Episode 1 True Stories


Episode 1

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Transcript


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I'm going to tell you something about my life.

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My name is Florence Nightingale.

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I was born in the year 1820 in Italy,

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and named after a famous city there,

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but I grew up in England in a large country house.

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The story I will tell you starts when I was still a girl,

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when I began to imagine the life I could lead,

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when I got hold of the idea that I might do something with my life,

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and I wouldn't let it go.

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I grew up with my sister Parthenhope,

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who was also named after an Italian town.

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We were a wealthy family and our father wanted to educate us himself.

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From a young age, I loved to read, and I wanted to learn.

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I was neat and orderly, and liked everything to be in its place.

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My sister, on the other hand, just wanted to play around.

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In lessons she did her best to distract me.

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But I would not be distracted.

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I had this idea that I would do something with my life

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and I wouldn't let it go.

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Wherever I was, I was only happy if I had a book in my hand,

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much to my sisters' frustration.

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They said I was a bookworm.

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But it was more than that.

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I knew even then I didn't want to be like other girls.

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I grew up with my head in books and, over time,

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I formed a very clear idea of what it was that I wanted to do.

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What I wanted to do was work, and the work I wanted to do was nursing.

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My family didn't approve.

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What they expected of me,

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all they thought I should aim for in my life,

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was to find a respectable man to marry me.

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I knew that being a wife and mother would never be enough.

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I had this idea that I would do something with my life

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and I wouldn't let it go.

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I stuck to my books, and refused to give in.

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I would not change my course.

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At that time nurses got no training at all, but I had other ideas.

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So long as my father refused to let me work, I stuck to my books,

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refining my ideas about how I would teach nurses to help the sick.

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Eventually, I got the chance that all these years I'd been waiting for.

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I was asked to train a team of nurses for work in the Crimea,

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a place far away where there was a war.

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There was a hospital there near the battlefield where injured

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soldiers were brought in, but were never getting better.

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I trained my nurses in

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fundamental principles of cleanliness and hygiene.

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I wanted them neat and orderly, and everything just so.

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Soon we were packed and ready to leave,

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for a war that had until now had seemed so far away,

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in a country most of them had never even heard of.

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Even I had a little apprehension,

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not so much for what we might find,

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but because I knew this was my chance to prove my worth as a nurse.

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The journey to Scutari in Turkey took several weeks.

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We arrived and it was hot.

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The hospital itself was in the shell of an old army fort,

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close to the battlefield.

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As we walked towards it, I didn't quite know what we'd find.

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Whatever we had imagined, this was worse.

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The first thing to hit you was the smell,

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the stench of sickness and filth.

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Soldiers lay on the floor in pools of blood,

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undressed wounds were covered in flies, sheets, such as there were,

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were crawling with lice and maggots.

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It was a hell on earth.

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I knew in an instant what needed to be done.

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First, I had to persuade the doctor to let us get to work.

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I knew what I wanted to do and I wouldn't let it go.

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He resisted but, in the end, he said that things

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had got so bad, he was willing to let me try.

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Here was my chance to prove what I believed were

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the first principles of good nursing, cleanliness and hygiene.

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I set my nurses to cleaning every inch, every crevice,

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every corner of the place.

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First we swept.

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I believed that when the wounded came to us,

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they should expect not dirt and disease,

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but good food and clean sheets

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and fresh air and the chance for nature to heal their wounds.

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Then, we scrubbed.

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That way we would be in charge, order would prevail,

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and health could be restored.

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I wouldn't let my nurses rest until the place was spotless.

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I was strict with them and I suspect they found me rather stern.

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Finally, we brought in fresh sheets.

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And, once clean, the hospital would stay clean.

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This was how I'd imagined it,

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clean and hygienic, and everything in its place.

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Now we could concentrate on tending to the soldiers' wounds,

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and nursing them back to health.

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The change in the hospital was immediate.

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I may have been stern with the nurses,

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but at night I walked amongst the soldiers on the wards.

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I would sit with them if they wanted, or read to them,

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or take their hand if they called out.

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After all, it was for them that we were there at all,

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and I so wanted each of them to get better.

