You might not think about it very often, but we are living
through a golden age of technology.
Our homes and our pockets are full of inventions and gadgets that,
20 years ago, would have been the stuff of science fiction.
Alexa, how exactly do you work?
Hmm, I don't know that.
That's what we're going to find out.
These things have become such an integral part of our everyday
lives that we've forgotten to remember how clever they are.
I'm Professor Hannah Fry, and I want to open your eyes...
I'm having a great time.
..to the secret genius of everyday objects.
CARD READER BEEPS
The ones that we take for granted.
Items that owe their existence
to generations of scientific innovation.
THE Edison drove an electric car? Yeah, this one.
In every episode,
I'm going to take one item and tear it apart...
bit... Oh!
..by bit...
So now there's some stuff you can see.
..meet the people behind it...
Frankly, I thought many things were impossible.
..and unlock the remarkable... Here is the clandestine listening device.
..and sometimes hilarious stories behind its invention.
Hello. Look at you.
This time, it's the trainer.
These foot-shaped miracles of engineering are packed full
of some of the most innovative tech on the planet.
Every single millimetre of this sole, every stitch and seam
of the upper, these things are designed and made
with absolute precision.
So, how did a 1970s American breakfast
inspire our soles?
Look, I've got other skills, OK?
Why did a family feud in the 1940s...
They had different ideas, really, how to run the business.
..create two of the world's biggest sports brands?
And how did an 18th-century china tea set influence
today's trainer trends?
Anything not perfect is smashed.
We are a nation of trainer lovers.
We spent almost £3 billion on them last year.
Maybe you call them sneakers, maybe you call them kicks,
maybe you take great pride in what you're wearing.
Maybe, like me, you just wear the same pair over and over again
until they fall off your feet.
So, what does it take to make a modern trainer?
I'm in Germany, at the headquarters of Europe's biggest
sportswear brand - Adidas.
They use all sorts of sophisticated tech to help design
and test their sneaks.
Oh, look at this.
We call this the Runter robot. And it does exactly that.
It takes somebody's running biomechanics and it simulates
it in this space here.
That is athlete scientist Harry Miles.
So you put shoes on there? Exactly.
And we look at the durability and we look at the performance
of the shoe. Can we try it? Of course, yeah.
This rather creepy robotic limb can run the equivalent of two
marathons a day...
..allowing them to precisely assess the wear and tear on every
millimetre of the shoe.
Oh!
And that is very useful for designing one crucial component.
It would be quite easy to just put thick rubber along the whole
outsole, but the shoe would become extremely heavy, so we try
and be as minimal and as precise as possible
with where we place the outsole, so that we get durability, we get
protection, and it lasts for a long time.
Wait. Where you place the what? Where we place the outsole.
Turns out, in the sneaker world, the sole has more than one part,
and the outsole is the bit that makes contact with the ground.
Let's take a step back and show you properly with a graphic.
To reveal the sneaky sneaker science hidden in our shoes,
I'm going to slice them open and look at four key components,
from the upper to the logo.
Kicking things off is the ridged tread at the bottom that gives us
grip and ensures that we don't faceplant in front of
the entire gym.
It's the outsole.
Of course, the sole isn't just doing one job, to act as a layer
between your foot and the ground. It's actually got different
components to it that are doing slightly different things.
And to show you is going to require some destruction, today, in the form
of a heat gun.
This guy!
Safety first, everyone.
OK.
Let's do this.
The outsole is this bit - the rubbery tread glued to the bottom.
To reduce the weight of the running shoe, but maintain maximum grip...
Oh!
..they only place the outsole in the areas that need
it, and reinforce areas which might wear away faster.
Oh, Lord!
That is satisfying.
The flexible rubber and web design means that it can move and bend
with your foot.
Woo! Welcome to DIY with Hannah.
Oh, ho, ho, ho!
Look at that.
Now it's all apart, you can see the different elements of the sole.
So, you've got the outer sole here.
What is essentially a mini tyre for your feet.
The sole on your trainer might look a little bit different,
and that is because they are each designed to suit the specific uses
of the shoe.
Now...
Do you reckon they'll take these back?
To find out how we got the extraordinary sole of today,
I have to take you back to a time that will strike fear in the hearts
of cool kids everywhere,
when trainers didn't exist.
It's the 1800s.
The Industrial Revolution has transformed society...
ARCHIVE: With the coming of the machine,
the productivity of each workman was enormously increased.
..and created a new middle class who play sports for fun.
Footballers and cricketers have spiked or studded shoes
to play in. But tennis poses a problem.
Spikes would damage the fancy grass courts, and flat leather soles
are far too slippery.
