."

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Mrs Beeton, like so many in Victorian society, was obsessed with efficiency.

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Waste was not just uneconomical, it was also un-Christian.

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In the kitchen, if you had old bones, you made soup.

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If you had old bread, you made a pudding.

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And this obsession was shared by the scientific community.

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In fact, it led to the development of a whole new concept, that of energy.

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As steam engines took off, people became interested in comparing which engines were most efficient.

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A new theory of energy would now help them make precisely that sort of judgment.

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No-one really knew what energy is.

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Some people thought of it as a fluid which flows from one place to another.

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But what was becoming increasingly clear is it could be transferred.

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The steam engine, like a kettle, could be explained scientifically.

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As it burns, chemical energy from the coal is turned into heat.

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This energy heats the kettle and the water inside....

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Which turns into steam, which can then be used to perform work.

0:29:480:29:52

It sounds really simple, but this was a turning point in science.

0:29:550:30:00

For the first time, such diverse things as heating coals,

0:30:000:30:05

warming water, production of steam, even the spinning of windmills

0:30:050:30:09

could all be united by a single concept - that of energy.

0:30:090:30:13

It led to the formulation of a new law of physics, one that is absolutely fundamental.

0:30:140:30:21

It's called the first law of thermodynamics.

0:30:210:30:24

The first law of thermodynamics is a mathematical description of energy,

0:30:270:30:32

known as conservation of energy.

0:30:320:30:35

It states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

0:30:350:30:41

So you can never get more out than is contained in the fuel you put in.

0:30:410:30:46

And it applies to every source of power there is -

0:30:500:30:54

from kettles, to steam engines,

0:30:540:30:58

to windmills.

0:30:580:31:00

Everything.

0:31:020:31:04

Thermodynamics was one of the crowning glories of 19th-century science,

0:31:090:31:15

inspired in part by the need to explain

0:31:150:31:18

that wonder of the age, the steam engine.

0:31:180:31:21

And by an obsession with thrift and efficiency.

0:31:230:31:27

But thermodynamics was only one component

0:31:270:31:31

of what was to be a far more comprehensive theory of energy and power.

0:31:310:31:37

In June 1772, a small sailing expedition set off for the coast of France

0:31:580:32:06

on a voyage that would help point science towards the modern age.

0:32:060:32:10

Its leader was John Walsh, recently retired from the British East India Company.

0:32:160:32:22

Walsh was fascinated by the electricity found in nature.

0:32:220:32:27

He went looking for it, not in the skies, but under water...

0:32:320:32:36

..in a fish....

0:32:390:32:40

..the torpedo fish...

0:32:460:32:48

..which uses electric shocks to catch its prey.

0:32:490:32:54

Walsh wanted to find out whether the power emitted by this strange fish

0:33:020:33:07

was the same as that given off by lightning...

0:33:070:33:11

..or a spark generator.

0:33:120:33:14

Having done numerous experiments on himself and his crew,

0:33:170:33:21

Walsh now headed back to London to try and find out

0:33:210:33:25

just how the torpedo fish produced electric shocks.

0:33:250:33:29

Some of the fish Walsh brought back are still preserved

0:33:340:33:39

at the Hunterian Museum in London.

0:33:390:33:41

They were dissected by the renowned surgeon John Hunter to reveal some very peculiar organs.

0:33:410:33:48

Well, you see these two patches of white tissue, one top, one bottom either side of the fish?

0:33:510:33:57

These are things which Hunter hadn't seen before in other fish,

0:33:570:34:01

other rays that he'd dissected.

0:34:010:34:03

Right. This one looks very different.

0:34:030:34:07

It's a much more detailed dissection,

0:34:070:34:10

but also Hunter's worked a bit of magic on it

0:34:100:34:12

by injecting it with a red dye to show where the blood vessels are.

0:34:120:34:17

The electric charge seemed to come from these tiny cells,

0:34:170:34:23

now known as electrocytes, found within the electric organs.

0:34:230:34:28

It is extraordinary because you begin to see where the charge would have come from.

0:34:280:34:33

You can actually see each of the cells. It is beautiful, isn't it?

0:34:330:34:37

-A work of art.

-A work of art in its own right, isn't it?

0:34:370:34:39

Walsh was convinced that the electricity from the torpedo fish

0:34:420:34:46

was not only the same as the electricity in lightning,

0:34:460:34:50

but that it must be possible to produce it using a machine.

