Our history
is no more than a series of incredible events.
Every one of us can influence its course.
(dramatic orchestral music)
The most infinitesimal of our decisions
can influence the future of humanity.
To know the past is to foresee the future.
October 21st, 1805, Trafalgar, off the Spanish coast.
Onboard the Saint-Etienne,
flagship of the French imperial fleet,
the steam engines of the Papin Industries
run at full capacity.
Using the strength of steam,
the powerful battleship charges at the British fleet.
At the end of the 17th century, the engineer, Denis Papin,
has succeeded in finding practical applications
to his new invention, the steam piston.
France has quickly become
the center of a huge industrial revolution.
The country is now covered with factories and coalmines.
From the moment he came into office,
the admiral Napoleon Bonaparte, in the service of the king,
launched the development of new weapons using steam.
But none of that ever happened.
In 1690, France lost its opportunity.
Britain will be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
1690, Denis Papin develops the piston steam engine.
However, this invention will never succeed
in going beyond prototype.
19th century, Europe is covered with factory chimneys.
Everywhere, miners are sent underground to mine coal.
March 1906, France, mines of Courrieres.
68 miles of galleries are destroyed by an explosion
which kills more than 1,000 miners.
These three events are key moments of coal mining in Europe
and constitute the other side of the Industrial Revolution.
Man and machine.
From antiquity, men have vied in ingenuity
to develop complex machines.
From the exploitation of animal strength
to the channeling of natural forces.
From the invention of the wheel to the hydraulic millstone.
From the 10th century,
the countryside of Europe is covered with mills,
each one of them capable of carrying out
the work of about 15 men.
Yet, in 1690, a man is about to write
a new chapter in history.
The French engineer Denis Papin
is testing his new invention,
a mechanism which works with steam.
A cylinder containing a piston is filled with water.
Brought to a boil, water is converted into steam
and pushes the piston to the top.
When the cylinder cools down, the piston goes back down.
The cycle repeats itself as long as the fire is fed.
Denis Papin has just laid the foundation
of the steam engine.
But isolated, he doesn't develop
the potential of his prototype.
A few years later, the Englishman Savery develops a system
allowing the draining of stagnant water
from the bottom of the mines.
It functions slightly differently.
This time, water is put in a boiler.
The steam is then channeled in a leak-proof enclosure.
When the steam cools down,
it condenses and creates a vacuum.
This vacuum is used to evacuate the water below.
In 1712, a third engineer, Newcomen,
conceives his own pumping system
combining the two previous inventions:
the first steam engine in history.
This allows just two men
to drain as much water in 48 hours
as 20 men and 50 horses working day and night for a week.
The success is immediate and it is only the beginning
because these innovations have also affected other trades.
The development of the flying shuttle for the weaving looms
has quadrupled productivity.
30 years later, it is multiplied 20-fold.
In Great Britain, production soars, prices drop,
living standards increase, more and more important loans
are granted to businessmen by the banks, academies flourish.
Innovation radically changes British society.
18th century England is fascinated by science
and its practical applications.
New methods are developed to produce steel.
Inventions combine steam power and new weaving looms.
It is a real chain reaction,
the triumph of mechanization and industrial revolution.
Welcome to the memory of humanity.
Every historical event, regardless of how small,
is recorded and connected.
You only need to change one to upset all the others.
Here, we are able to control time,
analyze and compare billions of events
in order to rewrite history in infinite ways.
At the end of the 18th century, 2,000 Norman workers,
worried that their trade was being called into question,
besiege a mill and destroy the spinning machines.
With the industrial development, thousands of people
see their skills replaced by the machine.
In 1939, the economist Joseph Schumpeter
theorizes about creative destruction.
According to him, after a major innovation,
the economy enters a period of creative growth
which fosters employment,
followed by a period of economic depression
when innovations chase the outdated companies away,
causing unemployment.
Machines destroy some jobs,
but manufacturing and maintaining them creates new ones.
The balance is stable,
at least in theory.