Luckily, a transformative new material was on the horizon,
one that would change our modern world...
..vulcanised rubber.
Natural rubber had been used in South America
for thousands of years.
But it had some serious drawbacks.
There is one problem with natural rubber.
If it gets too cold, it goes really brittle. If it gets too hot,
it starts melting.
And that means it's not particularly good to wear or do anything
useful with, really.
So that meant that the race was on to find a way to make
rubber more stable.
The person who gets credited with creating rubber as we know
it today is this guy here.
This is Charles Goodyear.
American Goodyear was rubber mad.
He'd spent years and, basically, all of his money trying to work out
how to make it more useful when, one day, he found the answer.
The story goes that he was playing around with some natural rubber,
mixed in with lead and sulphur, and then he dropped
it onto a hot stove.
And to his surprise, rather than it melting, it hardened.
Stable, useful rubber.
Hurrah!
But poor Goodyear's bank balance wasn't safe just yet,
because he struggled to reliably repeat the results of his little
cooking accident, which meant he couldn't patent his invention.
Enter British rubber rival Thomas Hancock.
Thomas Hancock invented and patented almost every process and every
machine which was involved in the rubber industry.
This dapper gent is historian Professor Tom James.
He has the inside scoop on this raging rubber rivalry.
Now, he claims that he's totally impartial, but...
Believe it or not, my father was born in 1886 and his grandmother
was a Hancock. Which makes Hancock your... Let me work it out.
..great-great-great uncle. That's right.
Tell me the story, Tom.
Thomas Hancock and Goodyear were both working on it.
Goodyear sent over some samples of his work to this country,
and they were shown to Charles Mackintosh.
Yes, that's right. The raincoat guy.
He gave Hancock a sample of Goodyear's stabilised rubber.
So, Hancock looked at them and he said, "I can see
"that they probably include sulphur."
So he set himself to work in his private laboratory.
Eventually, Hancock worked out a way to reliably stabilise rubber.
Instead of just adding sulphur into the mix,
he would also dip the rubber in molten sulphur.
It bonded with the rubber, making it more, well, rubbery.
In 1843, he patented vulcanised rubber in the UK, pipping Goodyear
to the post by just a few months.
Overall, not a good year for Goodyear.
Together with Mackintosh, Hancock started producing all sorts
of fancy new and useful rubber products...
..some of which have been lovingly preserved here at Kew.
So here we have a shoe that was donated to us in 1853 by your
ancestor, Thomas Hancock, and it's one of our earliest known shoes.
Wow, look at that. Proper rubber stamp on the bottom.
Yes. Yes, "Ornamental shoes,
"Mackintosh and Co, 1853."
It's beautiful. Wow.
I mean, that is quite an extraordinary foot shape.
It's very dainty, isn't it?
I mean, look, I wouldn't fit into that, put it that way.
No, I wouldn't either. It's absolutely stunning.
And it was Mackintosh that made the rubber for this? Yes.
On behalf of your relative, who was obviously
a British rubber pioneer.
The invention of vulcanised rubber would transform the sports shoe.
By the 1870s, companies started producing cheap sports shoes
with rubber soles and canvas uppers.
In the UK, they were known as sandshoes or plimsolls...
..while in the US, they became known as sneakers because the rubber sole
meant that you could sneak around without being heard.
Say, why do you kids wear Keds?
So I can run faster and jump farther.
So I can win more often! Right!
The next leap forward in rubber soles would revolutionise things
on the running track, and the inspiration proves
that breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day.
Hello, everyone.
SHE LAUGHS
It all starts with a university track coach called Bill Bowerman.
Hey.
Can I have a coffee? Thank you.
In the 1960s, Bill's athletics team were at the University of Oregon,
and they'd just spent a huge amount of money...
Thank you. ..on a really swanky new athletics track.
The only problem... Cheers. ..was that the synthetic surface
was getting pulled up by the runner's shoes.
Back then, running shoes were still heavy things covered
in metal spikes.
What Bill wanted was a grippy trainer that athletes could use
on any surface.
So Bill, he decided to go on a mission to create the perfect
soles on a running shoe.
When it came to grip, he was, well, gripped.
He learnt cobbling techniques, experimented with new materials.
He even raided his wife Barbara's jewellery box, and used her items
to try and make imprints in rubber to see if he could get anything
to be grippy.
But then he had an epiphany, and it came from the kitchen.
For that, I need to go in there.
It's 1971, and Bill and Barbara are at home cooking up the Sunday
breakfast of champions...
..waffles. Right, I'm going to be Barbara.
Give me a second while that cooks.
