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I'm Joe Crowley and this is History Hunt, | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
where children like you investigate exciting stuff from the past. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
Big stuff... | 0:00:11 | 0:00:12 | |
-Incredible, isn't it? -Whoa. -It's massive! | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
Surprising stuff. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
Clever stuff. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:18 | |
The clues are everywhere if you know where to look, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:23 | |
and finding them is fun. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
On this episode of History Hunt, four inquisitive kids | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
track down a real life war hero, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
and learn about some big guns to find out why | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
a teenager died in a sea battle and became the bravest boy in Britain. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
This is Little Ilford in East London, | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
just over the border from Essex. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
We're at the Jack Cornwell Community Centre | 0:01:02 | 0:01:04 | |
on Jack Cornwell Street, to start today's History Hunt. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
This is Tharshika, Rajeevi, Bradley and Kwasi, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
and today we're going to be looking for clues | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
to find out who Jack Cornwell was. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:17 | |
Right, guys, let's go. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
So, guys, do we think the fact that his name is here | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
-that he might have been local? -ALL: Yes. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
The History Hunters think that | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
if he lived round here he might be buried round here, too. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
We can go to the cemetery, and on his grave maybe there'll be | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
-information about who Jack Cornwell was. -Ah, OK. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:37 | |
-Like what he did. -When he was born and when he died. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
Come on, then, let's go. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:42 | |
Jack Cornwell is actually buried in the local cemetery | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
in nearby Manor Park, so that's where the hunt started. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
We are on a search for Jack Cornwell. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
This is Jack Cornwell's grave. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:01 | |
"First-class boy John Travers Cornwell VC | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
"dies of wounds received at the Battle of Jutland, 2nd June, 1916." | 0:02:05 | 0:02:10 | |
-So, did you find the grave? -ALL: Yes. -I've even got proof. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
Good, you've got a photo. Tell me what's on there? | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
He was born 8th January, 1900, | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
died of wounds received at the Battle of Jutland, 1916. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
-1916? -That means he died during the First World War. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:30 | |
And what was that first bit, just before his name? | 0:02:30 | 0:02:32 | |
First-class boy. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:33 | |
Anything else? He has "VC" after his name. What's VC? | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
Vice captain? | 0:02:37 | 0:02:38 | |
It's a good suggestion, but as they're not too sure | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
they'll need further confirmation. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:43 | |
So, now we have two tasks ahead of us - | 0:02:43 | 0:02:44 | |
finding out what a first-class boy is, and what VC is. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
We're going to split into two teams. Who wants to work with who? | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
OK, boys and girls, how surprising. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
Bradley and Kwasi look up what a VC is online, | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
The girls find out that first-class boy was a naval rank, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
so they're off to the local naval cadet centre to see | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
if they can get any clues about what Jack's job would have been like. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
Hello, girls, welcome to TS Chester. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
This is the home of Newham Cornwell VC Sea Cadets. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
First we need to get you in uniform, so go and get changed. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
Shoulder arms! | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
Guard, into line, left turn! | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
This is the kind of training Jackie would have done at Keyham. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
Although the weapons are different, | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
the drill manoeuvres are virtually identical. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:30 | |
-Was it hard for Jack Cornwell? -Yes, it was very hard, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
he had to be up at 5:45 every morning. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
He crammed a lot of training into a very short time. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
I think it's time you two had a go. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:39 | |
Remember, don't point it at anyone. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
Just hold that for me. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
It's quite heavy, so be ready for it. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
And if you follow me I'll take you to the drill squad. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
Guard halt! | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
Not bad for your first go, well done. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
Kwasi and Bradley's internet research reveals that | 0:03:54 | 0:03:58 | |
VC stands for Victoria Cross - | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
the country's highest award for bravery in the face of enemy attack. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:05 | |
They've also uncovered someone in the UK who's won a VC like Jack. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
Living VC holders. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:10 | |
Johnson Gideon Beharry. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
Bradley and Kwasi want to speak to someone who knows | 0:04:13 | 0:04:15 | |
just what it takes to win a VC, and they're super lucky, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:19 | |
as Johnson Beharry, the only living man to win a VC in 20 years, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
has agreed to tell them his story. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
This is the boys' chance to speak to a real, modern day war hero. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
Do a lot of people have VCs? | 0:04:29 | 0:04:31 | |
In the UK, we have five Victoria Crosses alive with the UK medal. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:35 | |
How do you get one? | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
You have to do something brave in the face of enemy fire, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
and you have to be in 97% of losing your life. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
How did you get it? | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
I received the Victoria Cross for saving 42 members | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
of my comrades in Iraq. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
Private Beharry explains he'd been driving a tank | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
in the Iraq War when he was ambushed by enemy fighters | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
who attacked his vehicle with rockets and set it on fire. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
His only exit was blocked by a mine in the road. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
Johnson knew that he would almost certainly die | 0:05:03 | 0:05:05 | |
if he drove over the mine, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
but that his fellow soldiers would probably die if he stayed still. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
Someone had to set the mine off to clear the route. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:14 | |
And that's what I did, I drove over the mine knowing I was going to die. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:18 | |
And, still under enemy fire, he helped his comrades to safety. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
A year later, Johnson Beharry became the first living man for 20 years | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
to be awarded the VC for his bravery. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
But receiving the award is a huge honour for me. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
Thank you very much we enjoyed chatting with you. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
Thank you, you are welcome. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
Right, hello, guys. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:42 | |
'Bradley and Kwasi meet the girls outside the Sea Cadet Centre, | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
'and the four History Hunters tell me what they've learned.' | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
-We learned what sort of clothes he wore. -Right, how was that? | 0:05:48 | 0:05:53 | |
-It was itchy. -Itchy? -And very heavy. And the rifle he used was... | 0:05:53 | 0:05:59 | |
Ten times every other than what we use. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
-But a good experience? -Yeah. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
OK, and you feel you know what he'd have gone through? | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
-You know a bit more about him now, do you? -Yeah. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:10 | |
How do you get a VC? | 0:06:10 | 0:06:11 | |
Well, you just have to be willing to give 90% of your life away. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
-Right, you've got to take a huge risk? -Yeah. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
I was doing a bit of research and I'll show you what I've got here. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
'I'd found Jack's naval service record at the National Archives | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
'which mentioned the ship he'd served on - HMS Chester. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
'It also repeated the fact that Jack had won the VC | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
'for conspicuous bravery at the Battle of Jutland. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
'So, we need to find out more.' | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
-So, where do we go, what do we do? -The library? -Very good. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
Anyone we can speak to? | 0:06:40 | 0:06:42 | |
The people who fought in the Battle of Jutland, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
maybe their relatives are still alive. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
-Yeah, everyone happy with that? -Yeah. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
Right, here we are at the Imperial War Museum. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
I'm going to introduce you two to a relative of someone | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
that served in the battle, OK? | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
You guys, I'm going to test your research skills. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
-What could we use to find out a bit more? -Newspapers? -Newspapers, yeah. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