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Because of my lantern, and my nightly rounds,

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they started to call me 'The Lady of The Lamp'.

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Soon, we were rewarded for all our efforts.

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Soldiers that would have died before were getting better,

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and some were able to leave their beds.

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It gave me such satisfaction to watch them leave.

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I'd never felt more complete.

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After the war ended,

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I stayed until every last soldier was well enough to leave.

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When I got back to England,

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I was astonished to find that I was famous!

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Not only were people talking about my work,

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but there was a trust fund that had been set up in my honour!

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It was a good deal of money and

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I used it to start up the first ever Nurses Training School in London.

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What I did changed nursing for good.

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It became a real profession, with strict principles and standards,

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and all the better for the health of the entire nation.

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As a girl, I had decided that I would do something with my life.

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I'm glad that I took hold of that idea and I never let it go.

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I'm going to tell you about something about my life.

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My name is Alexander Graham Bell.

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I was born in the year 1847 in Edinburgh.

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To understand where I ended up,

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you'll need to understand where I started from.

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So the story I will tell you begins when I was just a boy.

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By the time I was ten years old, my mother was almost deaf.

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She liked to listen to me playing the piano,

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although I'm not sure exactly what she heard.

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She would sit beside me with her hearing tube pressed to the piano,

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and seemed to like it even though I didn't really play that well.

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Because of my mother,

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I was interested from an early age in how sound works.

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I spent ages peering inside the piano, watching how,

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when I pressed a key, a little hammer hit some strings,

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making them vibrate, and I saw it was the vibration that made the sound.

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I think it was the vibrations, too, that mother could pick up

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through her hearing tube.

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Sometimes, in the next room, my father would be teaching a pupil.

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It was his job to try and help deaf people learn to speak.

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He'd invented a system that helped them learn how to

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move their throat, tongue and lips to produce the vibrations to

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make the different kinds of sounds that went into speech.

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When there were people round for tea, and the chatter was whirling

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around the room, I didn't like the thought of my mother missing out.

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So I tried to help her follow the conversation

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by tapping a code out on her arm.

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Perhaps because of my mother, I was so glad that I could hear.

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I was so aware that the world was full of sound.

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I would go out and walk sometimes just to listen,

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and it was like the whole world was vibrating all at once.

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I thought if I listened hard enough, I could even hear

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the sound of moss growing and creeping its way along a fallen tree.

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I was always tuned in to the sounds things made,

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and even when I grew up I was still listening.

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But now I had my own ideas too, about how sound worked,

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and about all the things it might be possible to do with it.

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I was itching to try some things out,

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so my father set my brother Melly and I a challenge

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to invent a machine that could replicate the human voice.

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Ha! A talking machine!

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The idea got me really excited!

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ALEXANDER GARGLES

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We tried to figure out what it was

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that made the human voice come out at all.

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We tried to think of the body as a machine,

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with all the mechanisms needed to cause a vibration to make a sound,

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but not just any sound,

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all the different kinds of sounds that make up speech.

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HORN HONKS

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WHISTLING

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We made something, and it worked!

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Well, kind of worked.

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When I wasn't thinking about machines or working on my ideas,

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I taught deaf children just like my father did.

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I never forgot that some people, like my mother,

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could hear very little or nothing at all.

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And teaching them how to make sounds spurred me on and

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I had so many ideas about how to make machines that could manipulate sound.

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Then a chance came along for me to try out some of my ideas.

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I was asked to find ways to improve the telegraph machine.

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The telegraph machine was a relatively new invention,

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used to send messages from one place to another.

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Before the telegraph, messages had to be handwritten

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and sent by horse and cart!

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This was so much quicker.

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It sent messages from one place to another

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by taking the words of the message, and turning them into a code,

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like Morse code, which could be sent down an electrical wire.

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At the other end, the code was received

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and translated back into words again.

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But the big drawback was you could only send one message at a time,

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and it had to be sent from the Telegraph Office,

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which often meant there was a very long queue.

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And when the messages were received, at a Telegraph Office somewhere else,

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they had to be printed off, one at a time,

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and delivered to the right address.

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It was a clever system,

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but sending one message at a time was simply too slow.