Look, I've got other skills, OK?
WAFFLE IRON BEEPS
It's time.
As this delicious waffle was served, Bill was particularly transfixed
by the shape of it.
See all those little holes there, where your syrup tends to go?
He wondered, what if you did the same but in reverse,
so that instead of having lots of little holes, you had lots of little
ridges that stuck out from the surface,
just like you have on the original mould?
So Bill then runs out to his workshop, grabs some liquid
urethane, and pours it straight into their precious Art Deco waffle
iron, which was, I should add, a wedding present.
Do you know what? I've also realised
I actually forgot to put the spray on.
So I don't even know if it's going to come out.
Which, by the way, is also what happened to Bill.
He forgot to put any spray on, when he put the urethane in,
and then the whole thing was slammed shut.
Their beautiful wedding present ruined.
The waffle iron didn't survive, but remarkably, the marriage did.
Despite this initial setback, he persevered and ended up making
a flexible, lightweight sole with a raised grid pattern.
It was super grippy and it didn't tear up the nice new track.
The official Waffle trainer was launched in 1974.
But Bill Bowerman wasn't content with just keeping these big ideas
that he had about running to himself and his elite athletes. No, no.
See, he wasn't just a track coach.
Bill was also the co-founder of a small sportswear brand -
Blue Ribbon Sports. Which you might not have heard of,
but you will have heard of its successor - Nike.
And this here is one of their modern versions of that same waffle sole.
And so what started out as a running shoe for athletes became
something much bigger.
Mm.
That is really soggy and cold.
Delicious.
SHE CHUCKLES
New materials and manufacturing methods mean that our outsoles
have got more and more specialised, to the precisely engineered options
that we have today.
Our next component is what gives us a spring in our steps.
Bear with me, because it's still the sole.
But this time, it's the soft, spongy layer of cushioning sandwiched
between us and the ground.
It's the midsole.
Remember I said that the sole didn't just have one job?
The sole isn't just doing one job, to act as a layer between your foot
and the ground. It's actually got different components to it that are
doing slightly different things.
That's because hidden under our rubber tread is the second,
and equally important, part of our sole.
So this bit here, sort of a posh, squidgy marshmallow,
this bit here is the midsole, and that is there to provide
you with nice cushioning, so a nice, soft landing
as you're running. And there you have it.
Each one of these elements has to be individually designed
to perfection and then combined together to give you the best
possible running experience.
The teams at Adidas HQ have spent a lot of time working
on this squishy bit.
How do we enable the runner to run on clouds?
That was the brief to the team back in the day.
That is Stephan Scholten, director of running shoes, and a man
who knows his midsoles.
In the past, it was always very clear that you can either
have soft cushioning or responsive cushioning.
According to Stephan, it's now possible to have cushioning
AND extra power in your step...
..thanks to an innovative midsole material they use in their
best-selling Boost range.
So these look like, I mean, little glass beads, almost.
I'd like to call them diamonds. Yes. OK.
I mean... Yes. You're the marketing guy, so...
Exactly.
So this is TPU, or thermal polyurethane, which is the absolute
raw material for what we call Boost today.
Basically, they put these, um, plastic polyurethane particles, AKA
diamonds, into a mould, and then they blow them up, a bit like
popcorn, to make a super-light midsole filled with
tiny, squishy pockets of air.
I mean, it kind of looks in a way, it looks like polystyrene,
but actually, it's really flexible.
And then is it quite...? Oh! ..quite bouncy?
What we initially realised, when you just look at it,
like the energy return that you get is unlike any other foam that you
get in a running shoe.
Energy return? I know what you're thinking - more marketing jargon,
but actually, energy return is the Holy Grail of the trainer industry.
The energy that gets absorbed through the pellets, gets
transitioned through the midsole, and then pops out again
when you push off.
Normally, when your foot hits the ground, some of your precious
energy is absorbed by the midsole, or wasted as heat,
noise or vibration.
The beauty of this material is that it holds on to the energy
and redirects it back into your step.
Running is hard. I mean... For the most part, right?
So you want running to be as enjoyable as possible.
And sort of a bouncy spring in your step. Exactly.
So that is the clever cushioning of today.
But how did we get here?
In the 1970s, the popularity of running exploded,
and so did everybody's joints.
ARCHIVE: The average runner takes about 1,000 steps a mile, and with
every step, the foot absorbs three times the body weight.
The industry became obsessed with cushioning, and started
to introduce a lovely, spongy layer into the midsole.
The midsole, which goes from heel to toe,
supports and cushions the foot from heel strike,
all the way through to toe-off.
It was all thanks to a revolutionary new material - foam.
