A favorite of students and educators everywhere, James Burke the "scientific detective" is back tracking the fascinating links between technological invention, social history, economics, and, well, everything. .As the Sherlock Holmes of science, Burke tracks through 12,000 years of history for the clues that lead us to great life changing inventions-the atom bomb, telecommunications, the computer, jet aircraft, plastics, and television. This interdisciplinary approach has never before been applied to history or science and it succeeds tremendously.
"Life is a giant 3-dimensional globe made up of millions of threads that cross and recross each other," says Burke as he traces the lines that lead from a French loom to IBM, from a kink in a water pipe to a carburetor. "He makes two dozen international stops by way of explaining how the steam pump led to carbon paper, to the entire Industrial revolution and the moon landing, with drill bits, X-rays and genetic engineering along the way." says New York News
day. "In one half-hour! Your head spins, but its the same as splendid champagne. TV is rarely this tasty or this smart, and hardly ever both in such a whiz-bang package."
Volume 1:The Trigger Effect
Both the beginning and the end of the story are here. The end is our present dependence on complex technological networks illustrated by the NYC power blackouts. Life came almost to a standstill: support systems taken for granted failed. How did we become so helpless? Technology originated with the plow and agriculture. Each invention demands its own follow-up: once started, it is hard to stop. This segment ends in Kuwait, where society has leapt from ancient Egypt to the technology of today in 30 years.
Volume 2: Death in the Morning
How did a test of gold's purity revolutionize the world 2500 years ago and lead to the atomic bomb? Standardizing precious metal in coins stimulated trade from Greece to Persia, causing the construction of a huge commercial center and library at Alexandria. This wealth of nautical knowledge aided navigators 14 centuries later. Mariners discovered that the compass's magnetized needle did not point directly north. Investigations into the nature of magnetism led to the discovery of electricity, radar and to the atomic bomb.
Volume 3:Distant Voices
Telecommunications exist because the Normans wore stirrups at the Battle of Hastings- a simple advance that caused a revolution in the increasingly expensive science of warfare. Europe turned its attention to making money to wage wars. As mine shafts were dug deeper, they became flooded, stimulating scientists like Galileo to investigate vacuums, air pressure and other natural laws to mine deeper silver. This led to the discovery of electricity and magnetism's relationship and to the development of radio, and deep space telecommunications that may enable contact with galactic civilizations.
Volume 4: Faith in Numbers
Each development in the organization of systems (political, economic, mechanical, electronic)influences the next, by logic, by genius, by chance, or by utterly unforeseen events. The transition from the Middle ages to the Renaissance was influenced by the rise of commercialism, a sudden change in climate, famine and the Black Death, which set the stage for the invention of the printing press.
Volume 5:The Wheel of Fortune
The power to see into the future with computers originally rested with priest-astronomers who knew the proper times to plant and harvest. The constellations influenced life spectacularly, particularly when the ailing Caliph of Baghad was cured by an astrologer using Greek lore. His ancient medical secrets were translated and spread throughout Europe, ushering in an era of scientific inquiry. The need for more precise measuring devices in navigation gave rise to the pendulum clock, the telescope, forged steel and interchangeable machine parts-the basis of modern industrial system.
Volume 6:Thunder in the Skies
A dramatically colder climate gripped Europe during the 13th century profoundly affecting the course of history for the next seven centuries. The changes in energy usage transformed architecture and forced the creation of new power sources. The coming of the Industrial Revolution, spurred on by advances in the steam engine, scarred England indelibly: but a moment in history later, gasoline-powered engines opened the way to the heavens.
Volume 7:The Long Chain
Often, materials discovered by accident alter the course of the world. In the 1600s Dutch commercial freighters controlled Atlantic trade routes. Competing British lines induced America to produce pitch to protect hulls of their royal vessels. This arrangement lasted until 1776, after which a Scottish inventor tried to produce pitch from coal tar. By the time he succeeded the navy was using copper instead. Subsequent experiments with coal tar yielded gaslight lamps, waterproofed garments, a brilliant mauve dye that established the German chemical industry and nylon, the first of the miracle plastics.
