Let There Be Light

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0:00:00 > 0:00:01of Borneo has plummeted by half, almost 150,000.

0:00:01 > 0:00:08Now it's time for Click.

0:00:08 > 0:00:17This week, dancing with the stars, laughing with the stars and...

0:00:17 > 0:00:22Skinny-dipping in the Himalayas!

0:00:43 > 0:00:49Choose Wi-Fi, choose Snapchat, choose a pre- ordered backyard with

0:00:49 > 0:00:55arm and milk, juice likes, choose follows, choose pizza delivered by a

0:00:55 > 0:01:02drone, is quite bright, swipe left, follow, follow, follow. We are

0:01:02 > 0:01:06constantly being bombarded with updates, twigs and information. We

0:01:06 > 0:01:10are glued to our phones, addicted to digital status and even smashing up

0:01:10 > 0:01:14our gadgets, obliterating them to pieces in a violent quest to rid

0:01:14 > 0:01:18ourselves of this virtual assistants. How self-imposed

0:01:18 > 0:01:25restraints. Well, it's time to get away from all that, just for if you

0:01:25 > 0:01:31minutes. This week, Justin Rowlatt travelled thousands of miles to a

0:01:31 > 0:01:34village in the Himalayas which is getting electricity for the first

0:01:34 > 0:01:40time by enhancing the power of the sun.

0:01:40 > 0:01:48I've joined the team hiking up the frozen Zanskar River. We've got an

0:01:48 > 0:01:56eight day 140 kilometre trek ahead of us. Our destination, a village

0:01:56 > 0:02:01which has around 50 people, for houses huddled together, under

0:02:01 > 0:02:15granite cliffs. For hundreds of years the only light of the dark was

0:02:15 > 0:02:25the thin flicker from oil lamps. Tanzin struggles to cook in the dim

0:02:25 > 0:02:32light.TRANSLATION: These traditional lights are not portable

0:02:32 > 0:02:37and they don't cover enough area for the children to read. It also causes

0:02:37 > 0:02:44pollution. If we had solar power it would be much better for us.The

0:02:44 > 0:02:52next morning and the team gets to work. This is the satellite dish and

0:02:52 > 0:02:57take a look at this. It has taken quite a beating along the way. It

0:02:57 > 0:03:03will be interesting to see if this works.This is a street light.20

0:03:03 > 0:03:08watts. A complete grid?Because you get wild animals in the summer and

0:03:08 > 0:03:15winter. This is a charge controller. Tying the grid together is over 550

0:03:15 > 0:03:23metres of wiring, but there's a problem.The wire is very thick and

0:03:23 > 0:03:30it is frozen.It's so cold. It's about minus 15.Yes, we need to warm

0:03:30 > 0:03:37this for about half an hour so that it can be usable.His team is hard

0:03:37 > 0:03:42at it, threading cables through the tightest nooks and crannies. Each

0:03:42 > 0:03:48home is topped off with a shimmering solar panel.

0:03:52 > 0:03:57This is a solar panel and the capacity of the solar panel is 260

0:03:57 > 0:04:02watts. This panel is a polycrystalline panel. At any

0:04:02 > 0:04:06coverage it can charge the batteries very well.So even when it is

0:04:06 > 0:04:09freezing, as it is now, it will still generate electricity?The

0:04:09 > 0:04:14beauty of this is even at low temperatures it gives a better

0:04:14 > 0:04:19current. So it gets better? It gets better.It is like a high altitude

0:04:19 > 0:04:25desert, so it gets Sunbury-on-Thames 50 days in a year?Yes any one day

0:04:25 > 0:04:30it gets nine hours of sunlight. In winter it get six hours and proper

0:04:30 > 0:04:35sunlight.Generating as much power as possible is only the half of it.

0:04:35 > 0:04:41The other issue is making sure no power is wasted. What's more, the

0:04:41 > 0:04:46solar panels don't just passively drip DC into a battery, this system

0:04:46 > 0:04:52has a brain. Remote motion sensors ensure what's generated laughs. The

0:04:52 > 0:04:56idea is you don't have to remember to turn the lights off, as soon as

0:04:56 > 0:05:03you leave the room the lights go off. The sunsets... And it is almost

0:05:03 > 0:05:11ready to go. The new solar micro grid is a big deal for the

0:05:11 > 0:05:19villagers. There is an elaborate ceremony. The local Buddhist monk

0:05:19 > 0:05:25says a prayer for the system. And then it's time to throw the switch!