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I was working on how to make the telegraph machine better,

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but I kept coming back to a different idea.

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What if, rather than turning a message into a code and then sending

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that code along an electric wire and turning it back into words again,

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what if you could send the sound of a human voice,

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so that one person could simply speak to another,

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even if they were far away?

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I had an idea that you could use electricity to send sound itself

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along a copper wire, but I wasn't quite sure how to build it.

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I got a man called Watson who was good with electricity to help me out.

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We rented two rooms, one next to the other.

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Together, we came up with a contraption that might just work.

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It had a mouthpiece or transmitter to speak into and then,

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using a dangerous liquid called acid, the sound would be turned

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into electricity, travel along a copper wire,

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and be turned back into sound again at the other end, at the receiver.

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We had something that we thought might work,

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and we got ready to try it out.

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But just then, at the crucial moment...

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< Come in here, Watson, I need you!

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..I spilt acid on my trousers. It was burning my leg.

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-VIA PHONE:

-Watson, I need you.'

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To my utter amazement, Watson had heard me!

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The machine had worked!

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I was so excited, I almost forgot the burning sensation on my leg!

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In that moment, the telephone was born.

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It needed more work,

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but soon, I was ready to show people what I had invented.

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It caught on and it was a great success.

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Amazing to think that the device we rigged up between those two rooms

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was the first ever telephone, and now, in your world,

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there are more five billion of them!

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What had started with me playing piano for my mother,

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and peering inside to see how it worked,

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led me down a road that ended in an invention that, quite frankly,

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the world now simply couldn't do without.

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I'm going to tell you something about my life.

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My name is Harriet Tubman.

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I was born in Maryland in the United States of America in the year 1820.

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But my story starts when I was just a child

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I was born into a family of slaves.

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My mother and father were from Africa,

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but they were snatched up from their homes

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and brought to America on a ship to work for a rich landowner.

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Being a slave meant that we were owned by our master,

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and he got to decide everything we did.

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And most of what we did was working in his cotton fields.

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The seasons turned one into the next, and every year it was the same.

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We hoed the field to sow the seed to pick the cotton,

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then hoed the field to sow the seed to pick the cotton,

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over and over, till our hands were raw, our backs ached,

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our spirits worn down by the endless toil.

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From the age of six,

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my job was to carry buckets of water out to the field.

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The bucket was heavy and sometimes I could barely lift it off the ground.

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We got no money.

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We were given just about enough food to keep us from starving.

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The landowner lived in a giant house on the hill,

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with a view over all his land.

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We slept in a small hut in the forest.

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We had no furniture, and we slept on the floor, lined up like sardines.

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But still, I loved the hut, loved us all lined up together,

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keeping each other warm.

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My father snored loudest, but it was so familiar it helped me sleep.

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Sometimes, my father would take me

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into the forest that surrounded our hut and tell me things.

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He told me how moss always grew on the north side of a tree,

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how birds made their nests.

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I loved watching the birds.

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I tried to imagine what it would feel like to fly anywhere you felt like,

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high above the tree tops, looking down on everything.

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And that's how I grew up, knowing only the small world of

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the forest round our hut and the field we worked in.

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As soon as I was old enough,

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I was put to work alongside the other slaves in the field.

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I spent years that way, until my hands were raw, my back ached,

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and my spirit was worn down by the endless toil.

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Still I watched the birds.

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The slave master could keep my back bent towards the earth but

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he couldn't stop me from imagining what it might feel like to be free.

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Then, one day, we were working in the field, like every other day,

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when, all of a sudden, one of the slaves made a run for it.

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The slave master bid me go after him,

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but I just stood still and watched, admiring how brave he was,

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willing him to magically take flight and leave the ground.

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The master was furious.

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From that day on, I had dizzy spells,

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and would fall asleep without warning.

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But the strange thing was that that blow to the head

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also made something clear to me, like I'd suddenly woken up.

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I knew I had to escape,

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I had to do more than just look at the birds and dream of being free.

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In the moment that rock hit my head, I knew I just needed to be brave.

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Early one morning, I woke before the others.

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The time had come.

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I wrapped what little I had, and a small amount of food into a shawl.