-Everyone ready? -ALL: Yeah. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
Girls, this is Philip Douglas. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
Now, his dad served in the Battle of Jutland. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
The Battle of Jutland was a huge sea battle | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
that Jack fought in during the First World War. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
It took place on 31st May, 1916. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
It's really valuable to speak to someone | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
so directly connected to the event itself. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
What job did your dad have? | 0:07:30 | 0:07:31 | |
My father was the Gunnery Commander on HMS Warspite. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
The guns you probably saw as you came into the museum | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
were 15 inch guns. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:38 | |
They're 50 foot long, they weigh 100 tonnes each | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
and could be fired over 16 miles. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
Was it hard for him in the battle? | 0:07:45 | 0:07:46 | |
The battle was very hard indeed. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:48 | |
It was a very short-lived battle, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
but the biggest battle that has ever taken place at sea. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:53 | |
That's Jock Cornwell's ship, HMS Chester, and that was | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
the gun that he was operating on when he got hit in the chest. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
The Chester got caught out between the two fleets, | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
and the Germans managed to hit her | 0:08:05 | 0:08:07 | |
and did quite a lot of damage but didn't sink her. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
That hole would have been about seven feet across. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
Who won the battle? | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
They both claimed they'd won, but nobody was the obvious winner. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
That's interesting, girls, it just shows we can't always trust | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
everything we read, even when it's a newspaper in 1916. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
Boy hero of the naval battle. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
John Travers Cornwell of HMS Chester was mortally wounded | 0:08:27 | 0:08:31 | |
early in the action. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
He nevertheless remained standing alone at the most exposed post | 0:08:33 | 0:08:38 | |
with the gun crew dead and wounded all around him. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
What did he do that was so brave? | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
Well, even though he was wounded he decided to carry on | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
and followed the orders of the captain. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
Jack was only a few years older than Bradley and Kwasi when he died, | 0:08:49 | 0:08:54 | |
and the two History Hunters try to put themselves in his shoes. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
I would have run away or gone to a safer place on the boat. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
I would feel a little bit scared, | 0:09:00 | 0:09:02 | |
but I would have to make a decision if I either wanted to run away | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
or I would fight for my crew members and for the whole of England. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:12 | |
So, guys, it's been a very productive day. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
What have we learned about our Jack? | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
'The team have uncovered loads of information | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
'about Jutland Jack Cornwell, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
'but with the story nearly complete, one thing's caught my eye - | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
'I wonder if the History Hunters have noticed it, too.' | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
We found a newspaper having Jack's face on it. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
You guys took a photo, right? Let's see the photo. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:37 | |
This is the front page of a newspaper. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:40 | |
Look at his hat. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:41 | |
HMS Lancaster. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
-What boat was he on? -HMS Chester. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
Ah. So what's happened there? | 0:09:48 | 0:09:50 | |
Maybe they put somebody else's picture in. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
Right, they did. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
'Jack's bravery was an inspiring story to tell people, | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
'but because he was dead there was no picture of him | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
'to show people what he looked like.' | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
That's actually his brother. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:05 | |
This is wartime, you want to keep people's spirits up, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
they want people to feel good about the war and keep going. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
-We've learnt a lot today, haven't we? -ALL: Yes. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
So, it seems this community centre was named after a 16-year-old lad | 0:10:14 | 0:10:18 | |
who was not just a hero to the people of Little Ilford | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
but also to young people all around the country. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
And that's the story our History Hunters team has uncovered. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:28 | |
John Travers Cornwell - or Jack, as he was widely known - | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
was born on 8th January, 1900, in the district of West Ham, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
which was then in Essex. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:39 | |
A year into the First World War, in July, 1915, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:44 | |
the 15-year-old Jack joined the Royal Navy. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
He was soon sent to war aboard HMS Chester. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:49 | |
Jack's job was to operate one of the ships' huge guns | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
in the war's deadliest sea battle - | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
the Battle of Jutland on May 31st, 1916. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
HMS Chester was hit several times by enemy shells, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
and Jack Cornwell was severely injured in the chest. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
With dead and wounded all around him, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
he continued to stand by his weapon awaiting orders until help arrived. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
He was taken to Grimsby hospital, but died two days later | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
on 2nd June, 1916. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
He was just 16 years and 5 months old. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
Jack was awarded a full military funeral, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
and in September that same year he was awarded the Victoria Cross | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
after his death, for a conspicuous act of bravery. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
Photographs, paintings and cigarette cards | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
were all issued in his memory to increase morale but, | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
as there was no photograph of Jack, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
his brothers were used as models instead. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
I'm Joe Crowley and this is History Hunt, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
where children like you investigate exciting stuff from the past. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:56 | |
'Big stuff.' | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
-Incredible, isn't it? -Whoah! -It's massive! | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
'Surprising stuff.' | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
'Clever stuff. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
'The clues are everywhere if you know where to look, | 0:12:06 | 0:12:09 | |
'and finding them is fun.' | 0:12:09 | 0:12:12 | |
Today the History Hunt teams are in the lab, | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
investigating a scientific scandal. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:33 | |
Why was a woman who helped make a massive discovery ignored | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
when the biggest prize in science was won by her male rivals? | 0:12:37 | 0:12:42 | |
I'm in Cambridge, home to one of the world's top universities. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
And this is Rosalind Franklin House, a doctor's surgery close to the city | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
and the starting point for today's history hunt. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
This is Neil, Elizabeth, Holly and Henry. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
They're today's History Hunters. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
Together we're going to look for clues to find out | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
who Rosalind Franklin was and what she did. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
Look what I found. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:11 | |
This is a picture by Quentin Blake | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, OK? | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
It says "DNA, Franklin, Crick and Watson." | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
'Crick and Watson are dead famous | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
'because they cracked the secret of DNA, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:24 | |
'but the name Franklin is much less well known. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
'The picture does suggest she had something to do with it. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
'We need to find out more about Crick and Watson.' | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
If we want to find out more, where would we look? | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
Search on the internet. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
-What other form of news do we get? -The television. -Television, right. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
1953, there wasn't a lot of television around at that point. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:46 | |
They went and saw newsreels in cinemas. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:48 | |
These are often online, so you're going to go and look online. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
I want you to keep an eye out for Crick and Watson. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
You head off to the Chemistry Department | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
-and find out a bit more about the background of... -DNA. -DNA. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
Come on then, let's go. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:02 | |
As our Crick and Watson team settle down to some | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
internet archive research, the DNA team head off | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
to Cambridge University's Chemistry Department. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
There, with help from scientist Adrian Nixon, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