0:05:31 > 0:05:35The hope is the new grid can ensure the future of the village.

0:05:55 > 0:06:00That added satellite dish does work of the role and so... Does the

0:06:00 > 0:06:04motion sensor.

0:06:13 > 0:06:18A local Himalayan expedition has installed over 250 micro grid is in

0:06:18 > 0:06:25outlying areas of Ladakh. -- the Global Himalayan Expedition. After

0:06:25 > 0:06:29Hanamur we visited one specifically designed to light up the minds of

0:06:29 > 0:06:39schoolchildren. It is at the government higher secondary school.

0:06:45 > 0:06:51Hallow, kids! They've got an innovative computer system and what

0:06:51 > 0:06:56I'm going to do is test it by asking you a fuse simple questions. So I'm

0:06:56 > 0:07:01going to write them on the board and then you fire up the computers and

0:07:01 > 0:07:06we will get to work.OK, Sir!Here we go.

0:07:11 > 0:07:21That's right. Get to work! It might look like they are online, but they

0:07:21 > 0:07:23are actually scouring through an off-line internet. So even without a

0:07:23 > 0:07:28data connection, these children will learn the sort of research skills

0:07:28 > 0:07:33essential for finding out information in a connected world and

0:07:33 > 0:07:37of course it all runs of solar power. There's half a terabyte of

0:07:37 > 0:07:41memory on here and installed on here is all of Wikipedia, Ted talks, all

0:07:41 > 0:07:46sites of encyclopaedias and works, works that the kids can use in order

0:07:46 > 0:07:51to research all sorts of subjects. At the heart of the system. But this

0:07:51 > 0:07:55is the key to keeping it lower power. This is a UK developed

0:07:55 > 0:07:59computer system. Incredibly low-energy, drives the keyboard and

0:07:59 > 0:08:05the mouse. This is the computer they use. What it means is they can have

0:08:05 > 0:08:09up to ten of these bright LED screens all running on 24 bolts, so

0:08:09 > 0:08:18very, very efficient -- vaults. Time is up! We need answers. I'm going to

0:08:18 > 0:08:25pick on you.He was the last king of the Empire.What do you think of

0:08:25 > 0:08:30this system?How does it work? It works very well. I get many

0:08:30 > 0:08:39knowledge from it.It's very useful and easy to operate. I think it's

0:08:39 > 0:08:46perfect for students of mountain areas.Solar micro grid is a great

0:08:46 > 0:08:49fit for Ladakh, where steepling geography has scattered communities

0:08:49 > 0:08:56and made them difficult to reach with powerlines. 1.2 million people

0:08:56 > 0:09:00globally live without electricity and for many of them solar is a

0:09:00 > 0:09:05perfect solution too because we've seen it can be rolled out almost

0:09:05 > 0:09:11anywhere under the sun. It feeds the demand for electricity without

0:09:11 > 0:09:14eating up the planet.

0:09:19 > 0:09:24But there is a rather unfortunate tradition at the end of the track.

0:09:29 > 0:09:36That's right. A deep -- dip.

0:09:50 > 0:09:55Welcome to the week Intech. It was the week that the UK government

0:09:55 > 0:09:58unveiled an artificial intelligence tool for blocking extremist content

0:09:58 > 0:10:04online. And it's not just airspace that are going to be occupying in

0:10:04 > 0:10:07any future, researchers at a university in North Carolina have

0:10:07 > 0:10:10developed a drone that can fly through the air and propel itself

0:10:10 > 0:10:14underwater. Plus the Winter Olympics website was frozen by a cyber attack

0:10:14 > 0:10:19during the Opening Ceremony. And a robot got to compete in its own

0:10:19 > 0:10:25Olympics. 18 downhill skiing droids went on to the slopes, competing for

0:10:25 > 0:10:32a $10,000 prize. Boston Dynamics is at it again with a demo guaranteed

0:10:32 > 0:10:37to freak most people out. It's Robo dog can now open doors. That's one

0:10:37 > 0:10:44less obstacle in the fight world domination. And a pig farm in China

0:10:44 > 0:10:51is using AI to bring home the bacon. The AI measures animal health and

0:10:51 > 0:10:54behaviour, which the developers Alibaba hope will improve farming

0:10:54 > 0:10:58efficiency. And finally a coin might be preventing us from making contact

0:10:58 > 0:11:05with aliens. Researchers complained this week that the price of key

0:11:05 > 0:11:08computer chips have been driven through the roof by demand from

0:11:08 > 0:11:12crypto currency miners, with no price drop on site we will all just

0:11:12 > 0:11:15have to watch this space.