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Then I took one last look at my family sleeping like sardines and

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at the space where all these years I had slept between them, and I left.

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I headed straight into the forest.

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Soon, I had walked further, and gone deeper into the forest,

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than I had ever been before.

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I headed north, knowing that way lay the border with Pennsylvania,

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where there was no slavery, and where,

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if I could get there, I could be free.

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When night approached, and the forest grew dark,

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I remembered what my father had taught me,

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that moss always grows on the north side of the trees.

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I wasn't afraid of the forest, or the dark,

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or the creatures that lived in the night,

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but I was afraid of the slave-catchers.

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Runaway slaves were worth money if they were caught,

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and there were slave-catchers out there who it made it their business

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to hunt runaways like me down.

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I had to keep my wits about me.

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I had to keep moving, stay quiet, and remember to be brave.

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I trod carefully and didn't stop to rest or sleep.

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After weeks of walking,

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I found myself at the border with Pennsylvania,

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a state where there was no slavery,

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a place where I could be something other than a slave.

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I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free.

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I felt my lungs fill with air as if for the first time.

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I was free.

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It was a feeling of such lightness.

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I thought again of the birds I'd spent all that time dreaming about.

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I chose where I walked, where I worked.

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I looked at the world around me with wide open eyes.

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But I couldn't settle.

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Less than a year after reaching freedom, I knew I had to go back.

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I went back the way I had come,

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to the place where I was a wanted runaway with a price on my head,

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but I knew I had to go return and lead my family to freedom.

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Now I wasn't just responsible for myself,

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but I knew if they were scared, that I could be brave for them, too.

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I knew now that there was a network of people who wanted to help

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runaways like us escape.

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Their homes were called safe houses, and they each had a sign

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they would hang outside to show that it was safe to call.

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It was a secret held dear by all those it helped,

0:33:050:33:09

and to keep the secret safe, we called the network of safe houses

0:33:090:33:14

the Underground Railroad.

0:33:140:33:16

It was neither a railroad nor underground,

0:33:160:33:21

but the runaways were called passengers,

0:33:210:33:24

and the people who helped or took people in were called conductors.

0:33:240:33:29

They would feed us and send us on our way.

0:33:320:33:35

We travelled at night,

0:33:410:33:42

trying to stay one step ahead of the slave-catchers.

0:33:420:33:46

I wasn't afraid of the forest, or the dark,

0:33:560:33:59

or the creatures that lived in the night.

0:33:590:34:01

I had to make sure we all made it to the border,

0:34:080:34:11

so that my family too would know the taste of freedom.

0:34:110:34:15

Finally, after weeks in the forest,

0:34:200:34:23

we reached the border with Pennsylvania.

0:34:230:34:25

I felt a happiness even greater than the first time

0:34:330:34:36

I'd crossed the state line.

0:34:360:34:38

I could imagine no greater joy

0:34:400:34:43

than the joy I felt watching my family rejoice.

0:34:430:34:46

When I saw the joy their freedom brought them,

0:34:540:34:58

I knew then that I would have to go back.

0:34:580:35:02

I knew then that this was what my life was for,

0:35:020:35:06

to help more slaves know what it was like to be free.

0:35:060:35:11

I went back time and time again

0:35:110:35:15

and I led more than 70 slaves across the Underground Railroad to freedom.

0:35:150:35:20

Later, they said I was a hero,

0:35:220:35:24

that I'd done great things,

0:35:260:35:29

but I knew all I needed to do was to be a little brave.

0:35:290:35:35

I'm going to tell you something about my life.

0:36:080:36:12

My name is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

0:36:120:36:15

I was born in the year 1806, before motorcars and mobile phones,

0:36:150:36:20

before aeroplanes and passenger trains and television.

0:36:200:36:24

I was an engineer.

0:36:240:36:26

It was my job to work out how to build things.

0:36:260:36:30

The seeds of the story I will tell you were sown

0:36:350:36:39

when I was just a child.

0:36:390:36:41

From the age of four my father insisted on teaching me himself.

0:36:410:36:45

He worked as an engineer and wanted me to become one, too.

