The Romans completed the wall around Masada in just a few days. But what they didn’t realise was how well stocked the rebels were. ibid.
How do you get a thousand-ton obelisk on to a barge? … [A. Make it an axle] ibid.
Roman engineers kept the water moving through hills and valleys maintaining a steady gradient of less than one per cent. An astounding feat … uphill: the inverted syphon … ibid.
One of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs created this impossibly vast monument to himself at Abu Simbel … The largest temple ever carved out of solid rock. Ancient Impossible s1e2: Monster Monuments, History 2014
Stonehenge: it appears to be a structure years ahead of its time. ibid.
‘These stones from this quarry were transported well over a hundred miles.’ ibid.
A 2000-year-old concrete dome found in the centre of Rome – it’s called the Pantheon. ibid.
The Egyptians built more than a hundred pyramids across their kingdom. ibid.
Ancient superweapons as mighty as today’s … Archimedes’ Claw … A group of men could grab and tip enemy ships … Just the first of Archimedes’ many game-changing inventions … A death ray … long debated … by harnessing the power of the sun. Ancient Impossible s1e3: Ultimate Weapons
Could Archimedes’ cannon have had the power needed for such destruction simply using steam? ibid.
Egypt: This floating superweapon appears to have carried more people than a modern aircraft carrier. ibid.
The ancient world clearly had more than one great scientific thinker … Colossal monuments, powerful ancient superweapons, and technology so precise it defies reinvention. Ancient Impossible s1e4: Ancient Einsteins
How could ancient civilisations have built huge structures … produced thousands of chariots with assembly-line precision … Why would the Romans have created a massive underground industrial hell, where thousands of slaves never saw daylight? Ancient Impossible s1e5: Biggest Builds
Using concrete on a large scale underwater … two thousand years ago. ibid.
What incredible power-tool might the ancient Egyptians have used to create this mysterious cylinder … What precision instruments did they have? … Who created the world’s first multi-tool? And an ancient Chinese machine that would start the world’s first industrial revolution. Ancient Impossible s1e6: Power Tools s1e6
How did the Chinese manage to build a devastating repeating weapon? … What secrets lie behind the ancient world’s high-tech body armour? … What simply invention was behind the world’s most ruthless weapon – land mines? Ancient Impossible: Warrior Tech s1e7
The game-changing lightweight armour that helped Alexander the Great conquer Asia. ibid.
Roman arenas, engineering triumphs, built to house gladiators fighting to their deaths. Ancient Impossible s1e8: Roman Empire
The Romans also created a mobile and deadly armoured weapon likened to the tank. ibid.
It covers over sixty thousand square feet and consists of a hundred and thirty-four columns in sixteen rows; most of them are fifty-feet high. The twelve central columns stand an incredible eighty-feet tall. The Hall is one of the greatest achievements of ancient Egyptian engineering. Ramesses the Great
The Romans brought their superior engineering skills to bear. When Rome Ruled Egypt, Discovery 2008
To ensure a constant water supply they had to dig deep. ibid.
To those who began the revolution in Russia seventy-five years ago science was a grand liberating force. They believed Karl Marx had discovered the scientific laws of society which they would now use to unlock the gates to a new world where everyone would be equal and free. But within twenty years the revolution was taken over by technocrats who looked down on the crowd below as though they were atoms. They were inspired not by Marx but by the laws of engineering. They believed they could transform the Soviet Union into a giant rational machine which they would run for their political masters. Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box I: The Engineer’s Plot: A Fable From the Age of Science, BBC 1992
This is a story of science and political power. How the Bolshevik’s vision of using science to change the world was itself transformed. What resulted was a strange experiment far removed from the original aims of the revolution. From the beginning of the revolution, modern technology was central to the Bolsheviks’ plans. Above all, the new power of electricity. ibid.
The aim of the Bolsheviks was to transform the people they ruled into what they called ‘scientific beings’, people able to understand and control the machines of the modern world rather than become enslaved to them. ibid.
The people to shape the future Soviet Union was passing to those who could build the new industrial society the Bolsheviks wanted so much. They were known as the bourgeois specialists, engineers from before the revolution who had the skills needed to master the modern technology. ibid.
At the end of 1930 the engineers’ dream suddenly became a nightmare: Stalin ordered two-thousand of them to be arrested, and eight of the most senior were put on a public show-trial. ibid.
‘Bolsheviks must master technology. It is time for the Bolsheviks themselves to become specialists. In the reconstruction period, technology decides everything.’ ibid. Stalin
He [Stalin] ordered engineering schools to be set up across the country to thousands of the young party faithful. ibid.
The model for this new simplified world was American … Gary, Indiana, is almost derelict. But seventy years ago it was a new kind of model city planned in an ordered way around a giant steel mill. To its builders it was a chance to break with the complexities of the past. ibid.
Those who lived in the American City were the new elite: a mixture of old Bolshevik commissars, foreign technicians and an ever increasing number of young red engineers. By the mid-30s the engineers had become the heroes in Soviet society. Praised by Stalin, they flaunted their new status. ibid.
In 1937 Stalin began another series of purges. This time his targets were the tens of thousands of old Bolsheviks. ibid.
It was a vision of a planned Utopia. Everything in the new Russia was to be designed and controlled from the centre of Moscow. ibid.
By the early ’50s vast reconstruction projects had changed the face of Soviet cities. ibid.
For over a 100 years Rolls Royce has been a British icon. Known for unparalleled luxury and classic design, loved by royals and the rich and famous. This is the story of Britain’s most iconic engineering firm. Rolls Royce: Dream Machine, Channel 5 2018
Rolls Royce started with two men: Charles Rolls and Henry Royce; they were unlikely business partners. ibid.
Their jet engines power the greatest airliners. ibid.
The car business suffered in post-war austerity Britain. ibid.
In the hidden world beneath London an army of 4,000 workers is attempting to build the biggest sewer in Britain’s history: seven metres wide and twenty miles long, the enormous tunnel will run directly beneath the River Thames. The five-billion-pound tunnel is urgently needed. The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer I, BBC 2018
A project first mooted almost twenty years ago. ibid.
London’s excess sewage has to go somewhere so to stop it backing up into people’s homes it’s released into the Thames. ibid.
London’s Victorian sewers are a labyrinth of more than 500 miles of interconnecting tunnels. Parts of the network have never been accurately surveyed. ibid.
If successful, the new super-sewer will capture this waste and transfer it to Europe’s largest treatment works east of the city. The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer II
Jim must scan every inch of the 20-mile stretch of the Thames to complete the underwater map. ibid.
Every day over 30 tonnes of wet-wipes are flushed down London’s loos. ibid.
During tunnelling, engineers plan to excavate over 40,000 tonnes of earth every week. ibid.