0:11:19 > 0:11:23Fashionably late, Apple has decided it wants a slice of the home speaker

0:11:23 > 0:11:31market, finally releasing its home pod, sometime after the first ones

0:11:31 > 0:11:35hit the shelves. They've gone for the same cylindrical shape as Google

0:11:35 > 0:11:39and Amazon but it looks more like a premium high-end speaker that either

0:11:39 > 0:11:45of -- than either of those systems. The amount of audio work Apple have

0:11:45 > 0:11:49done on this device means its key selling point is as a speaker. It is

0:11:49 > 0:11:53impressive, with a full rich upper facing woofer and seven tweeters,

0:11:53 > 0:11:57each with its own amplifier, meaning it can push sounds in different

0:11:57 > 0:12:02directions. So it sounds exactly the same wherever you are in the room,

0:12:02 > 0:12:05but what it doesn't do is give you the opportunity to change the levels

0:12:05 > 0:12:10in any way. If I wanted to push the base up right now there is no way of

0:12:10 > 0:12:15me doing that. And even in a space this big, the sound really carries.

0:12:15 > 0:12:23What is interesting though is even at 100% volume I can't even hear

0:12:23 > 0:12:29myself think and it can still hear my voice. Siri, pause. Just like

0:12:29 > 0:12:33that. Where is Apple is going to sound quality, Amazon seems to be

0:12:33 > 0:12:40focusing on different features. Their Echo Spot is all about the

0:12:40 > 0:12:45screen. It now has the ability to make video calls, as well as doing

0:12:45 > 0:12:49the usual like play music, Kelly the weather and even boil your kettle if

0:12:49 > 0:12:55you've got a smart home setup. But really it comes into its own as a

0:12:55 > 0:13:00very nice alarm clock. It's not just a function that makes this home

0:13:00 > 0:13:06assistance different, but price is another factor. While we Echo Spot

0:13:06 > 0:13:16costs £119, the home pod will set you back £319. The home pod ties chi

0:13:16 > 0:13:21Wintune Apple, so instead of being able to access any music streaming

0:13:21 > 0:13:24service by voice activation for example you can only use Apple music

0:13:24 > 0:13:28in this way. If you wanted the 70 million Spotify subscribers would

0:13:28 > 0:13:33have to go into your phone and use Air Pay as a workaround, essentially

0:13:33 > 0:13:38turning this speaker into a... Well, speaker. And as people have been

0:13:38 > 0:13:42discovering one that might leave a nasty white park on wooden tops.

0:13:42 > 0:13:47Apple's response? Choose a different surface, or get a cloth and some

0:13:47 > 0:13:52elbow grease. Over the next few weeks we are going

0:13:52 > 0:13:56to be talking to some of the gods of the visual affects world. Last week

0:13:56 > 0:14:01we went behind the scenes of Blade Runner and this week it is the turn

0:14:01 > 0:14:06of the Guardians of the Galaxy volume two and we started by talking

0:14:06 > 0:14:18about it is truly bonkers opening sequence.

0:14:18 > 0:14:22The beginning of the sequence features a title sequence with

0:14:22 > 0:14:30dancing in the foreground. And it doesn't cut. It is on Groot the

0:14:30 > 0:14:34whole time. He has to hold their viewers with his crazy little

0:14:34 > 0:14:37dancer, while what happens in the background never stops. We have

0:14:37 > 0:14:46something like or thousand frames of continuous action. -- 4000 frames.

0:14:46 > 0:14:50We were faced with the fact that the environment was completely

0:14:50 > 0:14:53spectacular and had to be created entirely digitally.

0:14:53 > 0:14:53spectacular and had to be created entirely digitally. Everything that

0:14:53 > 0:15:01we were inserting had to be reflected and that is multiple times

0:15:01 > 0:15:07the computation to compute the light on them and also their reflection.