But people who lose their job
on the grounds of innovation are not trained in new skills.
They become obsolete,
out of date in the eyes of the great cycle of economy.
University of Glasgow, Scotland.
The young James Watt works on the maintenance
of the university's scientific instruments.
One day in 1763, he is entrusted with a special job:
to fix the small-scale model of the Newcomen Machine.
Convinced that he can improve its output,
he studies it in detail.
He identifies its weakness:
the necessary cooling of the cylinder
to allow the condensation of steam
as well as its big loss of energy.
In order to get 'round these deficiencies,
he adds a separate tank to the system called the condenser,
an idea that he immediately protects with a patent.
Watt carries on with his research
and develops the principle of dual action.
Steam is used alternately on the two faces of the piston.
He thus succeeds in considerably increasing
the output of the Newcomen engine.
He patents his invention again,
joins with the manufacturer Boulten,
and starts the conquest of the market.
Between 1776 and 1800, they sell 500 of their machines.
They achieve a resounding success.
But Watt doesn't stop here.
A pressure gauge,
an improved pendulum to keep a rectilinear swing,
as well as an automatic pressure regulator are added.
Inspired, he invents a new unit of measurement
to help the investors
understand the capacity of his product: horsepower.
One horsepower is equivalent to the strength necessary
for a horse to lift 75 kilograms
one meter high in one second.
Backed by its 15 horsepower,
the machine adapts itself to different kinds of uses:
pumping of mines, gearing of mills,
but also to boilers for locomotives and steamboats.
The energy of men and animal
is gradually giving way to the mineral energy.
The West enters the Steam Age.
We are now at a point of divergence.
A point of divergence is a key moment,
a crossroads in our history
where our world can swing from one side or the other.
The Industrial Revolution was born in Britain.
A quite exceptional conjunction of factors
has come into play:
economic dynamism, stable political situation,
agriculture surplus, abundance of raw materials.
Watts' genius was not only to develop a technology,
but above all to find practical applications for it.
A few decades earlier, another point of divergence
had almost changed the face of the world.
From 1690, the Frenchman Denis Papin
had understood the importance of his invention,
especially its potential applications.
However, for this Protestant with no resources,
Catholic France had nothing more to offer.
Exiled, he won't have the means to carry on with his work.
If Denis Papin had been able to exploit his invention,
the Industrial Revolution might have been born in France.
France would've thus overtaken England,
developing its industry and its army,
even defying its great rival on the seas.
French history would've taken
a radically different turning point.
Street lighting.
Individual heating.
Agricultural mechanization.
Rail transport.
Steam navy.
All of that thanks to a black and dirty rock
deeply buried underground since the dawn of time: coal.
Coal is a fossil fuel.
The countless boilers which supply the precious steam,
the driving force behind the spiral of modernity,
guzzle coal every day.
However, to obtain coal,
it is necessary to dig and unearth a vein,
these layers rich in coal which snake under our feet,
sometimes at several hundred meters down.
And if, at ground level,
coal allows the machines to replace the human being
in the depths of the earth, roles are reversed.
Men are required to extract
the black rock from the Earth's crust.
Every day, armies of miners
converge at the foot of the mines' headframes.
These huge metal structures
will allow them to go down in the darkness
equipped with a simple lamp
in search of this so-precious ore for men at the surface.
The work rate is unimaginable.
The pits swallow miners at dawn
and, 14 hours later, spit them out covered with soot.
Because the machines of the revolution mustn't stop,
these voracious ogres,
which became essential to mankind, must be fed.
So, miners dig, always deeper and deeper.
The soil is scraped.
Loose stones are evacuated.
Rock is blown up with dynamite.
The coal tips and the slagheaps,
where excavation scraps are accumulated,
gradually become hills, then mountains.
Deep down in coal mines,
after a suffocating descent in the mineshaft,
miners maneuver in a maze of dark galleries
where reign heat, dampness, and an environment
saturated with coal dust and stagnant gas.
Danger lurks.
