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All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 Energy For Sale

    • November 5, 1985

    This programme looks at fireworks and the discovery of a commercial process for making ammonia easily converted into nitrate providing explosives for the First World War and fertilisers to fuel the agricultural revolution of the 1960s.

  • S01E02 Keepers Of Light

    • November 12, 1985

    This programme examines the work of Henry Fox-Talbot, the father of modern Photography.

  • S01E03 At The End Of A Rainbow

    • November 19, 1985

    This programme reveals the connection between William Henry Perkin's accidental discovery of the first synthetic dye and the identification of the cause of tuberculosis and the cure for syphilis.

  • S01E04 Bright Sparks And Long Waves

    • November 26, 1985

    This programme focuses on the work of Heinrich Hertz who discovered that an oscillating spark gave off waves of electromagnetic energy, knowledge that was used by Marconi. initially, to develop Morse code signals.

  • S01E05 Number Crunching

    • December 3, 1985

    This programme tells the story of Charles Babbage, a mathematician who, in the 1840s, became impatient with the mathematical tables of the time and built his own 'difference engine' - a precursor of the modern computer.

  • S01E06 Another Time Another Place

    • December 10, 1985

    This programme looks at Yorkshire born John Harrison's invention of the grasshopper escapement, used in marine timekeepers and how in 1884 the Greenwich Meridian became prime Zero longitude of the world.