0:15:07 > 0:15:13Everything ended up being done two or three times, because of the

0:15:13 > 0:15:16surface of the world they were standing on. We were delighted to

0:15:16 > 0:15:25have the opportunity to take on Rocket at the raccoon. The first

0:15:25 > 0:15:29aid, the muscle systems, all of these things had updated in the

0:15:29 > 0:15:34three years between the first Guardians and this one. We wanted to

0:15:34 > 0:15:38bring all about into Rocket, which meant rebuilding him from the ground

0:15:38 > 0:15:43up. And yet making sure that he was absolutely recognisable as the same

0:15:43 > 0:15:50character from the first movie. Space being very open, it is very

0:15:50 > 0:15:56hard to tell how fast things are moving. James Cameron is very keen

0:15:56 > 0:16:01on selling the speed of the action. So we conceived of these sort of

0:16:01 > 0:16:12wasps and waves of plasma energy that lived in and around this planet

0:16:12 > 0:16:16is so we could sell how fast the camera and the spaceships were

0:16:16 > 0:16:22moving -- wafts. There is a scene in the middle of the movie where Rocket

0:16:22 > 0:16:28and Yonder are in prison, but when they break out they are on-board

0:16:28 > 0:16:33this enormous, very big spaceship. Which of course didn't exist. We had

0:16:33 > 0:16:45big shots of Yondu walking through these hallways and docking bays with

0:16:45 > 0:16:49all of the ravages of the crew of the spaceship being shot out with

0:16:49 > 0:16:55his arrow. Ultimately, the arrow which Yondu is firing works its way

0:16:55 > 0:16:58all the way around the spaceship. We had to design the interior of the

0:16:58 > 0:17:06spaceship to give a satisfying journey for this arrow to take. It

0:17:06 > 0:17:13looks like a Busby Berkeley movie, with crazy camera angles. Every

0:17:13 > 0:17:18movie that we get involved in we want to be pushing the envelope,

0:17:18 > 0:17:34putting something new, with expectation that we will get there.

0:17:34 > 0:17:39Old film stock is a treasure trove of historical information. In the

0:17:39 > 0:17:43case of old BBC programmes it can be a race against time to find any

0:17:43 > 0:17:49remaining copy and digitise it or risk losing it forever. But when

0:17:49 > 0:17:53producer Charles Norton was given an old Morecambe and Wise episode there

0:17:53 > 0:17:58was a problem.After this that both the BBC in the British Film

0:17:58 > 0:18:07Institute have a look at the film and essentially judged it to be

0:18:07 > 0:18:12unable to be recovered. They were, effectively it was going to be

0:18:12 > 0:18:15thrown out. The pictures inside that film, they are still there, they

0:18:15 > 0:18:19still printed on the plastic, but they are all locked inside this

0:18:19 > 0:18:26permanently fused block of immobile gunk, which, sooner or later, we'll

0:18:26 > 0:18:33just rot away to soup.So Charles brought the film to Queen Mary

0:18:33 > 0:18:37University's dental department to use that x-ray machine to see

0:18:37 > 0:18:42through the love of decaying film to be precious pictures within. But now

0:18:42 > 0:18:45they had another problem. The film was too big to be X-Raid.The only

0:18:45 > 0:18:51thing you could do would be to cut the film into little pieces and scan

0:18:51 > 0:18:57Monfils at a time I didn't expect him to say yes to cutting up the

0:18:57 > 0:19:01film, but given the alternative was watching this just rapidly

0:19:01 > 0:19:08disintegrate, he said let's do it. We were using an infrared laser, it

0:19:08 > 0:19:11generated a lot of heat, occasionally there were flames. At

0:19:11 > 0:19:15the best we had a little bit of damage at the age of the frames, at

0:19:15 > 0:19:22worst we lost whole frames.Frame took 5000 images of each chunk as it

0:19:22 > 0:19:27rotated through 360 degrees to make a 3-D model. At that point they

0:19:27 > 0:19:31started to see what was on the film for the first time.When you first

0:19:31 > 0:19:36start seeing those pictures of Eric Morcombe in one of his stereotypical

0:19:36 > 0:19:46poses, you can't help but smile and think, yes, this has to be done.