they discover that DNA is in every living thing on earth. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
It's like a big instruction manual. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
It says are you going to have blue eyes or blonde hair? | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
For something so important, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:30 | |
it's surprisingly easy to extract DNA. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
Adrian's using a strawberry and a type of alcohol | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
which scientists call ethanol. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
And the DNA is soluble in water - you know what soluble means? | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
Yeah, it's a solid which can dissolve. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
Absolutely, but it can't dissolve in ethanol. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
So any DNA that floats into that ethanol, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
suddenly it's not soluble, so it starts clumping together, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:54 | |
and what you can see here is the DNA and, if we're really lucky, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:58 | |
we can actually get it to float free of the strawberry. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
You can see it starting to come free. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
So, that is DNA - that's the instruction manual for a strawberry. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
So, what does Rosalind Franklin and Crick and Watson | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
have to do with DNA? | 0:15:12 | 0:15:13 | |
They were the people who came up with the structure of DNA, | 0:15:13 | 0:15:18 | |
this wonderful, beautiful double helix. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
-I recognise it. -Where have you seen that so far? | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
We saw it in the picture of Rosalind Franklin. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
The Quentin Blake picture. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
Finding the structure of DNA | 0:15:28 | 0:15:30 | |
was one of the biggest scientific discoveries in history. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
It means that scientists can do things like make new medicines | 0:15:33 | 0:15:37 | |
and also grow new plants to help feed people living in | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
very hot and dry countries and prevent them from going hungry. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
Meanwhile, our Crick and Watson team | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
are targeting cinema newsreel archives... | 0:15:47 | 0:15:49 | |
Julie says try Pathe and Movietone. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
..and they find something on the Movietone site. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
Nobel prize-winners 1962. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
Dr John Kendrew, Dr Francis Crick. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:00 | |
There you go. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
Like all good historians, they take notes on what they've found. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
-I think we should Skype Joe and tell him what we've found. -OK. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:10 | |
Hi, guys. So, how did you get on? | 0:16:10 | 0:16:11 | |
-We find out that Crick and Watson won prizes. -Nobel Prize. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:16 | |
Nobel Prize? | 0:16:16 | 0:16:17 | |
That's huge, that's the biggest prize a scientist can win. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
You said Crick and Watson - any mention of Rosalind Franklin? | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
-No, there's wasn't. -No. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
'So far, our History Hunters have done well. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:30 | |
'They've found out that discovering the structure of DNA | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
'was a huge breakthrough.' | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
It's a really big deal because it helps people create medicine. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:39 | |
'And Crick and Watson were in the news. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:44 | |
'They won the Nobel Prize for something to do with DNA. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
'But Rosalind is on Quentin Blake's picture, too, | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
'and no mention of her so far. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
'Time to dig deeper in the archives - | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
'that's a place where the historical records are kept.' | 0:16:55 | 0:16:58 | |
Right, guys, Rosalind Franklin hasn't come up much, | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
so I think we've got a couple of tasks ahead. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
You guys I want you to look and see what you can find out | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
about Rosalind Franklin in the archives, yeah? | 0:17:07 | 0:17:09 | |
And you guys, | 0:17:09 | 0:17:10 | |
I've arranged for Rosalind Franklin's niece to come and see us. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
Let's get started. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
You can find out loads from talking to people | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
who actually knew someone from history. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
And sometimes they might have original notes | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
or drawings or photos, and these can be really important. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
Rosalind's niece is called Shirley. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
-What was her job? -She was a scientist. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
She was invited to do some work at King's College, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
which was to do with finding out about DNA. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:42 | |
What connection did she have with Crick and Watson? | 0:17:42 | 0:17:47 | |
They were both doing work separately on DNA. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
Shirley explained Crick and Watson saw themselves as Rosalind's rivals | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
in a race to identify how DNA was made up. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
Part of Rosalind's job was taking a special type of photograph | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
which shows what tiny things like DNA actually look like. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
In 1952, Rosalind took a photograph | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
that was the final piece in the jigsaw, | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
but she didn't realise it at the time. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
Tell me more about the photograph. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
This photograph showed what the structure of the DNA was, | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
in a sense. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:20 | |
But what happened was somebody showed it to Crick and Watson, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
and that's what they used to do their discovering. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
But she didn't know they'd got hold of it. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
It's called Photograph 51. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
The team tell me about Photograph 51 and how and why Rosalind was beaten | 0:18:32 | 0:18:37 | |
in the race to discover what DNA looked like. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
but Shirley is very close to Rosalind. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:43 | |
It would be really good to get someone else | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
to confirm what she believes. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
It's what good historians do all the time. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
And that's Neil and Elizabeth's job in the Churchill College archives, | 0:18:50 | 0:18:55 | |
with the help of Cath Senker, a Rosalind Franklin expert. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:59 | |
She knows all about Photograph 51, which is actually an X-ray. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
What sort of photo does an X-ray take? | 0:19:04 | 0:19:06 | |
It shows a photo of inside you, your bones. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
When Watson saw Photograph 51, | 0:19:09 | 0:19:11 | |
his jaw dropped, it was that obvious to him | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
that it meant DNA was a helix. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
Cath shows the History Hunters Rosalind's original notebooks | 0:19:16 | 0:19:20 | |
where she wrote about her research. It seems Shirley's right - | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
Photograph 51 was incredibly important, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
and when Crick and Watson saw it | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
they knew they'd found the secret of DNA. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
It was hailed as one of the biggest scientific discoveries in history. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
It won them the Nobel Prize, and they became world famous. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:40 | |
But they failed to say how much they'd relied | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
on Rosalind Franklin's work. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:44 | |
They didn't say, "We used the data from Rosalind Franklin | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
"and we've put it in our paper." | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
Crick and Watson did mention Rosalind, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
but didn't say how important the photograph had been. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
It seems Shirley was right - | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
Rosalind's meticulous work didn't get the credit it deserved. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:03 | |
But why would that be? | 0:20:03 | 0:20:04 | |
Some people believe it was the simple fact that she was a woman. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:09 | |
I spoke to a science historian earlier on. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
This lady is Patricia, and let's see what she had to say. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
The way we tell stories about science, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
we always focus on the great big heroes, we choose one person | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
or two people and focus on them, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:23 | |
and Rosalind Franklin happens not to be one of those two. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
60 years ago, being a woman in science was really very unusual, | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
so there was a lot of discrimination against women, | 0:20:31 | 0:20:33 | |
women couldn't even go and have tea and coffee | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
in the same room as the men, so it was a really hard | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
for a women to achieve as highly as Rosalind Franklin did. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
Right, so there we go. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
When we're looking at history, we have to put ourselves | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
in the situation as it was then, | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
and in the 1950s men and women weren't treated equally, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:53 | |
and that's also part of the reason, perhaps, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:55 | |
why Rosalind Franklin wasn't celebrated | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
for her role in discovering DNA. | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
Thanks to all the work you've done today, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