0:34:500:34:54

But plenty of people did not agree with Walsh.

0:34:560:34:59

It seemed almost sacrilegious to claim that electricity from a machine made by man

0:34:590:35:05

was exactly the same as electricity from a fish which had been created by God.

0:35:050:35:10

And yet, proof that this was the case was not far away.

0:35:150:35:20

In the archives of the Royal Society in London sits a letter that dates back to 1800.

0:35:300:35:37

Written by an Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta,

0:35:390:35:43

essentially it contains instructions on how to build your very own torpedo fish.

0:35:430:35:49

This is a copy of the letter that Volta sent to the Royal Society.

0:35:590:36:03

It's in French, got a useful diagram over in the corner.

0:36:030:36:07

I've also got a box here of bits and pieces.

0:36:070:36:10

Right, first of all I need some zinc and some copper.

0:36:100:36:16

Also I need some bits of cardboard or tissue

0:36:170:36:22

capable of soaking up a briny solution.

0:36:220:36:26

It is very hard to believe

0:36:300:36:33

this is actually going to do anything.

0:36:330:36:35

We shall see.

0:36:350:36:37

A piece of copper on the top and I've got a lead on it.

0:36:430:36:47

Now, if you look at it closely, it really does resemble

0:36:480:36:52

the working bits, if you like, of a torpedo fish.

0:36:520:36:56

And he suggested to call it an artificial electric organ.

0:36:570:37:02

The "voltaic pile", as it became known,

0:37:040:37:07

could generate a significant electric current.

0:37:070:37:10

Volta couldn't measure it, but he could demonstrate

0:37:130:37:17

that it delivered a shock, just like the torpedo fish.

0:37:170:37:21

Ohh!

0:37:210:37:22

Oh! Ooh!

0:37:220:37:24

What's interesting is that Volta, when he writes to the Royal Society,

0:37:240:37:28

effectively gives away all his secrets,

0:37:280:37:30

which is a bit of a shame for him because this turned out to be

0:37:300:37:35

one of the greatest technological discoveries of all time.

0:37:350:37:39

It is of course the battery.

0:37:390:37:42

What is really surprising, looking at it from a modern perspective,

0:37:480:37:52

is that for a long time people had no idea what to do with the battery.

0:37:520:37:56

It had not obvious practical application.

0:37:560:37:58

There was nothing to plug it into.

0:37:580:38:00

It would be a generation before somebody managed to find

0:38:000:38:04

a really significant practical use.

0:38:040:38:07

An ingenious response to a rather urgent problem.

0:38:070:38:12

On the 18th June 1815,

0:38:180:38:21

the armies of the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor Napoleon met at Waterloo.

0:38:210:38:26

It was a battle on whose outcome rested the fate of Europe.

0:38:300:38:34

By the end of the day, the battle was over. The French had lost.

0:38:370:38:41

Wellington was keen to get this good news to London as quickly as possible.

0:38:410:38:46

Major Henry Percy was ordered to carry the message.

0:38:460:38:50

He mounted his battle-weary horse and rode off across Belgium until he got to the coast.

0:38:510:38:56

When he arrived, he had to wait for the correct wind and tide

0:38:560:38:59

before finally he could set sail for England.

0:38:590:39:02

In all, it took him four days to reach London,

0:39:040:39:07

four days during which I'm sure the people in the war office

0:39:070:39:10

were biting their fingernails with anxiety

0:39:100:39:13

because many expected the French to win.

0:39:130:39:16

Now, if you could have got a secret message from Waterloo to London

0:39:160:39:20

faster than Major Percy, you could have made a fortune, betting on an improbable English victory.

0:39:200:39:27

There was clearly a need for faster communication.

0:39:300:39:34

Volta's Pile was about to get plugged into something useful.

0:39:360:39:41

And this time it was science that led the way, thanks to a man called Hans Christian Oersted.

0:39:420:39:49

The story goes he was about to give a lecture and he was preparing his equipment.

0:39:520:39:57

Amongst it, he had a voltaic pile and some wire.

0:39:570:40:01

When he connected up the wire, something utterly unexpected happened.

0:40:010:40:05

The needle of a nearby compass twitched

0:40:090:40:12

and every time he connected the wire

0:40:120:40:15

or disconnected,

0:40:150:40:18

it moved again.

0:40:180:40:20

People had known for centuries that compass needles were deflected by magnets.