0:36:450:36:48

He believed a good engineer should be able to get things exactly right,

0:36:480:36:53

so he made me sit at the long desk in the study and draw circles.

0:36:530:36:59

I drew circle after circle, over and over.

0:37:010:37:05

Sometimes it felt like I couldn't stop.

0:37:050:37:07

Circle after circle, over and over,

0:37:070:37:10

until I'd completely filled the page.

0:37:100:37:13

I learnt to never stop until something was just right,

0:37:140:37:18

I learnt that getting something right was the most important thing.

0:37:180:37:23

By the time I'd grown up,

0:37:230:37:25

I could draw anything. I could build anything, too.

0:37:250:37:30

I did become an engineer, as my father had hoped.

0:37:310:37:34

If they needed a bridge over a river, I could build it.

0:37:340:37:37

If they needed a new pier or harbour wall, I could build it.

0:37:370:37:42

But what I wanted was to do was something really big,

0:37:450:37:48

something bigger and better than the world had ever seen.

0:37:500:37:54

I wanted to prove that there was nothing

0:37:540:37:56

good engineering could not achieve.

0:37:560:37:59

Finally, my chance arrived.

0:37:590:38:03

I was to be Chief Engineer on a brand new railway,

0:38:030:38:07

the Great Western Railway.

0:38:070:38:10

It was to be a new kind of track to take a new kind of train.

0:38:100:38:14

Now here was a project to put all my engineering skills to the test.

0:38:140:38:18

It would be the first of its kind, something the world had never seen,

0:38:180:38:22

a railway built to transport not coal and bricks and other stuff,

0:38:220:38:26

but designed to carry people, passengers, from place to place.

0:38:260:38:30

It would run from the capital city London,

0:38:320:38:34

to the smaller city of Bristol more than 100 miles away.

0:38:340:38:38

As Chief Engineer, I would need to work out the route,

0:38:380:38:41

and build a track to take a train that would run faster

0:38:410:38:45

than any train had ever run before.

0:38:450:38:47

I wanted to plan every part of the route myself.

0:38:470:38:51

I needed to see for myself what obstacles lay in the way,

0:38:510:38:55

what problems there were to be solved.

0:38:550:38:58

I walked and walked and walked.

0:39:050:39:08

Now, here's a thing you might not know.

0:39:100:39:13

I suspect you don't wear top hats.

0:39:130:39:16

There were considerable advantages to the big hats popular in my day.

0:39:160:39:20

They could make a short man look taller,

0:39:200:39:22

and also double as a convenient place to store one's lunch!

0:39:220:39:26

My aim was to build a track to take a train that could travel

0:39:400:39:44

the 100 miles from London to Bristol and take no longer than four hours.

0:39:440:39:49

I knew for the journey to be that quick,

0:39:490:39:51

the train would need to run fast.

0:39:510:39:54

And I knew that for the train to run fast,

0:39:540:39:56

the track that it ran on would need to run straight.

0:39:560:39:59

For the train to run fast and the track to run straight,

0:39:590:40:03

it would need to cut through or cross over anything that lay in its way.

0:40:030:40:08

I walked and walked.

0:40:110:40:13

I would not rest and I would not waver.

0:40:130:40:16

I surveyed the countryside by day,

0:40:160:40:19

and at night I worked in my carriage.

0:40:190:40:22

I had my measurements, I did my sums, I drew my plans.

0:40:250:40:29

If there was a river, I would build a bridge over it.

0:40:290:40:32

If there was a hill, I would build a tunnel through it.

0:40:320:40:35

There was no problem that engineering couldn't solve,

0:40:350:40:39

and I would not rest until my work was done.

0:40:390:40:42

But it wasn't just the hills and the valleys

0:40:430:40:46

and the rivers that I had to overcome.

0:40:460:40:49

There was another obstacle that lay in the way.

0:40:490:40:52

It was a problem I hadn't even thought of.

0:40:520:40:54

People were terrified of trains.

0:40:540:40:58

The train was still a new machine.

0:41:030:41:05

Most people had never even seen one.

0:41:050:41:08

I had to persuade them the railway was a good idea,

0:41:080:41:11

that it could change their lives for the better.