-you know the real story, don't you? -ALL: Yeah. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
By speaking to family members, experts, | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
and going through the archives, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:08 | |
we've found out a lot about Rosalind Franklin, | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
so the doctor's surgery where we started is named after | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
a very intelligent scientist who was involved | 0:21:14 | 0:21:16 | |
in one of the biggest discoveries in the 20th century. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
And that's the story our History Hunters have uncovered. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
Rosalind Franklin was brought up in London | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
and studied at Cambridge University in the 1940s. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
It was a very different world from now. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
Very, very few women did science, | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
and even when they went to university, | 0:21:36 | 0:21:38 | |
the men just assumed women shouldn't be doing science. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
In 1950, she was offered a job at Kings College - | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
which is part of London University - to work on DNA. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
Every living cell has DNA in it. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
It's vitally important in making us how we are. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
It's like an instruction book for the human body. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
Rosalind was an expert in using X-rays | 0:21:58 | 0:22:00 | |
to look at how very small things are made up. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
In 1952, she produced Photograph 51, | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
which was a real clue to finding the shape of DNA, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
that it was a something called a double helix, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
like two springs coiled together. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
Francis Crick and James Watson - scientists at Cambridge University - | 0:22:15 | 0:22:20 | |
were also very close to discovering the structure of DNA, | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
and then someone showed Jim Watson Rosalind's Photograph 51. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
He was shown that photograph without Rosalind's knowledge, | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
and the minute he saw that photograph | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
everything fell into place in his mind. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
It was a Rosalind Franklin who took the crucial photograph | 0:22:35 | 0:22:39 | |
that enabled him to work out how DNA operates. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:42 | |
Crick and Watson published their discovery in the magazine Nature | 0:22:42 | 0:22:46 | |
without saying they'd used Rosalind's picture. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
It was a huge breakthrough, and they won the Nobel Prize for it. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
But Rosalind never knew how important her work had been to them. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
She died in 1958, before Crick and Watson won the big prize. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:03 | |
A lot of women feel very angry about the way | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
Rosalind Franklin's been treated. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
If Crick and Watson hadn't already worked out the structure, | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
she might have worked it out herself, but what is certain is that | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
Rosalind Franklin played a far more important role | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
than Jim Watson was ever willing to acknowledge. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
I'm Joe Crowley, and this is History Hunt, | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
where children like you investigate exciting stuff from the past. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
'Big stuff.' | 0:23:39 | 0:23:40 | |
-Incredible, isn't it? -Whoa. -It's massive! | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
'Surprising stuff. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
'Clever stuff. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:46 | |
'The clues are everywhere, if you know where to look. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:51 | |
'And finding them is fun.' | 0:23:51 | 0:23:52 | |
Today's History Hunters are on the trail of a man who was | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
obsessed with the tiniest things in the universe. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
Atoms - they can be used to make terrible bombs, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
but their peaceful use gives us much of the energy | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
we need for our homes. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:23 | |
This is Todmorden on the Pennine border | 0:24:27 | 0:24:29 | |
between West Yorkshire and Lancashire. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:31 | |
It made its fortune in the 19th century as an industrial town, | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
milling wool and cotton. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:36 | |
And it's by one of those old mills you'll find a plaque | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
to Sir John Cockcroft. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:41 | |
And this is James, Hannah, Callum and Maisie. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:45 | |
They're today's History Hunters, and they're going to find out about it. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:49 | |
Come on, guys, let's go. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:50 | |
OK, guys, look what's behind us - a blue plaque. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:55 | |
Can anyone read the name on it? | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
"Sir John Cockcroft lived here from 1899 to 1925." | 0:24:57 | 0:25:01 | |
Apparently he was a pioneer. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
Pioneer. What does that mean? | 0:25:04 | 0:25:06 | |
-The one that does it first. -Yeah, very good. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
'He split the atom, whatever that means, | 0:25:09 | 0:25:12 | |
'and he won something called a Nobel Prize.' | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
Splitting the atom - do you know what that is? | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
'The History Hunters decide they need someone to explain | 0:25:17 | 0:25:21 | |
'what splitting an atom involves. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
'They look online where might be a good place to find | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
'a scientist who has the answer.' | 0:25:26 | 0:25:28 | |
-What have we got? -Cockcroft Institute. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
That sounds like a winner. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
You guys, I think you should look into this Nobel Prize thing. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:36 | |
-Where could you find out more information? -The internet. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
-Anywhere else? -Museums? -Museums, yeah, very good. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
While Callum and Maisie follow up on the Cockcroft Institute lead, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
James and Hannah are off to learn more about Nobel Prizes | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
Albert...Alfred Nobel. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
"Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honouring men and women | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
"for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, | 0:26:00 | 0:26:02 | |
"medicine, literature and for work in peace. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
"Each prize consists of medals, | 0:26:05 | 0:26:07 | |
"a personal diploma and a cash award." | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
Awesome. I want one of them. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:11 | |
"The Nobel Prize in physics 1951 was awarded jointly to | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
"Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:20 | |
"He married Eunice Elizabeth Crabtree in 1925 | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
"and has four daughters and a son." | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
-Hi, guys, how are you getting on? -Good. -OK. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
I have found a clip in the BBC archives that | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
I think will be really useful for you. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
-I'm going to send it across now and I want you to have a look at it. -OK. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
'In the concert hall at Stockholm, there took place last week | 0:26:42 | 0:26:45 | |
'the presentation of Nobel Prizes. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
'And from the hands of King Gustaf, said John Cockcroft | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
'and Professor Walton received their awards.' | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
The atom team are going to meet a scientist at a rugby ground. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:59 | |
Seems a bit weird. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
Atoms are what everything is made of, and atoms are incredibly small. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
In one of those salt grains... | 0:27:04 | 0:27:06 | |
Dr Rob Appleby from the Cockcroft Institute tells the team | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
that one grain of salt contains a billion billion atoms. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
For a long time, people thought that atoms were the smallest thing. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:18 | |
Actually, atoms are made of smaller building blocks. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
Dr Appleby explained that at the centre of every atom | 0:27:21 | 0:27:25 | |
is something called a nucleus, and that's even tinier. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:30 | |
So if this whole stadium was one tiny atom, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:34 | |
the nucleus would be smaller than a table tennis ball. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
The rest of the atom would be empty space, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
and in fact, where the stands are now are particles called electrons | 0:27:41 | 0:27:44 | |
that are whizzing around and around the nucleus at a very high speed. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:49 | |
And even the nucleus can be broken down into smaller bits. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
The nucleus is made up of smaller particles | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
called protons and neutrons. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
So John Cockcroft figured out how to take the nucleus of an atom | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
and split it up. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:02 | |
-Now, how do you do that? -Drill a hole down the middle? | 0:28:02 | 0:28:05 | |
That's one way of doing it. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
Sir John Cockcroft used a particle accelerator, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:09 | |
which takes a little proton and accelerates it to very high speeds, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
so if you fire protons at a nucleus, the nucleus splits up. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
Why would he want to split the atom? | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
It turns out that energy comes out. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
That energy is called nuclear power. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