0:40:220:40:26

Somehow the electric current in the wire was also acting like a magnet,

0:40:290:40:33

deflecting the needle, which left Oersted completely baffled.

0:40:330:40:39

Now, he obviously realised this was important

0:40:410:40:44

because he did further research and published his findings.

0:40:440:40:48

But I think it's extremely unlikely he ever appreciated

0:40:480:40:51

just what a massive impact his discovery would make on the world.

0:40:510:40:56

Within a few years, that twitching compass needle had grown into the electric telegraph.

0:40:590:41:06

The power of electricity could now be used to get messages from A to B almost instantaneously.

0:41:100:41:17

Telegraph tables were soon running right across the globe.

0:41:170:41:22

And when the telegraph came together with that other great invention the steam engine,

0:41:260:41:32

the combination was unstoppable.

0:41:320:41:34

Steam power did the heavy work -

0:41:400:41:43

draining mines, spinning cotton,

0:41:430:41:47

powering a new railway network.

0:41:470:41:49

And with the telegraph that ran alongside those same railways,

0:41:490:41:54

the battery brought control - political and financial.

0:41:540:41:59

Together, they helped build the empires of 19th-century Europe.

0:42:020:42:06

The stage was now set for the next step in the scientific understanding of power.

0:42:120:42:18

The tiny, twitching needle of the telegraph had shown

0:42:310:42:35

how electricity from a battery could be truly useful.

0:42:350:42:38

But what's happening here is also something which is much more profound.

0:42:400:42:44

It is the coming together of two great forces

0:42:440:42:47

that previously were regarded as utterly separate.

0:42:470:42:51

And covering the link between two things as disparate as an electric current and a magnetic compass

0:42:510:42:57

was one of the greatest achievements of science,

0:42:570:43:01

a major step towards a unified concept of energy.

0:43:010:43:05

Electricity was the crowd pleaser.

0:43:080:43:10

Flashes, sparks, electric shocks.

0:43:100:43:14

Magnetism was altogether more sedate, something of interest mainly to navigators.

0:43:140:43:19

But when the two came together, they created the science of electromagnetism

0:43:190:43:24

that would dominate the 19th century.

0:43:240:43:26

Electromagnetism not only explained the relationship between electricity and magnetism,

0:43:280:43:34

it would go on to explain the very nature of light...

0:43:340:43:38

..of radio waves...

0:43:390:43:41

of x-rays.

0:43:410:43:44

And it helped persuade 19th-century physicists

0:43:440:43:49

that they had now discovered all the fundamental laws of nature.

0:43:490:43:53

As it turned out, this cosy assumption was somewhat wide of the mark.

0:43:560:44:02

At the turn of the 20th century, the discovery of a new element

0:44:090:44:13

was splashed across front pages all over the world.

0:44:130:44:17

One reason for all the excitement was the way radium behaved.

0:44:290:44:35

It spontaneously glowed in the dark...

0:44:350:44:39

..and created ghostly patterns on photographic plates.

0:44:400:44:44

It seemed to be creating energy out of nowhere.

0:44:460:44:49

Radium's mysterious properties caught the public imagination,

0:45:000:45:05

helping to sell a new range of consumer products...

0:45:050:45:10

..which was unfortunate, since radium is radioactive.

0:45:130:45:17

-..Yes.

-Thank you.

-Have a look.

0:45:170:45:20

OK. So what am I looking at?

0:45:200:45:22

Well, you're looking at a variety of radioactive consumer products,

0:45:220:45:26

mostly from the 1920s,

0:45:260:45:27

-produced in the United States.

-So this one here, for example,

0:45:270:45:31

-you actually put...

-Water in it.

-You put water in it?

0:45:310:45:35

That is the most famous of the radioactive quack cures, at least in the United States.

0:45:350:45:40

Over half a million of these were sold.

0:45:400:45:43

This is a similar device, except, rather than put the water in it,

0:45:430:45:46

you would put this in the water.

0:45:460:45:49

This is not radioactive now, I take it? Or mildly?

0:45:490:45:52

Yes, it is radioactive, but it's mild.

0:45:520:45:56

It is quite spooky, I must admit.

0:46:000:46:03

I can hear it still active all these years later.

0:46:030:46:06

So great was the hype

0:46:080:46:10

that small amounts were put into toothpaste,

0:46:100:46:14

heat pads, toys.