Volume 8:Eat, Drink and Be Merry
When Napoleon marched huge forces across Europe, he needed an efficient way to store provisions. A Frenchman preserved sterilized food in empty champagne bottles, an idea modified by the British, who tried tin cans. Still, canned foods sometimes spoiled, which led to experiments with refrigeration. Later, it was discovered that gases may be stored at very low temperatures in a thermos flask, a device handy for picnics, for polar explorers and for, storing large quantities of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. When lit by a spark these gases can send rockets into space.
Volume 9:Countdown
What happens when you combine a carbon arc light, a billiard ball coating, a spoked wheel and consecutive images? Motion pictures! Complex and sometimes incredible events led to Thomas Edison's remarkable invention; the beginnings of limelight on a Irish mountain; George Eastman's production of celluloid from the slightly explosive gun cotton; the "magic lantern" of an Austrian ballistics teacher. Then Eadweard Muybridge settled a bet in 1872 by photographs; does a horse raise all four feet when galloping? (Yes.) Today moving pictures, together with television, are enormously powerful mass media. Have we become trapped by our own technology?
Volume 10:Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
"Why did we do it this way?" Essential moments from the previous programs are reviewed to illustrate the common factors that make for change. Will they go on operating to affect our futures? And if so, can we recognize them? The second half looks at the extent to which we have become increasingly incapable of understanding how change occurs in our complex world and at why we are in such a predicament. Finally, there is a look ahead to the need for radical change in the availability and use of information in the future, if we are to remain in control of our destinies.
Revolutions
Discover how the steam engine led to safety matches, imitation diamonds and the moon in a wild ride.
Sentimental Journeys
What has Freud got to do with maps? Or prison reform with blue dye? Or the inside of a star with the Himalayas? India reveals the answers.
Getting It Together
Start by examining a SWAT team, which leads to hot air ballooning, the root of many inventions.
Whodunit?
Who stole a set of billiard balls in 1902 and why was he the most famous crook in history? The clues: maps from 1775, Charles Darwin's cousin and the FBI.
Something for Nothing
Something impossible happened 400 years ago. And we wound up in outer space, thanks (en route) to pigeon lovers, the Pope, and electric Italian frogs.
Echoes of the Past
On his way to finding the secret of the universe, Burke takes us to the Buddhist tea ceremony, ties it to international spies and Lincoln's assassination.
Photo Finish
The Le Mans 24-hour race is the backdrop for linking photography and bullets, relativity and blimps.
Separate Ways
Two trails split over slavery in the 18th Century. One route leads to the Wild West and Brooklyn Bridge, the other coining money and TV. Both end with a threat to peace.
High Times
Unwrap a sandwich and you're on a path to World War II radar and Neo-Impressionist painters.
Dйjа Vu
History repeats itself, when you know how to look. Pizzaro beats the Incas, the first stock market opens. The Queen of England salutes a Mexican beetle and Hitler's plans misfire.
New Harmony
Microscopic bugs inspired the novel "Frankenstein" which aided the birth of Socialism.
Hot Pickle
The connections between a cup of tea, opium dens, the London Zoo and a switch that releases bombs.
The Big Spin
The greatest medical accident in history starts a trail that leads to Helen of Troy, 17th Century flower-power, the invention of soda pop and earthquake detection.
Bright Ideas
A Baltimore man invented the bottle, which led to razors and clock springs, and the Hubble telescope.
Making Waves
Hairdressers, Gold Rush miners, Irish potato farmers and English parliamentarians are really tied together.
Routes
A sick lawyer in 18th Century France changes farming and triggers the French Revolution and new medical research.
One Word
One medieval word kicks off the investigation into different cultures with the same stories that ends in cultural anthropology.
Sign Here
Dutch piracy starts international law and French probability math and phonetics.
Better Than the Real Thing
How the zipper started with technology Jefferson picked up in Paris during a row about Creation.
Flexible Response
Robin Hood starts us on a trail from medieval showbiz to land drainage, to the invention of decimals that end up in U.S. currency, thanks to the guy who started the Erie Canal.
Feedback
In the twenty-first century, electronic agents will be our servants on the great web of knowledge. They will use the kind of feedback that won World War II. Feedback mathematics is invented to help guns hit their targets. The concept of feedback originated in the vineyards of France by a wine-maker and physiologist named Claude Bernard. His ex-wife began the Humane Society, created to save people from drowning. Drownings increased due to an increase in shipping. All of this eventually leads to the hiring of a doctor at a sanitarium in Michigan. The doctor tries out new diets on the patients. The most successful product is named after him -- Kellogg's cornflakes.
