This is a single-cylinder four-stroke engine which uses petrol as a fuel. ibid.
It was the first time the world saw a motorcycle, and it is the first ever petrol-driven vehicle. By an amazing coincidence just sixty kilometres away another motor-car pioneer was testing a rival prototype. Karl Benz had made a fortune making engines for industry but his real goal was to create a car. And that’s exactly what he did in 1886. ibid.
In a hot air balloon invented by a pair of dabbling amateurs ... it was paper that first inspired the French brothers’ interest in flight. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e7: High Fliers
A few months after the Montgolfiers’ first flight the Paris Academy launched a hydrogen balloon. ibid.
In 1906 Graf von Zeppelin recorded a twenty-four hour flight. The German government commissioned an entire fleet. ibid.
The Wright Brothers experimented with box-kites and concluded that two sets of wings would increase lift ... Their plane – Flier 1 – looks very like a box-kite, except the Wrights added a system of controls and a lightweight engine. In 1903 the Wright brothers completed the first powered flight in a winged craft. It was a magnificent achievement but it lasted less than a minute. ibid.
On July 25th 1909 [Louis] Bleriot used it to fly across the English Channel. ibid.
It was huge. It was two-hundred-and-forty-five-metres long ... This was not a party balloon: the Hindenburg had enough life to carry four one-thousand-and-fifty-horsepower engines. ibid.
The Hindenburg fire brought the age of the airship to a tragic end. ibid.
The exquisite porcelain of the far east was the most sought after tableware of the eighteenth century’s wealthiest people. However, the secret of its manufacture had evaded Europeans for hundreds of years. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s4e8: Europe – Perfect Porcelain
Kaolin powder was brought into Delph along canals by barges. ibid.
Paddle-steamers were not designed for tourists. They were cargo ships ... A hundred and fifty years after they first appeared paddle-steamers are still one of the best ways of exploring the alpine landscape. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e9: Steaming up the Alps
British pioneer George Stephenson came to Switzerland in the late 1840s to advise on railway construction. The trouble was a conventional train could never climb such a steep slope because the smooth train wheels don’t have enough grip against the smooth rails ... The funicular railway is amazingly simple. Two cars on a cable, some water and a pair of buckets! ibid.
It was all about cogs and teeth. ibid.
Welcome aboard the steepest rack railroad in the world ... Over a hundred and fifteen years later tourists are still happy to trust their lives to a nineteenth century technology of cogs and racks. ibid.
In the late eighteenth century Sweden had no heavy industry to speak of ... A canal was built linking all these lakes together. They called it the Gota Canal. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e10: Swedish Waterwork
Look closely and you’ll find the British were behind almost every big advance that shaped the modern world. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e1: Buildings, Discovery 2006
The magnificently named Spitfire. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e2: Planes
Frank Whittle had invented the jet engine ... Sir Frank Whittle’s Gloster Meteor which launched the jet age. ibid.
The Comet was simply the most glamorous plane ever built ... The first Comet was built in 1949 ... In October 1952 a Comet crashed on take-off in Rome: over the next two years five more Comets crashed. In 1954 the Comet was grounded. ibid.
The Harrier has everything a good jet fighter needs. Speed, agility, fire-power ... The Harrier can take off and land vertically. It can hover and manoeuvre in mid-air ... Test flights with the P11-27 began in 1960 ... By 1966 the first Harrier jump jet, the sexiest jet fighter ever built, was in the air. ibid.
Concorde was a step into the unknown ... Concorde is a beautiful memorial to the unassuming smoking cardigan-wearing problem-solvers who are the real heroes of British engineering. It’s just a damn shame she’s been grounded. ibid.
There is something about a bridge which is a bit special: these are among the biggest man-made structures in existence ... Tower Bridge: this is the most fairytale bridge in the world ... It’s really an iron bridge clad in stone, and that’s the secret. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e3: Bridges
The biggest and most expensive Meccano set ever made: the iron bridge in Coalbrookdale ... The world’s very first iron bridge ... Darby’s bridge cost £6,000. ibid.
The revolutionary Menai Straits Bridge ... a radically new way to build bridges: this is the first time anyone had tried to suspend a big road from towers using metal cable: a suspension bridge. ibid.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel wanted to build the biggest suspension bridge in the world spanning the greatest distance. An elegant bridge that seemed almost to float across the sky ... Brunel never ceases to amaze ... What Brunel called his Little Darling. ibid.
To a bridge whose stories begins with a disaster ... What was created was the greatest civil engineering project of the nineteenth century. A marvel of girder and rivet – the Forth Rail Bridge ... The biggest rail bridge in the world ... The art critic William Morris described this bridge as ‘the supremest specimen of all ugliness’. ibid.
An engineering leviathan ... the Humber Bridge. This bridge is over two kilometres long and is made up of 27,500 tons of steel and 480,000 tons of concrete ... Opened in 1981 ... Until recently the biggest in the world. ibid.
Land Transport ... The car itself is a rolling definition of excellence ... The Rolls Royce ... A Silver Ghost set you back £3,500. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e4: Vehicles
The first internationally celebrated British roadster. Sex on four wheels. The car James Bond should have driven. The E-Type Jaguar ... unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show 1961. ibid.
HMS Surprise belongs to the Swiftsure class of submarines. These nuclear-powered subs are equipped with Cruise missiles and were the first British subs to sail under the polar ice-cap. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e5: Ships
The Victory was recognised in her day as one of the fastest and most agile, most heavily armed warships on the high seas. ibid.
The era of metal seafaring machines was beginning ... And with the SS Great Britain he [Brunel] planned a new kind of ship to link Britain with its empire and former colonies. Brunel aimed at nothing less than a revolution in seafaring. ibid.
Think of the ultimate icon of art deco and here it is: the Queen Mary. ibid.
This is it: the world’s first fast-slipway lifeboat. ibid.
One of the great engineering marvels of the nineteenth century. One railway in particular enthralled the general public: the GWR or Great Western Railway. Soon to be known as God’s Wonderful Railway. And it was considered the crowning achievement of its young engineering chief: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e6: Transport Systems
The Underground: no-one had done it before ... In 1863 the world’s very first subterranean railway opening linking Farringdon to Paddington. ibid.
Soon an extraordinary canal network, the most extensive in the world, fanned out creating a new industrial Britain. ibid.
The golden age of canals was short-lived. By the mid-nineteenth century a new invention had revolutionised transport: the steam engine. ibid.
London Underground is 150 years old this year. The City would be unthinkable without it. The Tube: An Underground History, BBC 2013
Farringdon is prone to flooding. The track is built along the bed of a river. ibid.
The first underground lines were built just under the surface using a technique called Cut & Cover. ibid.
The Greathead Shield was the tunnelling machine pioneered by Brunel that made it possible to dig through the clay deep under London. ibid.
One other innovation drove this extraordinary expansion: Electricity. ibid.
In 1933 intense public demand to make the system simpler led parliament to create a new body bringing all the different private companies together: London Transport. ibid.
The Tube was creating new suburbs. ibid.
On 18th November 1987 the years of neglect brought Kings Cross Station to a tragic low. ibid.
The Tube is now undergoing a £10 billion upgrade. ibid.