There are daily accidents.
Miners die in vertiginous falls,
crushed under heaps of rocks,
burnt alive by fires, drowned in floods,
or, even more unpredictable,
pulverized by an exploding of gas pockets,
the famous firedamp explosions.
It is impossible to flee from this enclosed maze.
Dozens, even hundreds of workers,
are killed by these accidents each time.
Miners see their bodies suffering, becoming distorted.
Nobody comes out from the pit unharmed.
And it is only the visible part,
because miners die young of various infections.
Even years later, miners die from the silicosis,
this implacable reaper which suffocates its victims.
The salaries, a pittance, depend on the output.
Consequently, miners never have a break,
work relentlessly at a killing pace.
Even children are called upon.
Quite often, pregnant women work until childbirth
and go back to work the following day.
Miners are the fuel behind the Industrial Revolution.
(light trance music)
The 19th century
was the era of both triumphant liberalism
and the emergence of socialist ideas.
Indeed, if landscapes were transformed
by the appearance of factories and mineshafts,
society has also experienced radical changes.
Capitalism is a system in which means of production
are held by private persons,
favoring innovation and enterprising spirit.
According to the economist Karl Marx,
working is the essence of mankind
and society is divided into two classes.
The proletariat is made up of workers,
the capitalist bourgeoisie embodied by employers.
For Marx, the proletarian refers to the person
who has only his or her working force
in exchange for a salary.
On the opposite side,
the capitalist is the person who enriches his capital
by exploiting the proletarian.
The two classes are in perpetual conflict,
the capitalist pursuing benefit while the proletarian
is hoping for better living conditions.
A new fervor emerges from the working masses,
longing for human dignity, social justice, and equality.
The socialist movement behind these ideas
emerges from the first half of the century.
Its representatives will position themselves
as defenders of the rights of the proletariat.
It is the class struggle.
In France, down in coal mines,
this struggle will take a remarkable turning point.
At the beginning of the 19th century,
France mined only one million tons of coal every year.
During the following century, it will be 40 times more.
For the shareholders of French mines,
it is a wonderful success.
But at what cost?
Miners, exhausted by this dangerous and underpaid job,
are left behind by progress.
At the mercy of their employers,
there is nothing they can do against abuses.
Hunger, alcoholism, violence, insecurity,
illiteracy, promiscuity, prostitution,
and unsanitary housing are their daily lot.
In order to increase output,
mine owners realize that workers must be in good health
and live, if possible, near the mineshafts.
In areas surrounding the mines,
they build workers housing developments
with shops, schools, and of course cafes and taverns.
Fear of unemployment pressures people to accept anything.
But gradually, they understand that,
standing together and unified, they can make a difference.
General strike is their means of action.
If they stop working,
mines won't produce and profits will fall.
Now then, maybe they will draw attention.
On May 17th, 1833, miners of Anzin,
exasperated with a company that has ignored them
for almost 10 years,
take to the streets armed with sticks.
The army sets 3,000 soldiers
and three artillery pieces against the striking miners.
For the French state, there is no joking over coal supplies.
In 1844, in Rive-de-Gier,
during the transfer to Saint-Etienne of 17 arrested workers,
the escort falls into an ambush
and retaliates by fire and by sword.
Four years later in the Saint-Etienne area,
miners succeed in finding a stock of firearms.
Determined, 400 of them attack a police station
in order to free the prisoners on strike.
Demonstrating an evolution of society,
strikes, long forbidden,
are authorized by the state in 1864.
However, salaries don't increase
and working conditions don't improve.
Strikes, more and more violent, follow one another.
Attack on ramming wagons in Lens.
Ambush in La Ricamarie.
In Aubin, strikers offer their chest to the police
and shout, "Kill us if it's what you want!
"Shoot us if you dare!"
In 1884, the Waldeck-Rousseau Law
authorizes the creation of trade unions.
The federative union action
will channel the workers' fieriness.
The leaders of the miners associations
advise the strikers to be calm and moderate.