0:41:110:41:15

The fastest most people had ever travelled was

0:41:210:41:24

the speed of a carriage or a trotting horse.

0:41:240:41:28

Some people even thought that

0:41:280:41:30

if you travelled that fast, the train would boil your brain!

0:41:300:41:34

A ridiculous idea of course!

0:41:340:41:35

But I knew a passenger train would be useless without passengers,

0:41:400:41:44

so I did my best to convince they need not be afraid.

0:41:440:41:48

I didn't know if, when the track was finished, the passengers would come.

0:41:480:41:53

But, for now, I had other things to think about.

0:41:530:41:56

The biggest challenge of all was a great big hill called Box Hill,

0:41:590:42:03

an enormous hill, two miles wide, solid rock.

0:42:030:42:07

To build a tunnel through this would take a tunnel longer than

0:42:090:42:12

any that had ever been built before.

0:42:120:42:14

This was the big opportunity I'd been waiting for.

0:42:160:42:20

To halve the time it would take to build the tunnel, I would

0:42:290:42:33

have workers digging from east and west, either side of the hill.

0:42:330:42:37

This is where my measurements would need to be exact,

0:42:390:42:43

my sums would need to be spot on, and my plans would need to be perfect,

0:42:430:42:47

so the two halves would meet in the middle.

0:42:470:42:50

Get it wrong and it would be a disastrous waste of time.

0:42:510:42:55

I employed 1,500 men.

0:43:120:43:13

Half of them worked through the day, half of them all through the night.

0:43:130:43:18

Even with this many men, it would take five years to build.

0:43:180:43:23

It would cost thousands and thousands of pounds.

0:43:230:43:27

Week after week, they dug and dug, day and night,

0:43:270:43:32

chipping away at the solid rock.

0:43:320:43:34

Ton after ton of rock was removed,

0:43:340:43:37

the two parts of the tunnel edging closer and closer together.

0:43:370:43:41

Finally, the moment of truth arrived.

0:43:470:43:50

The digging was nearly finished but had it worked?

0:43:500:43:53

I had to be there to see for myself if I'd got it right.

0:43:540:43:58

I'd done it.

0:44:210:44:24

My sums were good, the two halves of the tunnel were perfectly lined up.

0:44:240:44:29

Finally, the line between London and Bristol could open.

0:44:290:44:34

A very straight line it was, too.

0:44:340:44:37

I'd shown the world that engineering could achieve great things.

0:44:380:44:43

Now I could show that it could even change the way people travelled.

0:44:430:44:48

And, to my great relief, people came.

0:44:510:44:53

For the first time ever,

0:44:530:44:55

passengers waited on the platform for the train.

0:44:550:44:58

Although some of them were still afraid,

0:45:170:45:20

as they boarded the train, they were making history.

0:45:200:45:23

I was proud to stand on the footplate of the train

0:45:360:45:39

and feel the wind on my face as we sped, just as I'd planned,

0:45:390:45:42

between London and Bristol.

0:45:420:45:45

I was there. I'd made this happen.

0:45:470:45:50

Nobody's brain boiled and a new era in transportation was born.

0:45:500:45:54

For me, now I'd done this, I wanted to do something even bigger.

0:45:590:46:05

I wanted to build an enormous steam ship to

0:46:050:46:07

take people from Bristol across the Atlantic Ocean to New York.

0:46:070:46:11

I was determined to succeed, I would not rest and I would not waver.

0:46:110:46:15

But that's another story.

0:46:170:46:19

I'm going to tell you something about my life.

0:46:540:46:58

My name is Mary Anning.

0:46:580:47:00

I was born in the year 1799 to a poor family in a small town by the sea.

0:47:000:47:06

It's difficult to know where to start my story, because the truth is,

0:47:060:47:09

I was born once, and then, when I was just 15 months old and still a baby,

0:47:090:47:16

I had my second beginning.

0:47:160:47:18

My mother had left me in the charge of three ladies.

0:47:210:47:25

They were getting some fresh air when suddenly the sky got dark

0:47:250:47:29

and a storm cloud came rolling across the sky.

0:47:290:47:33

As the rain started, they ran to shelter under a tree.