-How did we get on? Have we all been learning lots of things? -Yes. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
'Time to all meet at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
'to discuss what we've learned and what to do next.' | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
I think you guys need to learn about nuclear power. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
-Where could you learn about nuclear power? -Newspapers. -Newspapers. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
-Very good. Anything else. -On the news. -On the news. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
Really good suggestions. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:47 | |
So, I want you to look up a company called British Pathe. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
They've got loads of old news reports. See what you can find out. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
While Callum and Maisie go online to use British Pathe's search engine, | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
James and Hannah want to know more | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
about the machine called a particle accelerator | 0:29:02 | 0:29:04 | |
which is used to smash up atoms. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
They've got an invite to the ALICE particle accelerator | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
at Daresbury Laboratory. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:13 | |
So inside this vessel is a Cockcroft-Walton power supply. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:18 | |
This is a key contribution from John Cockcroft | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
to the science of particle accelerators. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:24 | |
Dr Lee Jones is a particle scientist | 0:29:24 | 0:29:26 | |
and he explains that to smash an atom | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
you need to make the particles go very, very fast. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:32 | |
And to do that, you need massive amounts of electricity. | 0:29:33 | 0:29:36 | |
Sir John Cockcroft's machine, using the Cockcroft-Walton voltage ladder, | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
made this possible for the very first time. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
The Cockcroft-Walton ladder multiplies voltage. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
So we have 5,000 volts on the top | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
and 500,000 volts on the bottom. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:52 | |
That gives as the high voltage that we need | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
to accelerate our charged particles. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:56 | |
Dr Jones explains that the high voltages mean | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
the charged particles soon end up going at super-fast speeds. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
How long does it take for an electron | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
to get round the accelerator? | 0:30:06 | 0:30:08 | |
An accelerator is about 70 metres long. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
It would take some slightly over 210 nanoseconds. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
A nanosecond is a thousandth of a millionth of a second. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:18 | |
So could you use this to split the atom? | 0:30:18 | 0:30:21 | |
You would use exactly the same technology to split your atom. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:24 | |
The machine Sir John invented allowed scientists to split the atom | 0:30:24 | 0:30:28 | |
whenever they wanted, and every time they did, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
huge amounts of energy were released. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:34 | |
Callum and Maisie's job | 0:30:34 | 0:30:35 | |
is to look for how Sir John's discovery was used. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
They found old news reports that showed that scientists | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
built on Cockcroft's work | 0:30:41 | 0:30:42 | |
and soon worked out ways of using this reliable release of energy. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:46 | |
They find out that Sir John's work led to scientists in America | 0:30:46 | 0:30:50 | |
building a huge bomb that used the power created by splitting atoms. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
But they also find out Sir John worked at somewhere called Harwell, | 0:30:58 | 0:31:01 | |
which looked to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, | 0:31:01 | 0:31:05 | |
just like it said on the plaque. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:07 | |
A report from 1956 explained how splitting the atom | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
could be turned into electricity for people's homes. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
'The research done here has made possible the huge power plant | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
'at Calder Hall which soon will be going into operation, making Britain | 0:31:17 | 0:31:21 | |
'the proud owner of the world's biggest nuclear power station. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:25 | |
'Heat from the atomic pile in the reactor | 0:31:25 | 0:31:27 | |
'is applied to heat exchangers which produce steam. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:29 | |
'Along these pipes, the steam travels to the generator building | 0:31:29 | 0:31:33 | |
'which houses the giant turbines.' | 0:31:33 | 0:31:35 | |
Next, Hannah and James are meeting | 0:31:36 | 0:31:38 | |
some of Sir John Cockcroft's relatives. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
Son Chris and nephew Peter Cockcroft | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
have brought along a few of his things as well as their memories. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:46 | |
Sir John has become a really important man in history, | 0:31:46 | 0:31:50 | |
but to them, he was a good dad and a wise uncle. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
This is his faithful suitcase that he took on many journeys overseas. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
In here, we've got some pictures of him. | 0:31:57 | 0:31:59 | |
This one which was taken at the Nobel Prize giving. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
You've got my father being presented with the Nobel Prize medal | 0:32:02 | 0:32:06 | |
by the King of Sweden. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:07 | |
Here is a picture of my father receiving the Freedom of Todmorden. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:11 | |
-I think you said it was 1949. -'46. -'46. -1946. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
What was he like as a father? | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
He always had an open door for the family. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
He gave us lots of good advice and he was a wonderful dad, | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
really, even though he was away an awful lot. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:25 | |
Guys, well done today. I know you have learned a lot. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
It doesn't get any more complicated than that. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:31 | |
'At the end of a mind-boggling day, | 0:32:31 | 0:32:33 | |
'the History Hunters tell me what they've learned.' | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
Have we got our heads around how a nuclear power plant works? | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
You've got the atom that's split | 0:32:40 | 0:32:45 | |
and it creates the heat which turns the wheel | 0:32:45 | 0:32:49 | |
which creates the energy | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
which creates the electricity that goes around. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
-Yeah. -And then it goes to homes. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
Goes to your home, my home, goes everywhere. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
-So now can we all see how important Sir John Cockcroft was? -Yes. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:05 | |
Yeah. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:06 | |
From a small plaque in Todmorden, | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
today's History Hunters have travelled across the North West | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
to discover more about the amazing life of Sir John Cockcroft, | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
a real pioneer, | 0:33:14 | 0:33:16 | |
whose work spread much further than his hometown of Todmorden. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:21 | |
John Cockcroft was born in 1897 in Todmorden in Lancashire | 0:33:24 | 0:33:29 | |
to a family of mill owners. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:30 | |
He was fascinated by mathematics and the world around him. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:34 | |
In the 1920s, he started to research the properties | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
of the smallest particles in the universe - atoms. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
John Cockcroft and his partner Ernest Walton wanted to know | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
what would happen if you split up the nucleus of an atom. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
In 1932, they invented a machine called a voltage multiplier | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
that could create enough energy to reliably split atoms | 0:33:51 | 0:33:55 | |
time after time the first time anyone in the world had done this. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:59 | |
The discovery led to Sir John Cockcroft winning the Nobel Prize, | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
one of the top awards in the world. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:05 | |
They also discovered this reaction created huge amounts | 0:34:05 | 0:34:09 | |
of heat and light energy which they knew could be useful. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
The first application of splitting the atom was to take this energy | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
and create a nuclear bomb | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
Cockcroft spent the rest of his life trying to invent peaceful uses | 0:34:21 | 0:34:26 | |
for this atomic energy, | 0:34:26 | 0:34:27 | |
and in 1956 his work led directly | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
to the opening of the first nuclear power station in the world | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
at Calder Hall in Cumbria. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
By focussing on the very smallest particles known to man, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
Sir John Cockcroft had laid the basis for creating | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
a new source of energy for the world's homes. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:44 | |
I'm Joe Crowley, and this is History Hunt, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
where children investigate exciting stuff from the past. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:56 | |
Big stuff. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:00 | |
-Incredible, isn't it? -Wow! It's massive. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:03 | |
Surprising stuff. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:04 | |
Clever stuff. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:07 | |
The clues are everywhere if you know where to look, | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
and finding them is fun. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
The History Hunters are thinking big | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
and finding out about a man who won a competition | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
and got to design a giant cathedral that took 70 years to build. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
That's a bit different from his other famous design - | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
a tiny telephone box. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
Today, I'm in Liverpool, home to the Beatles, the Mersey Ferry | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
and one or two football clubs. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