Ever-increasing numbers of workers
are even in a position to elect their own deputies.
Progressive legislation is gradually enacted.
The workers' condition improves.
Children under 13 are prohibited from working,
accidents at work are compensated,
and the workday is reduced to less than 12 hours.
While in France,
the workers' conditions seems to finally improve,
a dreadful disaster reminds everybody
the harsh reality of this job.
On March 10th, 1906, in Courrieres,
68 miles of galleries are destroyed by an explosion.
Out of the 1,800 miners who went down in the morning,
more than 1,000 won't come back.
Despite social advances,
miners continue to pay the price for progress.
Progress left its mark
on the 19th century.
As a continuous evolution of society
towards a collective ideal,
progress should be on behalf of all mankind.
Today is better than yesterday, but not as good as tomorrow.
Development is unavoidable and even necessary
to the world's smooth running.
But the central question remains:
Who sets limits and under what conditions?
The invention of the gasoline-powered car
is a symbol of progress.
But if its development has generated many new trades,
it eliminated many others.
How many blacksmiths have succeeded
in reinventing themselves into motor mechanics?
How many miners died down in coal mines
in order for us to enjoy all modern conveniences?
Today, we understand that no matter how great the benefits,
there are always costs to progress.
Human beings are constantly stretching
their technological limits.
More than ever, the only objective
is to innovate again and again,
without considering if its fair or not to do so.
Does material progress always make people better
or happier?
April 2004, Lorraine.
The last French mineshaft is officially closed.
After three centuries of intensive mining,
coal is no longer as profitable as before.
Coal was the blood of the Industrial Revolution,
the lungs of the European rebuilding
just after World War II,
as well as the muscles of the Chinese economic awakening.
But it now has been superseded by other sources of energy.
Huge open-cut mines have replaced metal pit headframes.
Nuclear waste has given way to slagheaps.
Oil slicks have supplanted firedamp explosions.
Our world is changing once again.
Our daily life is now flooded with cars.
There is a massive population growth.
And space is already being explored.
At the beginning of the '80s,
the world seemed once again ready to evolve.
And then, a new machine arrived on the market:
the first personal computer.
During the following decade,
it is the internet's turn to revolutionize
our means of communication on a global scale.
Like James Watts' engine two centuries ago,
these inventions have quickly become essential
and transformed the economy,
creating new jobs that people from the 19th century
could never have imagined.
Nowadays, while the Digital Revolution
has not reached every country yet,
a new one seems to emerge already.
A new view of the future is promised
by the convergence of technological advances
regarding artificial intelligence,
nano and biotechnology, and cognitive science,
a world of tomorrow where the words work,
employment, and career would be meaningless,
a world where robots could do anything better than humans,
from the manufacturing of cars to cooking
to the composition of a violin concerto,
a world where the human being
would face the very question of his own fundamental purpose.
But that is another story.
Progress can be a frightening thought.
At the very beginning of the steam locomotive,
the craziest rumors were spread about this hellish machine
which was going to destroy the countryside.
Nowadays, fantasy and fears dominate debates
about leading-edge technology.
We hear about robots capable of talking to humans as equals,
computers synthesizing our emotions,
machines augmenting our intellectual abilities
or even extending our lifespan.
The future makes our head spin
so that we are greatly tempted to reject it outright.
Even entrepreneurs like Elon Musk
consider that the uncontrolled development
of artificial intelligence could become the greatest threat
for the future of humanity.
Are we soon going to see the first robots breakers,
similar to the machines breakers
at the beginning of the 19th century?
Who controls progress?
Who decides that an innovation is good for mankind or not?
Are men still in control?
Fortunately, the main asset of the human race is adaptation.
Because it seems absolutely certain
that somehow or other these technologies
will show up in our life, it is only a matter of time.
Faced with this future revolution,
every one of us has a choice to make:
going through this revolution as an onlooker
and entrusting others with the task of shaping our future
or joining the fray and keeping control.
(dramatic orchestral music)