0:47:340:47:38

Suddenly, a great bolt of lighting leapt from the sky,

0:47:430:47:48

striking the tree and the ladies with it.

0:47:480:47:50

All three of the poor souls fell to the ground.

0:47:520:47:56

My father came running.

0:47:570:47:59

They say I was a dull child before, but that after the lightning strike

0:48:050:48:09

I was bright, like the lightning itself had gone into me

0:48:090:48:13

and brought me fully to life.

0:48:130:48:15

I grew up by the sea.

0:48:220:48:24

Every day my father would take my brother Joseph and I

0:48:240:48:27

down to the beach, no matter what the weather.

0:48:270:48:30

We were looking for these things we called 'curiosities'.

0:48:430:48:47

They were beautiful things, hidden inside the rocks.

0:48:470:48:51

I didn't know what they were, these curiosities,

0:48:510:48:54

but somehow I knew that they came from another world.

0:48:540:48:58

You might know them to be fossils.

0:48:580:49:02

You might know that they are creatures that

0:49:020:49:05

lived millions of years ago, turned to stone

0:49:050:49:08

and waited to be discovered amongst the rocks.

0:49:080:49:10

But we didn't know that then.

0:49:100:49:14

To us, they were just beautiful mysterious things.

0:49:140:49:19

I learnt how to spot them. I was good at it.

0:49:190:49:23

A keen eye, my father said.

0:49:230:49:26

My father taught me how to get the curiosities out of the rock.

0:49:360:49:41

You had to have such patience.

0:49:410:49:43

One hit too hard with a hammer and the whole thing could be in pieces.

0:49:430:49:49

So I learnt to be patient and to find it one tiny chip at a time,

0:49:500:49:55

to tease it out from where it had been hiding for who knows how long.

0:49:550:50:00

Because we were poor,

0:50:060:50:08

once we'd got the curiosities out of the rock, and cleaned them up,

0:50:080:50:12

me and Joseph would sell them from a stall on the street.

0:50:120:50:16

People thought they were frozen lightning bolts or

0:50:220:50:26

the devil's own toenails!

0:50:260:50:28

We'd sell them for a penny each.

0:50:290:50:32

One day a lady came by.

0:50:350:50:37

Said her name was Elizabeth Philpot.

0:50:370:50:40

She showed such special interest in our fossils,

0:50:430:50:46

and thought we had a fine collection.

0:50:460:50:50

She seemed to know more about these things than anyone I'd ever met.

0:50:500:50:54

So when she asked if I'd like to see her fossils,

0:50:540:50:57

I asked father and went with her straightaway.

0:50:570:51:00

I'd never seen anything so fine.

0:51:070:51:09

She had them all lined up like little treasures in a special cabinet.

0:51:090:51:14

There were things in that cabinet I'd never seen before,

0:51:180:51:22

things that made my heart beat harder.

0:51:220:51:24

Then she gave me some books to borrow.

0:51:290:51:31

I was so hungry to see what they said.

0:51:310:51:34

I read about all the new ideas coming from

0:51:400:51:43

the best men in science, ideas that were new and strange,

0:51:430:51:47

that these curiosities were really creatures from another time,

0:51:470:51:52

that had died and been somehow locked up inside the stone,

0:51:520:51:57

thousands, even millions of years ago.

0:51:570:52:00

I started to see the fossils differently

0:52:040:52:06

and imagined them coming to life!

0:52:060:52:09

It gave me such a thrill to think of it.

0:52:110:52:15

It was all I wanted to do, to walk on the beach

0:52:150:52:18

and stare at the stones.

0:52:180:52:21

It was like an itch or a twitch,

0:52:210:52:25

just knowing that there were fossils out there, waiting to be discovered.

0:52:250:52:30

Then a terrible thing happened.

0:52:320:52:34

My father got very ill.

0:52:400:52:41

He had fallen down the cliffs and just wasn't getting better.

0:52:410:52:46

I was just 12 years old when my father died.

0:52:580:53:03

Now I would have to walk the beach without him.

0:53:030:53:07

We were more poor now than ever.

0:53:110:53:14

Selling curiosities was our best chance of making money,

0:53:140:53:18

so every day I went out to look for them.

