Michael Faraday, the father of electricity ... He conducted most of his experiments into magnetism and electricity here at the Royal Institution. And his practical demonstrations to a distinguished audience of fellow scientists and enthusiastic VIPs were the talk of the town. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e7: Bright Sparks
Armstrong, the Geordie genius, had with a combination of his power station and Swan’s lights pioneered the domestic use of electricity. ibid.
Another revolutionary discovery – the electric motor. Yet another breakthrough for the father of electricity. ibid.
This is mining country: tin and copper are found in this area, and have been worked here for over four thousand years. The Cornish coast is full of holes, hacked out of the granite by miners desperate to find metal ore. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e8: Heavy Metal
By the 1860s there were 340 mines across Cornwall; 50,000 people were working above and below the surface. ibid.
By the 1860s the Cornish mining boom was over. ibid.
Silk production is a slow laborious process. It originated in China 4,000 years ago. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e9: Cutting It Fine
But the simple punch-card went on to revolutionise much more than weaving. ibid.
Machine tools are the unsung heroes of the industrial revolution. Without them the spectacular feats of nineteenth century engineering would not have been possible. Mark Williams, More Industrial Revelations s2e10: Machine Tools
Harnessing the wind had secured the lowlands. And wind was about to propel Holland’s trading ambitions. Both the British and the Dutch had made contact with the East Indies, and in 1602 the Dutch East Indies Company was formed to harvest the treasure of the world. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e1: Reaping the Whirlwind, Discovery 2005
In seventeenth-century France they built one of the greatest engineering feats of its time: a massive canal across the country from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e2: The Canal King
By 1668 Riquet’s reservoir and mountain channel were well under construction. He had solved the problem of how to fill the canal with water. ibid.
This was no ordinary sized canal. Riquet’s ambitious plan was to build a canal with twice the volume of any built before, so that it would be deep enough to carry ocean-going boats. ibid.
Riquet employed 12,000 workers to carve out the canal ... They even received sick-pay. ibid.
No-one had ever built a tunnel for a canal before. It was nicknamed Le Mal-Pas (the bad step). ibid.
Britain built the first steam locomotive to deliver coal from its mines. They would have stayed purely as industrial machines if it hadn’t been for Robert Stephenson. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e4: The Impossible Railway
This is the cutting made for Stephenson’s railway. At three and a half kilometres long and twelve metres deep it took forty barrel runs to take away the earth. At times 20,000 navvies were employed to build the line to Birmingham. ibid.
In the nineteenth century engineers struggled to keep up with the demand to build roads, railways and canals. There was only one alternative to a man with a pickaxe and that was to use explosives. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e5: Big Bang, Discovery 2005
The Italian Chemist Ascanio Sobrero had created a monster. The problem with nitroglycerine is it’s very unstable, extremely dangerous. You can never tell when it’s going to go boom! Nitroglycerine was the most destructive explosive that had ever been found ... Alfred Nobel however was determined to tame it. ibid.
After several accidents the Californian government actually banned Nobel’s blasting oil because it was so unstable. Alfred Nobel wasn’t having the best of luck in Europe either. Despite all of his attempts to make things as safe as possible his Swedish factory blew up. His explosives empire was booming. He had built a German factory near Hamburg. Unfortunately, when this was also destroyed in a violent explosion he decided to continue his research out of harm’s way ... Would Nobel live long enough to succeed? ibid.
During the nineteenth century electricity went from being an obscure scientific curiosity to becoming the driving force of the modern world. Ironically, it was on the railways electricity found its first practical use. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s3e6: The European Story: Generation Electric, Discovery 2005
Siemens completed his Indo-European telegraph in 1870. ibid.
