Connections is a 10-episode documentary television series and 1978 book (Connections, based on the series) created, written, and presented by science historian James Burke. The series was produced and directed by Mick Jackson of the BBC Science and Features Department and first aired in 1978 (UK) and 1979 (USA). It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, and demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology. The series was noted for Burke's crisp and enthusiastic presentation (and dry humour), historical re-enactments, and intricate working models.
"Elementary Stuff" – Alfred Russel Wallace, who studied beetles, Oliver Lodge and telegraphy, a radio designed by Reginald Fessenden, which was used by banana growers, studied by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, who got the Swiss to use stamps on postcards with cartoons of Gothic houses of parliament, which in turn had been inspired by Johann Gottfried Herder's Romantic movement, inspired by fake Scottish poems. The exiled Scots escaped to North Carolina, producing turpentine, which helped make Chinese lacquer on tinplate, which is for what Jean-Baptiste Colbert had hoped. French navy decorator Pierre Paul Puget, who paints pictures of locations where barometers are the subject of investigation. The weather experimenter, whose brother's writing turns on Swift, whose pal Berkeley has visual theories that Young confirms while decoding ancient Egyptian from examples sketched by pencils invented by French balloonists. The American balloons are used for spying by Allan Pinkerton and his intrepid agent James McParland, who becomes famous in England because of Conan Doyle.
#OnThisDay 1974: "If you stop trying to entertain people, you're a bad teacher" James Burke discussed showbiz, science and throwing the script away, with Chris Dunkley.
Source: https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1111302167804235776
"Making Waves" – a permanent wave in ladies' hair is aided by curlers, and this leads us to explore borax, taking us to Switzerland, Johann Sutter's scam, and Sutter's Mill, and that means the discovery of gold leading to the 1848 California gold rush. Americans then cut into the English tea market with the aide of the Yankee Clipper, which played a big role in the gold rush. A fungus from America created the Great Famine of Ireland, resulting in the importing of corn, but laws prevented the Yankee clippers from being used until it was too late to save Ireland. Finally, the laws were changed, leading to franking fraud, which was overcome by special printing of postage stamps, which gave us wallpaper, and a thickening agent, leading us to the Canal du Midi, the American war for independence, resettlement in Scotland, highlanders in Nova Scotia and—finally—the RMS Queen Elizabeth II.
"One Word" – The one word that changed everything was "filioque", but we must make a trip to Constantinople, visit the Renaissance, meet Aldus Manutius of Venice, explore abbreviations, learn about Italic print, which resulted in an overload of books, requiring the development of a cataloguing system, which was complicated for those seeking education, where Komensky was innovating with pictorial textbooks. And that brings us to church intolerance, James Watt and the Industrial Revolution, cerium, the asteroid Ceres, Gauss's mathematics, and cultural anthropology.
#OnThisDay 1980: James Burke and Douglas Adams pondered whether they were happier when they were children, or as adults, on Open Door.
Source: https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1109070610565660672
"Something for Nothing" – How do space shuttle landings start with the vacuum which was forbidden by the Church? Burke takes us on an adventure with barometers, weather forecasting, muddy and blacktop roads, rain runoff, sewage, a cholera epidemic, hygiene, plumbing, ceramics, vacuum pumps, compressed-air drills, tunnels in the Alps, train air brakes, hydroelectric power, the electric motor, Galvani's muscle-electricity connection, Volta's battery, and gyroscopes.
"Distant Voices" suggests that telecommunications exist because Normans had stirrups for horse riding which in turn led them to further advancements in warfare. Deep mine shafts flooded and scientists in search of a solution examined vacuums, air pressure, and other natural phenomena.
"Hit the Water" – Thanks to napalm, made with palm oil, also used for margarine, stiffened with a process using kieselguhr that comes from plankton living in currents studied by Ballot before observing the Doppler effect that caused Fizeau to measure the speed of light. Fizeau's father-in-law's friend, Prosper Mérimée, who wrote "Carmen"... his friend, Anthony Panizzi, who works at the British Museum, opened to house the collection of Hans Sloane, who treats Lady Montague's smallpox before she sees Turkish tulips, first drawn by Gesner, whose godfather eats sausages and cancels the military contract with France, which was the first to develop military music and choreography, used in a London show by John Gay, whose friend Arbuthnot does statistics that impress the Dutch mathematician who knows Voltaire, who hears from the worm-slicing Lazzaro Spallanzani, who stars in the story by Judge Hoffman, who tries German nationalists who start gymnastics, adopted by the YMCA and the man who started the Red Cross, who need a way to figure out blood types, surgical stitching and the perfusion pump invented by Charles Lindbergh, whose father-in-law's disarmament treaty leads to Graf Spee, Altmark, and the German invasion of Norway and the Allied commandos whose mission was to "Hit the Water".
#OnThisDay 1969: James Burke tried a futuristic office, devoid of pesky human interaction. He seems fine...
Source: https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1118201135276417024