But the real reason I'm here is to try to piece together | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
the story of a local historical figure | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
who literally changed the landscape of Liverpool. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
And giving me a hand on this chilly day | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
are Erin, Jade, Elliott and Jack. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
They are today's History Hunters. Right, guys, let's go. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
Behind us is our starting clue, the big, red thing. What is it? | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
-A telephone box. -Good. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
Now we have mobiles, telephone boxes don't get used so often, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
but they're still a symbol of Britain, | 0:36:20 | 0:36:22 | |
and there are thousands across the country. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:24 | |
What could be historically important about a telephone box? | 0:36:24 | 0:36:28 | |
-How long it's been around. -Yes, anything else? | 0:36:28 | 0:36:30 | |
-The person who made it. -The person who made it. Yeah, very good. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
Like old London buses and red postboxes, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
they're instantly recognisable, | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
but someone had to decide what they looked like. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
If we wanted to find out more about the design, where would we go? | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
-A museum. -Museum, that's a good suggestion. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:47 | |
'The team work out the telephone box was in some ways | 0:36:47 | 0:36:49 | |
'a type of building - it's got doors and a roof, just like a house.' | 0:36:49 | 0:36:54 | |
-Who designs a house? Any idea? -Architect. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:58 | |
So if we want to find out more about the design of the phone box | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
and who was behind it, | 0:37:01 | 0:37:03 | |
I reckon an architect is a really good place to go, OK? | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
This is Mushtaq. He's an architect. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
We've been looking at the telephone boxes | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
and we'd like to know who gets picked for the designs and how? | 0:37:17 | 0:37:21 | |
The K2 telephone box was a competition. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
They chose that design from lots of different designs | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
from lots of different architects. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:29 | |
Lots of building designs are chosen this way. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:32 | |
Mushtaq shows us the designs for a competition he'd won. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:35 | |
This is it. It's a cafe building on a park. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
We came up with an idea that was very different to everyone else's. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
It's a bit like origami, | 0:37:43 | 0:37:44 | |
and that's what won the competition for us. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:47 | |
Where can we see the telephone box entry? | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
Well, sometimes the RIBA, | 0:37:50 | 0:37:51 | |
which is the Royal Institute of British Architects, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:55 | |
they hold competition entries. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:58 | |
It sounds like a good clue, | 0:37:58 | 0:38:00 | |
so we all headed off to the local branch of the RIBA | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
to take a look on their online photographic archives. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
-What do you think we should search? -The K2. -K2! Well done, Elliott. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:11 | |
We know it's called K2, don't we? What is that looked like? | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
-A telephone box. -Telephone box! | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
So that is clearly a design on paper for the telephone box. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:22 | |
The history hunters are looking at the actual | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
original designs for the phone box! | 0:38:24 | 0:38:26 | |
They showed the designer was called Giles Gilbert Scott. Result! | 0:38:26 | 0:38:31 | |
It also says he was born in 1880 and died in 1960 | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
and that the telephone box design was for a competition in 1924. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:39 | |
The History Hunters look to see what else he had designed. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
They all had a theme. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:44 | |
They all have big towers and they're big buildings. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:48 | |
Yeah, they're huge, aren't they? | 0:38:48 | 0:38:50 | |
'They wonder if he had anything to do with | 0:38:50 | 0:38:52 | |
'Liverpool's biggest building. That also has a big tower.' | 0:38:52 | 0:38:56 | |
The Anglican Cathedral. | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
I'd say it was one of the biggest buildings in Liverpool. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
-Look, the designer is... -Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. -Yeah! | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
The archive shows that the cathedral was also | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
the result of a competition, held in 1903. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
And the competition was won by the same man - | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:18 | |
That meant Sir Giles was only 22 when he won the competition! | 0:39:18 | 0:39:24 | |
It appears the red telephone box is closely linked | 0:39:24 | 0:39:26 | |
to one of Liverpool's most famous buildings. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:29 | |
There's only one place to go to search for more clues. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
-What a building! Look at that tower! Incredible, isn't it? -Yeah. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
What sorts of things might we find out at a place like this? | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
-The model of the church that he made? -Something about the design. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
If we want to find out more about the building, | 0:39:44 | 0:39:46 | |
what sorts of sources would we see? | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
-Files and documents. -Good. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:51 | |
-Anything else that's not actually handwritten? -Pictures. -Good. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:55 | |
But let's not forget why we are here in the first place. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
The cathedral's amazing, and that's also a historical source, | 0:39:58 | 0:40:02 | |
so remember to keep your eyes open and keep looking at the building. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
OK? We are going to split into two teams. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
The guys want to speak to the people who knew Sir Giles the best, | 0:40:08 | 0:40:12 | |
so we arrange for a real-life relative or three of Sir Giles | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
to chat to them. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:17 | |
The others are being given a real privilege | 0:40:17 | 0:40:20 | |
and allowed to see the actual designs Sir Giles made | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
and old photos of the cathedral's construction. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
These are the drawers where we keep all the drawings | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
Giles Gilbert Scott did. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:31 | |
He did hundreds and hundreds of drawings every single year. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:34 | |
You know there was a competition to build the cathedral? | 0:40:34 | 0:40:37 | |
-Yes. -Well, lots of people entered, | 0:40:37 | 0:40:39 | |
but they had to choose just six designs | 0:40:39 | 0:40:43 | |
to see who was going to win the competition, | 0:40:43 | 0:40:46 | |
and these are some of the early designs. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:48 | |
This one's from a very famous architect called | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
Charles Rennie Mackintosh. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
And there's the one Scott had originally as his entrance. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:57 | |
What do you think is different, Jack? | 0:40:57 | 0:41:00 | |
-It's only got one tower. -Why you think he changed his mind? | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
He grew older and he had different ideas | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
and the first design is very fussy and cluttered and ornate, | 0:41:06 | 0:41:11 | |
this one is much simpler. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:13 | |
There's an interesting one there. That's Mr Scott there, yes. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:16 | |
How many people worked on it, because it's so big? | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
Over the years that it took to build the whole cathedral, | 0:41:18 | 0:41:23 | |
there were hundreds and hundreds of men worked on the cathedral. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:26 | |
Some of them started when they were only 14 and they carried on | 0:41:26 | 0:41:30 | |
until they were old men. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:31 | |
They worked the whole of their life building this cathedral. | 0:41:31 | 0:41:34 | |
Do you notice anything about the dress of the people? | 0:41:34 | 0:41:37 | |
-What's missing, do you think? -Helmets. -Helmets, yes. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
You won't see one hardhat in any of these photographs. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
Did Gilbert Scott live to see his cathedral fully built? | 0:41:44 | 0:41:49 | |
No, he didn't, because he died in 1960 | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
and the cathedral wasn't actually finished until 1978. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:56 | |
So it was finished a long time after he died. | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
Sir Giles's son Richard, daughter-in-law Eline | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
and grandson Nicholas have brought some photographs | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
to show Erin and Jade. It's a terrific opportunity to meet people | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
who really knew the man himself. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
That's Giles there. He was rather a sweet little boy. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:21 | |
-Apparently, he didn't enjoy school very much, did he? -No. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
That's Giles, and you see the little boy on his shoulder? | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
Guess who that is. | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
Richard is now nearly 90 years old! | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
What was he like as a dad? | 0:42:35 | 0:42:37 | |
He was a great dad. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:40 | |
Mischievous and humble. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:43 | |
How did he get to design something so big? | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
He won a competition at the age of 22. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:52 | |
Formerly, he designed a pipe rack, | 0:42:52 | 0:42:58 | |
-but nothing else. -A pipe rack! | 0:42:58 | 0:43:01 | |
-Do you know what a pie rack is? -No. -You know people who smoke pipes? | 0:43:01 | 0:43:05 | |
-Oh, yeah. -It's just something to pop your pipe in. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
So it's quite a big jump. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:09 | |
They had great faith in him, even though he was so young. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