What's in a Name
A good breakfast leads to corn cob garbage by the ton. This is used for "furfan," and a whole new discipline no one's heard about, called furfan chemistry. Furfan can do amazing things, like creating resin for bonding. This leads to the creation of the tractor and, then the creation of the diesel engine. Believe it or not, James Burke shows how this all leads to the creation of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Drop the Apple
Smithson, the benefactor of the Smithsonian Institution, discovered the mineral calamine. This mineral is one of the most useful and unusual because it gives off electricity. The secret is in the shape. This was discovered by J. Currie of the famous pair. The first consumer use of this electricity was 33 rpm records. This eventually leads to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which leads to the creation of the atomic bomb.
An Invisible Object
This program travels five hundred years into the past and back, to connect mysterious black holes in space with modern fast food, via thrills and spills on the Pony Express, Italian anatomy theaters and stolen corpses, the Sultan of Turkey's disastrous finances, Renaissance German jewelry, the invention of the screw, slide rules and American tobacco plantations, boiled potatoes, Spanish Inquisition thumbscrews, and why beer is served chilled. The show also includes a French Queen's dinner party, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the greatest disaster in history (for wine-drinkers), squeaky-clean Swiss airplanes, and a fifteenth century French barber-shop quartet.
Life is No Picnic
The advent of modern coffee-vending machines spurs the creation of freeze dried coffee. This begins a revolutionary effort by the U.S. Army in World War II to lighten the soldiers' rations packs. The Star Spangled Banner lyrics are adapted from an ancient Greek poem. Mme de Stael of Switzerland drives the Romantic Movement forward in Europe. The Romantic Movement affects all thinkers which leads to future studies of animal development. Based on this research,Darwin proposes his Theory of Evolution.
Elementary Stuff
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is shared by Alfred Russel Wallace who has a strong belief in miracles and spiritualism. British interest in spiritualism is shared by physicist Oliver Lodge who develops the coherer, the device that makes radio reception possible. With the Swiss creation of postage stamp, Switzerland becomes the world postal center. Highlanders fearing oppression from Scottish rulers flee to North Carolina where turpentine is developed. The creation of the vacuum pump is instrumental in the discovery of both Boyle's Law and Pierre Perrault's hydrography. Quarrels about whether or not present language/literature is as good as that of the past leads to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes.
A Special Place
Meet a real live man who changed history with a totally new way of identifying you. Plus a four hundred-year trip through 20 locations. Swedish electricity and Dutch wind tunnels use a new type of photography. Aristocratic World War I fighter aces and their crazy mountain-climbing uncles. Touchy-feely times in Romantic Germany. The mysteries of ancient cities uncovered. Female painters in eighteenth-century London theaters lit by amazing new kinds of lights. Saving sailors from shipwreck and helping Caribbean smugglers. Astronomers, poets, fishermen, mathematicians and skeptics, bird-painters and Russian skullduggery lead the program to a final beauty-spot, where hundreds of Americans get drenched every day.
Fire from the Sky
How do you go from the majestic beauty of Iceland's geysers to the destruction of the Allied Firebombing of Hamburg in World War II? You stop by Stonehenge, chat with the mystical Caballists, talk to Martin Luther, Ozeander, Tycho Brahe and Mary Queen of Scots, before heading to the magnetic North Pole. The invention of gin and tonic will set you back on course to the discovery that mixing rubber with gasoline makes it burn slower, an integral component of any firebombing. It's all a matter of connections.
Hit the Water
If you launch your story in the cockpit of a Tornado Fighter Bomber-- the height of "smart bombs" operated by smart pilots -- dip into the history of margarine and plankton, travel to 18th Century Turkey to investigate small pox inoculations, dance at the ballet Copelia, then blow up a dam in Norway with a British commando team, how do you prevent Hitler from building and exploding atomic bombs? Through the infinite world of unexpected connections - an ingenious look at why and how Hitler never harnessed heavy water and the A-Bomb.
In Touch
An American scientist ponders the problem of nuclear fusion in 1951. This unleashes a series of connections that encompass superconductors, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, King George III, modern oceanography, the Versailles Gardens, Pagoda Mania, and handwriting analysis to arrive at the Global Net. Through this chain of unexpected connections, you, too, can "stay in touch."
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