Two Englishmen, father and son, transformed the textile and iron industries of northern Europe. It’s a story of espionage and intrigue ... William Cockerill was born in 1759 ... One of the British machines Cockerill built was the Spinning Jenny. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e7: Industrial Espionage
Perrier bought a water engine for the project, and when the Paris Water Works was completed it worked perfectly. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e8: Steam on the Water
In 1775 Perrier launched the very first steam-powered boat on the River Seine in Paris. ibid.
Once paddle-steamers had proved to be a commercial success in the United States they quickly spread across Europe. ibid.
In 1829 John Ericsson built a steam locomotive called Novelty. ibid.
Ericsson had developed a shortened version of the Archimedes' Screw that would propel boats. ibid.
As well as being labour-intensive the major problem with steam engines was they made such inefficient use of coal ships which couldn’t carry enough for long journeys. ibid.
The United States showed great interest in Ericsson’s ship ... Jon Ericsson went on to make his fortune in the United States building revolutionary iron-clad warships, designing guns and advancing development of the steam-engine. ibid.
Iron turned Sweden into one of the almighty nations in Europe. But it owes its strength to one man: Christopher Polhem, whose genius forged its power. 1620: and the survival of Sweden depended on its ability to produce high quality iron ... Through a quirk of geology it sat on one of the richest iron-ore deposits in the world. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e9: Iron Man of Sweden
To produce sixty tons of iron you need a hundred and twenty tons of charcoal. Now, to produce a hundred and twenty tons of charcoal you need to slowly burn twelve hundred tons of wood. ibid.
Swedish iron is free of impurities such as sulphur and phosphorus so it is very strong. ibid.
The elaborately decorated material was in such demand that by the last 1700s hand-woven Lyon silk made up over a third of France’s exports. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e10: King Silk
Jacquard was back in business. In 1804 Napoleon called him to Paris in order to mechanise the Lyon silk industry. It was there that Jacquard made a surprise discovery ... the prototype to an automatic loom. ibid.
The new and improved Jacquard loom: the big change that Jacquard had made ... The punchcards now control the loom. ibid.
They realised Jacquard’s system could be applied to any fabric; they decided to use it. And by 1833 the British had over a hundred thousand looms based on Jacquard’s system, driving the world’s biggest textile trade. ibid.
The first threshing engine was invented in 1786 by a Scotsman Andrew Michael. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e1: Bread, Beer and Salt
Now in the 1880s they ditched the grindstones and water-mills and they replaced them with rollers and a turbine. ibid.
Without mass produced beer, bread and salt, workers would have starved and the industrial revolution would have ground to a halt. ibid.
During the industrial revolution there was an unprecedented demand for new buildings ... If the building industry was going to keep up with demand, brick-making would have to increase output dramatically. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s4e2: Europe s4e2: Building Europe, Discovery 2006
Berlin decided to clean up its act, and made plans to replace this time-consuming tram journey with a modern rail link and a modern train. And the most modern of all these trains were powered not by steam but by 1898 onwards by electricity. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e3: The City
By the 1760s they could use a Spinning Jenny: a glorified spinning wheel with several spindles: but even it couldn’t keep up with demand. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe 4e4: Cotton, Linen and Rope
Arkwright built a series of mills across the north of England. This is Cromford: the first. His appetite for cotton was insatiable. ibid.
In 1889 this was the tallest building in the world – three hundred metres high and designed to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution ... This is still the world’s most famous iron tower. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e5: Eiffel’s Tower
Eiffel’s use of open girders massively reduced the wind resistance. Not only were they cost effective they were an engineering triumph. ibid.
Not one of Eiffel’s workers died during construction of the Tower. ibid.
Two of motor power’s most innovative pioneers – Karl Benz und Gottlieb Daimler. Their dream of a fast self-powered road vehicle changed almost every aspect of modern life. And it helped define the twentieth century. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e6: Exploding Engines
When steam-power really got going as a moving force it wasn’t on the roads, it was on the railways. By the 1860s locomotives were criss-crossing Europe, but on the roads self-powered vehicles were in for a bumpy ride especially in England. ibid.