-Was he at it 24/7? -He was at it all his life. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:18 | |
And he changed it many times. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:23 | |
He often said that his rubber was his best friend. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:29 | |
-Would he be proud of it? -No. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
The west end is completely different to his design. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:39 | |
Guys, what a day. I imagine your heads are about to explode with all | 0:43:42 | 0:43:46 | |
the information you've got, so sum it up for me. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
Starting with the red telephone box, what do we know about that? | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
-Sir Giles Scott invented them. -Yeah. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
-It was designed in 1924. -Brilliant. Anything else? | 0:43:55 | 0:43:59 | |
He won a competition when he was 22. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:02 | |
Yeah, so he's a young guy in his early 20s. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
He wins a competition, and what's he going to build? | 0:44:04 | 0:44:08 | |
-He was to build this. -This! You guys spoke to his family. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
-What did you learn from that? -That he was a mischievous man. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:16 | |
Yeah, that's quite nice, isn't it? Anything else? | 0:44:16 | 0:44:18 | |
His son said that his rubber was his best friend, | 0:44:18 | 0:44:22 | |
because he swapped and changed everything. | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
-He didn't finish it until 18 years after he died. -Yeah. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:28 | |
-Because he kept on changing it. -Well done today, guys. Good work. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:31 | |
I think that's first-class history hunting. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:34 | |
The team have been all over Liverpool trying to work out | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
the story behind the red telephone box, | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
and it seems Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
the man who designed the red telephone box, | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
played a huge part in making Liverpool look the way it does. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
That's the story our History Hunters have uncovered. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:51 | |
Giles Gilbert Scott was born in 1880. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
Aged just 22, he won a competition to design | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral in 1903. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:04 | |
The cathedral was Scott's first job | 0:45:04 | 0:45:06 | |
but it wasn't his only major project. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
After winning the competition to design the cathedral, | 0:45:08 | 0:45:12 | |
he went on to design huge buildings across the UK. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
But perhaps his most recognisable work was far smaller. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
They may not be used as much these days, | 0:45:20 | 0:45:22 | |
but at their peak there were around 70,000 red telephone boxes | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
across the UK. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:27 | |
Scott came up with a design for the K2 box in 1924. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:31 | |
His hugely influential work across Britain | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
led to Sir Giles becoming knighted in 1924 | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
and becoming the president | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1933. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
The cathedral remained his most famous building | 0:45:42 | 0:45:46 | |
and its construction dominated his life. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:49 | |
In fact, it remained unfinished when he died in 1960. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was a hugely influential architect | 0:45:52 | 0:45:55 | |
who left his mark not only on the skyline of Liverpool, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:59 | |
but for a while at least, on almost every street corner in the country. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:03 | |
I'm Joe Crowley and this is History Hunt, | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
where children like you investigate exciting stuff from the past. | 0:46:13 | 0:46:16 | |
Big stuff. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:21 | |
-Incredible, isn't it? -It's massive! | 0:46:21 | 0:46:24 | |
Surprising stuff. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:25 | |
Clever stuff. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:28 | |
The clues are everywhere | 0:46:28 | 0:46:30 | |
IF you know where to look... and finding them is fun. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:35 | |
In this episode, four History Hunters discover | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
why men who tried to fly like birds crash-landed, | 0:46:53 | 0:46:57 | |
until one amazing but largely forgotten man | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
invented something WAY ahead of his time - | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
the world's first flying machine. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
I'm here at the Great British seaside, Scarborough, | 0:47:05 | 0:47:09 | |
on Yorkshire's east coast. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:11 | |
Blue plaques are often found on important buildings | 0:47:11 | 0:47:15 | |
and there's one here, but who was Sir George Cayley? | 0:47:15 | 0:47:18 | |
This is Kitty, Will, Jasmine and Calvin - today's History Hunters. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:24 | |
We're all going to try and piece together | 0:47:24 | 0:47:27 | |
the story of Sir George Cayley. C'mon, guys, let's go! | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
Right, guys, this is Paradise House | 0:47:35 | 0:47:37 | |
and we have a very attractive blue plaque up on the wall. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:41 | |
Who wants to read it out? | 0:47:41 | 0:47:42 | |
"Sir George Cayley, 'The Father of...Aeronautics'. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:46 | |
"Born at Scarborough, 1773. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:49 | |
"Died at Brompton Hall, 1857." | 0:47:49 | 0:47:52 | |
What do we know from looking at that? | 0:47:52 | 0:47:54 | |
His nickname - what he got called after all the things he did. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:58 | |
So he's known as "The Father of Aeronautics," very good. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:02 | |
-Aeronautics, anyone know what that is? -Is it flight? -Flight? Yeah! | 0:48:02 | 0:48:06 | |
If we want to know more about aeronautics, who could we speak to? | 0:48:06 | 0:48:10 | |
-The pilot of a plane? -Pilot, that's a good idea. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
Owner of a plane. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
The History Hunters wonder if Sir Richard Branson - | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
who owns an airline and is mad about flying - might talk to them. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
So, team one are off to see if they can track him down, | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
whilst team two are going to speak | 0:48:26 | 0:48:28 | |
to Sir George's great-great-great granddaughter, Belinda | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
and her husband Mark at Brompton Hall. | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
They tell Jasmine and Calvin what an amazing person Sir George was. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:39 | |
He lived in this house, Brompton Hall. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:42 | |
This is his workshop where he did all his drawings and experiments. | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
He invented a fountain pen, a submarine, a fire screen | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
for safety at theatres and also the tension reel for bicycles. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:56 | |
But in an era with no cars, very few trains and certainly no aeroplanes, | 0:48:56 | 0:49:01 | |
Sir George's hours of thinking | 0:49:01 | 0:49:04 | |
resulted in one amazing discovery in particular. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
He studied why it was that birds flew | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
and from that, why an aeroplane might fly. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
Originally, people thought birds could only stay up | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
cos they flapped their wings. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
Various people made models of birds for themselves with big wings | 0:49:20 | 0:49:25 | |
and jumped off buildings flapping their wings | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
but they had very poor results on the whole | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
and one or two big crashes when they landed miles below. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
Mark explains Sir George realised that sometimes birds flew | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
without flapping their wings. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:40 | |
This led to his breakthrough discovery, | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
what really makes wings stay in the air - something called lift. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:48 | |
This is a little model of an aerofoil. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:51 | |
Let's say, if you like, a little aeroplane. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:54 | |
Now what I'm going to ask you to do is to blow hard. Here we go. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
There we are, that got some lift! | 0:49:59 | 0:50:01 | |
That's better. A good, hard one. I'll give it one final blow. | 0:50:02 | 0:50:07 | |
That's what actually makes aeroplanes go up. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:12 | |
Sir George quickly realised the significance of his discovery. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
It was so important, he scratched it into the wall | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
cos he thought if it was on a piece of paper, | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
and it was thrown away, all he'd discovered would be lost. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
So, right here, in Yorkshire, this is where flying started. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
Back in Scarborough, the man who owns an entire airline, | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
Sir Richard Branson, has agreed to chat to Will and Kitty online. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:38 | |
He tells them that 150 years ago, Sir George built a glider | 0:50:38 | 0:50:42 | |
that in theory at least, should roll down a hill and take off. | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
That was 50 years before | 0:50:46 | 0:50:48 | |
the American Wright brothers flew a plane. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:50 | |
One day he asked his coachman if he'd like to fly in the plane, | 0:50:50 | 0:50:54 | |
so he climbed into the plane and to his horror, it took off | 0:50:54 | 0:50:59 | |
and it flew across the Dales | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
and I think at the other side of the Dales it crashed | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
and I think he broke his leg or arm, | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
and he promptly resigned the next day. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:09 | |
150 years later, we decided to see | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
if we could build a replica of the plane | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
and somebody said, "Richard, would you like to fly it?" | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
To my horror, the plane took off, | 0:51:17 | 0:51:19 | |
flew across the Dales and crashed on the other side | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