0:46:140:46:16

Just the name radium was enough to sell a product.

0:46:180:46:23

Radium, er...condoms!

0:46:230:46:25

Oh, it's an empty box. I was looking forward to seeing a radium condom.

0:46:280:46:32

The scientists responsible for first isolating radium were Marie Curie

0:46:390:46:44

and her husband, Pierre.

0:46:440:46:46

It didn't take them long to recognise its extraordinary potential.

0:46:490:46:54

One of the things that stood out in Marie's mind

0:46:560:46:59

and piqued her curiosity and interest

0:46:590:47:01

was the tremendous amount of energy being released by the radium.

0:47:010:47:05

-So they saw radium as a potentially unlimited source of energy, did they?

-Yes. Absolutely.

0:47:050:47:12

Just one gram contained enough energy to turn a tonne of freezing water into steam...

0:47:140:47:20

while one tonne of radium could do the work

0:47:200:47:24

of one-and-a-half million tonnes of coal.

0:47:240:47:28

The problem facing the scientists is that all this seemed to go

0:47:310:47:35

completely against the established laws of physics.

0:47:350:47:38

Radioactivity presented a serious problem for scientists.

0:47:420:47:45

They knew that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

0:47:450:47:49

That is the first law of thermodynamics.

0:47:490:47:51

But they also knew that these radioactive substances were pouring out huge amounts of energy.

0:47:510:47:57

So where was it coming from?

0:47:570:47:59

Across the world scientists had been studying radioactivity intensely.

0:48:070:48:11

People noticed something peculiar -

0:48:150:48:18

that as radioactive substances emit energy, they transform.

0:48:180:48:22

They turn into something else.

0:48:220:48:24

Radium, for example, becomes lead.

0:48:240:48:27

And as they transform, they become lighter.

0:48:270:48:30

In other words, as they emit energy, they also lose mass.

0:48:300:48:35

The link between energy and mass was eventually explained by Albert Einstein's famous equation.

0:48:420:48:49

Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light.

0:48:500:48:56

The energy from the radium wasn't coming from some magical source,

0:48:590:49:04

but from the mass itself.

0:49:040:49:06

People had previously realised that you could describe heat and movement in terms of energy.

0:49:120:49:18

Now it seemed you could also describe mass in the same way.

0:49:180:49:22

Energy which hadn't even existed as a concept

0:49:220:49:25

was now being used to explain the very nature of matter itself.

0:49:250:49:29

In fact there wasn't much that could not be explained in terms of energy.

0:49:320:49:37

Not just steam engines...

0:49:380:49:41

and windmills,

0:49:410:49:43

but living things.

0:49:430:49:45

Stars, even galaxies were all governed by the laws of energy.

0:49:450:49:51

In its quest to understand what power is,

0:49:550:49:58

science had uncovered secrets which lay at the very heart of the universe.

0:49:580:50:04

The theory encapsulated in E equals MC squared would eventually lead

0:50:110:50:16

to the release of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb.

0:50:160:50:21

But the consequences of that belong to a different story.

0:50:210:50:26

Instead, to complete the story of power, I want to go back to the 19th century.

0:50:270:50:33

CLOCK TICKS

0:50:380:50:40

Back then theories of energy might have been lighting up men's minds,

0:50:400:50:46

but they weren't lighting up homes.

0:50:460:50:49

Not yet, at any rate.

0:50:490:50:52

Most people's domestic lives were largely unaffected

0:50:530:50:57

by developments in thermodynamics or electromagnetism.

0:50:570:51:01

Outside there were telegraphs and steam trains,

0:51:010:51:05

but at home, gas lamps, candles and open fires.

0:51:050:51:09

What changed our personal relationship with power was the discovery

0:51:130:51:18

that the link between electricity and magnetism worked both ways.

0:51:180:51:23

Oersted had shown that an electric current could act just like a magnet.

0:51:230:51:29

British scientist Michael Faraday was the first to demonstrate the opposite,

0:51:310:51:37

that moving a magnet could produce an electric current.

0:51:370:51:41

He used the idea that switching on an electric current could make a magnetised piece of metal move

0:51:430:51:48

to build the world's first electric motor.

0:51:480:51:51

But he also demonstrated the reverse is true.

0:51:510:51:54

Take a magnet, push it through some copper wire

0:51:540:51:58

and you produce electricity.

0:51:580:52:01

Beautiful, isn't it?