0:53:180:53:22

And besides, the fossils were all I thought about.

0:53:220:53:26

It was like an itch or a twitch,

0:53:260:53:28

knowing that there were fossils out there just waiting to be discovered.

0:53:280:53:34

I grew up and I never stopped looking.

0:53:370:53:41

I could see the world so clearly now.

0:53:410:53:43

I knew what the scientists were saying about what they were,

0:53:430:53:48

these fossils as they now were called, and I had my own ideas, too.

0:53:480:53:52

It must be hard for you to imagine,

0:53:520:53:55

but these were such extraordinary ideas.

0:53:550:53:59

People found it hard to believe that the world could really be

0:53:590:54:04

millions of years old, and that the curiosities

0:54:040:54:08

were really creatures that had lived all that time ago.

0:54:080:54:12

Then, one day, I was out hunting,

0:54:230:54:26

eyes scanning the stones and cliffs as usual,

0:54:260:54:30

and I saw something that made

0:54:300:54:32

the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

0:54:320:54:35

It weren't much to see, but there was a hint of something sticking out

0:54:410:54:46

from a large slab of slate.

0:54:460:54:48

I could have walked past it a thousand times.

0:54:480:54:51

But this time, it was as if I could see beneath the surface,

0:54:510:54:55

and I just knew that this was something really big.

0:54:550:54:59

I'd never lift it on my own. I called some quarrymen,

0:55:040:55:07

who knew me well for all the time I spent on the beach,

0:55:070:55:11

to come and help carry the slab back to my work room.

0:55:110:55:14

I had to calm myself down.

0:55:340:55:37

I knew it would take an age, and that I had to be patient.

0:55:370:55:41

I started to chip away at the great slab.

0:55:410:55:44

Just like my father had taught me,

0:55:440:55:48

I had to work one tiny chip at a time.

0:55:480:55:51

Hurry, and I could ruin it.

0:55:510:55:53

One tiny chip at a time, I waited to see what would emerge from the rock.

0:55:530:55:59

One tiny chip at a time, I couldn't stop.

0:55:590:56:02

I couldn't think of anything else.

0:56:020:56:05

As it slowly emerged,

0:56:080:56:09

I knew this was different from anything I'd found before.

0:56:090:56:14

It took days, weeks, one tiny chip at a time.

0:56:150:56:20

Finally, I stood back and looked at what it was that I had found.

0:56:280:56:32

It was the skull of some great creature,

0:56:320:56:35

a creature like nothing alive.

0:56:350:56:37

I ran to fetch Elizabeth.

0:56:390:56:42

She came with an important man of science, all the way from London.

0:56:430:56:48

He said it were like nothing he had ever seen,

0:56:510:56:53

and that he'd never seen a creature with such an enormous eye.

0:56:530:56:57

He said it was important.

0:56:590:57:03

He said that all of science would be amazed.

0:57:030:57:07

Imagine that!

0:57:070:57:09

They called it an ichthyosaur after the Greek words for 'fish lizard'.

0:57:090:57:14

To my astonishment, he gave me £25 for it.

0:57:180:57:21

For the first time in my life,

0:57:250:57:27

my family would have no need to worry about money.

0:57:270:57:31

My ichthyosaur was just the beginning.

0:57:340:57:38

I never stopped looking.

0:57:380:57:40

I found more things the world had never seen.

0:57:400:57:44

They took my fossils up to London,

0:57:440:57:47

put them on display in the British Museum.

0:57:470:57:51

My finds would change the whole way the world was understood.

0:57:510:57:55

But they never once said who had found them.

0:57:570:58:01

The men of science wrote their books and forgot all about me.

0:58:010:58:05

Now though, almost 200 years later,

0:58:060:58:09

they say I was the greatest fossil hunter ever!

0:58:090:58:14

How about that?

0:58:140:58:16

My father would have been so proud.

0:58:160:58:19

I found many incredible things,

0:58:190:58:23

but just think, for every fossil I found,

0:58:230:58:28

how many more may lie undiscovered right beneath your feet?

0:58:280:58:34

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0:58:510:58:54

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