0:19:46 > 0:19:52Once the scans were finished, they had loads of data, but they also had

0:19:52 > 0:19:58a new problem.The next really difficult part was finding a way of

0:19:58 > 0:20:04digitally flattening out this warped object and digitally prising apart

0:20:04 > 0:20:11all of the individual filmmakers within it. -- film layers. We

0:20:11 > 0:20:14originally have the manual software where I would physically go through

0:20:14 > 0:20:19each individual block and spend five or ten minutes flattening out one

0:20:19 > 0:20:26layer after the other, but that was over several thousand frames, quite

0:20:26 > 0:20:30labour-intensive.At this point Charles took the problem to a data

0:20:30 > 0:20:38scientist.What a human would do is try to see where the image was

0:20:38 > 0:20:42within the cross-section, the problem here is that a computer

0:20:42 > 0:20:48algorithm cannot quite do that. What the algorithm does is it follows,

0:20:48 > 0:20:52predominantly, the layers of plastic, so not the images, but the

0:20:52 > 0:20:58plastic. So once we have the layer of plastic, we can move to the edge

0:20:58 > 0:21:05of that layer and read off the image.That process was repeated on

0:21:05 > 0:21:10all of the film, making short work of a task that would take a human

0:21:10 > 0:21:17thousands of hours of work. Now Charles is beginning the next phase,

0:21:17 > 0:21:22turning the sky pictures back into video. That is the next problem. But

0:21:22 > 0:21:27now he has managed to put together a taster of what is on that film.And

0:21:27 > 0:21:32beautifully as well. Not a word out of sync.I'm not mainly now. It is

0:21:32 > 0:21:46me.You realise, of course, that the tape has stopped. How does he do it?

0:21:46 > 0:21:51That is an impressive sight. That is the king's library, assembled by

0:21:51 > 0:21:55King George III in the second half of the 18th century. Four floors

0:21:55 > 0:22:00below my feet here at the British Library lie its vast basins, which

0:22:00 > 0:22:04as you can imagine also contain a lot of books. But did you know they

0:22:04 > 0:22:09also contain 6.5 million sound recordings which are now being

0:22:09 > 0:22:15digitised? -- vast basement. The British Library is the National

0:22:15 > 0:22:22Sound archive, with sound recordings spanning the last 130 years. These

0:22:22 > 0:22:27are stored on all sorts of physical formats, from delicate wax cylinders

0:22:27 > 0:22:32to brass discs, two short lived formats like minidisks, remember

0:22:32 > 0:22:36that? There is a big push to digitise them and make them

0:22:36 > 0:22:41available online. Each of the 40 different types of storage format

0:22:41 > 0:22:46has unique challenges, they all need their own playback devices, and some

0:22:46 > 0:22:50need a little TLC to coax the best quality sound from them.Something

0:22:50 > 0:22:56reasonably robust like a vinyl this, we have an ultrasonic bath to be

0:22:56 > 0:23:00able to shake that debris out of its hiding place, we also have the more

0:23:00 > 0:23:05traditional type of record cleaning machines, the brush and vacuum

0:23:05 > 0:23:10arrangements, that can produce some quite startling results when you

0:23:10 > 0:23:16start to clean off otherwise invisible gunk.The team also have a

0:23:16 > 0:23:20workshop to keep their collection of machines in tiptop condition, so

0:23:20 > 0:23:24staff can work on as many concurrent transfers as possible and chip away

0:23:24 > 0:23:30at the millions of recordings.If you are faced with a tape for a disk

0:23:30 > 0:23:34in a really parlous state and you take it off a shelf, it may be

0:23:34 > 0:23:38mouldy, it may need treatment, some sort of repair, that doing that

0:23:38 > 0:23:44process, that active process of conserving and repairing that media

0:23:44 > 0:23:48such that it can be replayed, even just once, is hugely rewarding.

0:23:48 > 0:23:56Certainly challenging.But with only 2% of their collection digitise and

0:23:56 > 0:24:01only 15 years until some recordings become unsalvageable, it is a race

0:24:01 > 0:24:05against time to save as many as possible -- digitised. It reminds me

0:24:05 > 0:24:09that I have a box full of minidisks in the loft, to bring them in. That

0:24:09 > 0:24:13is it for this week from the British Library. Don't forget we live on

0:24:13 > 0:24:17Facebook and on Twitter at BBC click. Then he very much a watching.

0:24:17 > 0:24:25We will see you soon. -- for watching.