0:52:030:52:04

It's called electromagnetic induction

0:52:060:52:08

and it was the key to the electric age.

0:52:080:52:12

If one could keep the magnet moving fast enough,

0:52:180:52:22

one could produce an electric current that was continuous.

0:52:220:52:27

What was needed was something to keep the magnet moving.

0:52:270:52:30

Something like this.

0:52:380:52:41

Niagara Falls, one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world.

0:52:430:52:47

This is about as close as I can get to the Falls and it really is magnificent.

0:52:520:52:57

There's about a 150 million litres of water coming over the Falls every single minute.

0:53:030:53:08

And you can really feel the power.

0:53:080:53:11

The challenge lay in finding a way of converting this mass of energy

0:53:220:53:26

into an altogether more useful form - electricity.

0:53:260:53:30

Until very recently, I couldn't have stood here because there would have been millions of litres of water

0:53:310:53:38

just pouring down here, sweeping everything away.

0:53:380:53:41

Up that way, about a kilometre or so,

0:53:410:53:45

is the power station.

0:53:450:53:47

The project began deep under ground.

0:53:560:53:59

Tunnels were dug into solid rock by hand

0:53:590:54:03

to divert some of the water to an electrical generator.

0:54:030:54:07

Those taking part sensed the dawn of a new age.

0:54:070:54:11

When it was first built, it was described as a feat to rival the pyramids, the temples of the Greeks,

0:54:170:54:24

the great cathedrals of Europe, a monument to the scientific age.

0:54:240:54:29

And personally I think they were right.

0:54:330:54:36

Because these giant turbines really are the ultimate expression

0:54:360:54:41

both of what power is and what power does.

0:54:410:54:45

Huge magnets turned by the power of falling water,

0:54:460:54:51

creating enough electricity to power three quarters of a million light bulbs.

0:54:510:54:56

But for electricity to become a true commodity,

0:54:570:55:00

something that could be bought and sold,

0:55:000:55:03

there was one final barrier to overcome -

0:55:030:55:07

how to get electricity from here in Niagara to the places you'd actually want to sell it.

0:55:070:55:13

Cities like Buffalo, 24 miles away,

0:55:130:55:16

or power-hungry New York, 400 miles away.

0:55:160:55:20

The problem was the power loss as the current travelled along the cable.

0:55:230:55:28

If you happened to live near a generating plant like this, then you were fine.

0:55:300:55:35

But the further away you moved, the less power you got.

0:55:350:55:39

After just a mile,

0:55:390:55:41

you would begin to notice the difference.

0:55:410:55:44

After two miles, hardly any current would be getting through at all.

0:55:440:55:49

But here at Niagara, this problem was overcome.

0:55:520:55:56

Its generators produced what's known as alternating current -

0:55:560:56:01

high voltage, low power loss...

0:56:010:56:04

..which meant that electricity could finally travel.

0:56:050:56:10

When, in 1896, this new form of current was switched on,

0:56:120:56:17

it took less than a second to reach Buffalo, over 20 miles away.

0:56:170:56:22

In that instant was born the electric age.

0:56:250:56:30

The discovery of what power can do for us has transformed our lives

0:56:400:56:46

and set us on a relentless search for new sources of energy.

0:56:460:56:51

From deep within the earth to inside the smallest atom,

0:56:530:56:56

to the sun itself, a hunger for more power knows few bounds.

0:56:560:57:04

Small wonder that our planet alone in the solar system glows in the dark.

0:57:040:57:10

But the quest to find out what power is

0:57:260:57:28

has had an equally profound effect.

0:57:280:57:32

Using the language of mathematics,

0:57:330:57:35

we have shown energy to be a basic property of the universe.

0:57:350:57:39

And it's the coming together of the practical and theoretical approaches to power

0:57:420:57:47

which underpins the modern world.

0:57:470:57:49

For a long time, the search for power was led by practical men.

0:57:510:57:56

And then the theorists caught up.

0:57:560:57:58

And to the plaintive cry, "Can we have limitless power?"

0:57:580:58:03

replied a resounding "No."

0:58:030:58:05

But that search also led to the uncovering of the fundamental laws of nature

0:58:050:58:10

which now tell us how everything in the universe operates.

0:58:100:58:14

Next time, the great puzzle of existence...

0:58:250:58:29

What is the secret of life.

0:58:300:58:33

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:480:58:51

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0:58:510:58:54

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