but we had proven that it could fly | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
using that basic craft that he designed. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:27 | |
Then you went from small planes to enormous planes | 0:51:27 | 0:51:30 | |
like the Boeing 747. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:33 | |
I think George Cayley should be really proud of what he'd done. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:36 | |
The sad thing is, you know, | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
he never saw his dream become a reality. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
I think he's not just a local hero, he's a British hero | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
and he's a global hero. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:47 | |
Back at the impressive staircase at Brompton Hall | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
where Sir George did many of his experiments on lift, | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
the young historians tell me what they've learnt. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
How important do we think Sir George was? | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
Very important, cos it's led to space travel and aeroplanes | 0:52:00 | 0:52:05 | |
and commercial flights. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:07 | |
Really? So, everything we have now, we can track it all the way back | 0:52:07 | 0:52:11 | |
to these original ideas from Sir George Cayley? | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
And you guys spoke to Sir Richard Branson. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
Sir Richard had heard about George Cayley's glider, had he? | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
-Yeah, and he sort of did a replica and he flew it himself. -Really?! | 0:52:21 | 0:52:25 | |
The only thing he changed was he put a seat belt in it. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
So now we know at least one replica glider exists, | 0:52:28 | 0:52:31 | |
I think it's time to track one down. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:34 | |
The glider is currently on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:38 | |
-I think it's time to go and see the glider. -Yeah. -Sounds like a plan? | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
-ALL: -Yeah. -Come on, then. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
Does anyone get the idea we've come to the right place | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
to learn about planes? | 0:52:51 | 0:52:53 | |
-ALL: -Yeah! -Yes, good, OK. We learnt about lift earlier. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
What I want you two to do, is go and see an engineer. | 0:52:56 | 0:53:00 | |
Find out how you make that lift work with wings on an actual aircraft. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
You two are coming with me. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:05 | |
-We'll try and find a glider. Everyone ready? -Yeah. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
Let's go. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
Kitty and Will are going to speak to an engineer | 0:53:12 | 0:53:16 | |
from a company that builds aircraft. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
Andrew White tells the History Hunters just how amazing | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
Cayley's discovery of lift was and how it's still used today. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:26 | |
For an aeroplane to fly, it has to create lift | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
and that's done by angling the wing upwards into the airflow | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
and it turns the air as it goes past the wing. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
The shape and angle of an aeroplane wing changes the air around it. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
This means that above the wing you get low pressure | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
and underneath it, you get high pressure. | 0:53:42 | 0:53:45 | |
That low pressure above the wing sucks the aeroplane upwards. | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
I'll show you what I mean. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
We're going to use this tube. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
That's going to travel very fast and that's going to be stationary. | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
So that's low pressure and that's high pressure. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
Let's tip it out and try. Are you ready? | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
It's going, it's going. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:07 | |
The low pressure air at the top of the hose | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
sucks up the paper confetti. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:12 | |
That difference between the low pressure at the top, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
high pressure at the bottom, is what sucks the wing | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
and lifts the aeroplane into the air. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:20 | |
To put the theory into practice, | 0:54:20 | 0:54:22 | |
Kitty and Will attempt to make one of Sir George's early designs | 0:54:22 | 0:54:26 | |
for a flying machine. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:27 | |
This is a picture that Sir George drew himself | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
of the very first proper aeroplane. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
It's got a tail at the back, wing at the front - | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
a balanced weight, and that tail is used for stability and control. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:40 | |
No-one had ever done that before, that's what's so revolutionary. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:44 | |
It left the wing to just deal with lift. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:46 | |
So, we're going to make one. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
-Shall we see if it works? -Three, two, one. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
The small designs show the principle, | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
but Jasmine and Calvin have found Cayley's real breakthrough glider | 0:55:03 | 0:55:07 | |
hanging up in the museum. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:09 | |
It was the world's first ever aeroplane. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:12 | |
-Guys, what d'you think of this? -Whoa! -Oh, my God! Wow! | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
That is massive! | 0:55:16 | 0:55:17 | |
-Bigger than you expected? -Yeah! | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
Let me show you what the original designs were | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
and see if you think it matches it quite closely. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:25 | |
So... | 0:55:25 | 0:55:26 | |
That was the design, the wings the same shape - | 0:55:27 | 0:55:31 | |
-a funny shape, isn't it? -Yeah. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:33 | |
-So, imagine you're in that. -Yeah! | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
-Imagine you're the one flying it. How would that feel? -Freaky! | 0:55:36 | 0:55:40 | |
-Amazing. -Freaky and amazing! | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
And pretty scary when it's going... at full tilt...up a hill! | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
I understand why people thought it wouldn't fly. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:50 | |
It might not look like it could fly, but 30 years ago | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
a team of engineers and flying enthusiasts gave it a good shot | 0:55:53 | 0:55:58 | |
at the same site Sir George had flown his planes, 120 years before. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:03 | |
Have a look at this. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:04 | |
Can you see how that works once it hits a certain speed? | 0:56:04 | 0:56:08 | |
-It goes over... -It creates enough lift to take it off the ground. Wow! | 0:56:08 | 0:56:12 | |
That's going a lot higher! | 0:56:12 | 0:56:14 | |
From watching that, can you see how it would have taken to the air? | 0:56:14 | 0:56:17 | |
And how the man would have got a sore bottom! | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
Right, guys, you've joined us, excellent. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:23 | |
Fresh from making their models, | 0:56:23 | 0:56:24 | |
Kitty and Will are back to discuss today's findings. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:28 | |
Final question, then - why isn't Sir George Cayley very well known? | 0:56:28 | 0:56:32 | |
-The Wright brothers had put an engine in theirs... -Right. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:36 | |
..and George Cayley hadn't, | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 | |
cos engines hadn't really been made when George Cayley was around. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:43 | |
I think we can all agree now after today's History Hunt | 0:56:43 | 0:56:46 | |
that we know that Sir George Cayley - he put in the groundwork. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:49 | |
Finally, guys, thinking back to that blue plaque, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
does Sir George Cayley deserve the title of "Father of Aeronautics?" | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
-ALL: -Yes. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:57 | |
It's been a fascinating look through the history | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 | |
of a major, early Victorian inventor | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
who's been overlooked by the history books. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
It seems that small blue plaque in Scarborough commemorates a man | 0:57:05 | 0:57:09 | |
who almost certainly changed the world forever, | 0:57:09 | 0:57:12 | |
and that's the story our History Hunters' team has uncovered. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:16 | |
The Wright brothers have become famous | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
as the inventors of the aeroplane, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:23 | |
but the principles that allow us to fly | 0:57:23 | 0:57:26 | |
were in fact discovered nearly 50 years earlier | 0:57:26 | 0:57:29 | |
by a proud Yorkshireman called Sir George Cayley. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
He was born here, in Scarborough, in 1773. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:36 | |
Sir George Cayley's hours in this workshop | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
resulted in dozens of inventions. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:41 | |
The most important discovery here | 0:57:41 | 0:57:44 | |
was a calculation that showed just how a plane goes in the air. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:48 | |
This simple drawing describes the principle of lift. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
It was so important, he scratched it in the doorframe of the workshop | 0:57:51 | 0:57:55 | |
so it could never be lost. | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
Cayley designed a series of gliders to prove his theory, | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
including this one in 1804, | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
that's 100 years before the Wright brothers' famous Kitty Hawk flight. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:07 | |
But it was Cayley's first ever heavier-than-air manned flight, | 0:58:07 | 0:58:11 | |
in 1853, | 0:58:11 | 0:58:12 | |
that really laid the foundations for plane travel as we know it. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
This replica of Cayley's glider was built in the 1970s | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
and here's the moment it took off at Brompton Dale, | 0:58:20 | 0:58:23 | |
close to Sir George's home. | 0:58:23 | 0:58:24 | |
He may be less famous than the Wright brothers | 0:58:24 | 0:58:27 | |
who put an engine on their plane, | 0:58:27 | 0:58:30 | |
but they conceded they'd never have been able to get up in the air | 0:58:30 | 0:58:34 | |
without the work of a brilliant but largely forgotten Yorkshire genius. | 0:58:34 | 0:58:38 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:59:03 | 0:59:06 |