EVA, or ethylene-vinyl acetate foam, to be precise.
But Nike weren't satisfied.
They wanted to give us a bit more bounce.
In 1978, in a secret factory in Maine, they engineered
a new breakthrough that promised the springiest midsole ever
for pro athletes and amateur runners alike.
Well, hello.
And what they came up with would be the iconic Nike Air,
the world's best-selling trainer range.
I think I must have packed the box somewhere between 1980 and '82.
I don't know if I put shoes in there or sample midsoles or...
..I don't know.
This is Dave Stearns.
He was responsible for manufacturing
the original Airs,
and this is his box of midsole memorabilia,
which hasn't been opened in 40 years.
A1. Do you know what A1 means?
This is the first Air sole that was ever welded in Saco.
The idea behind the Air sole was revolutionary.
You would literally walk on air, or bubbles of it, at least,
and it was the brainchild of aerospace engineer Frank Rudy.
And that's me and Frank. He was an amazing guy.
Very, very smart - genius.
They had designed a tough, flexible bag of pressurised gas,
which they claimed would cushion the blow and act like a spring.
It was a great idea, but there was one rather significant oversight.
The component that was missing was how to put it into a midsole.
What are we going to do? Are we going to stitch some foam?
They originally thought they would just carve out some EVA
foam and cement it in.
Their solution for securing the Air sole into the midsole
was to master a process called injection moulding.
The injection head would come in and press foam into a mould.
Right? And that mould was shaped like the midsole here
of a Nike shoe. Right?
The injected foam would surround and encapsulate
the precious Air sole.
But like all the most fun experiments, or just a night out
in Ibiza, the process required hot foam.
And that wasn't good for the air pockets.
We had to find out what the temperature was that made
the foam react and wouldn't blow out the Air sole.
Because the Air sole was very sensitive to heat.
There was a lot of trash that went out in those first few months.
Another problem was that the foam was injected with a gun,
but when they pulled the gun away...
Foam was running back out the hole
that we just ejected. We said, "We can't have that."
After weeks of foam explosions, Dave came up with a simple
but effective solution.
This is gold.
This was what saved the day.
This is called the plugger.
Dave's creation,
the imaginatively named plugger, would, well, you guessed it, plug
the hole with a plastic pin so that the foam could set
around the Air sole, creating a single midsole.
Simple, right?
This saved so many headaches.
I think the first full production run of the shoes
were, like, 50 pair or something.
We just barely got 50 pair of shoes made.
The first Air shoe was officially released to the masses in 1979.
Oh, look. Ladies and gentlemen,
this was the reason the whole thing started.
This was the tailwind.
This was the very first shoe, Air shoe, that Nike made.
This is, this is...
Man tears could be coming, I don't know.
This is very exciting.
I can't believe it.
Let it out, Dave. It's OK.
The cushioning concept was a hit.
One early study showed it could shave five minutes
off a marathon time.
And since that first air bubble went into a midsole, Nike have now sold
hundreds of millions of pairs.
Now we've got to clean it up.
The Nike Air showed what happens when you bring precision engineering
to a midsole.
And over the last 40 years, trainer producers have taken that idea
and run with it, trying silicon gels, plastic honeycomb structures,
and even some sort of sneaker springs.
But back in Germany, they have a futuristic new design,
which Stephan believes takes the midsole to another level...
Let me show you something, actually.
..and will put more power in our step.
So, this is actually the latest innovation we're working on.
Oh, really?
So you are the first one to unveil 40 Forward to.
That is a strange-looking shoe. Talk me through the idea.
What we did realise, talking to consumers,
there is more that we can deliver than just cushioning
and energy return.
This shoe has a futuristic 3D-printed midsole that compresses
when your foot hits the ground and then propels you forward.
If you squeeze it, you will realise, and then you rotate
it, that depending on the structure and depending on how we manufacture
it, you get much different properties. Oh, yeah.
Squishes really easily in one direction, but not in the other.
Exactly.
The key to this shoe's ability to store and release energy
is that its midsole is made up of 10,000 individual
3D-printed struts.
You've got a completely different lattice structure at the back
than you do at the front.
So it's like you're kind of... You're doing slightly
different things on different parts of the foot.
This is really what we what we try to highlight.
You can code the running experience from the heel to the toe
all the way. Pressure comes from the top.
The structure is designed and engineered in a way,
so it collapses forward with every step, which then gives the runner
the feeling of just running much smoother than they would
with any other technology. Oh, that is very cool.
I mean, that is deliciously mathematical,
that shape. It is, actually. I'm very into it.
If you've been paying attention to our sprint through the midsole,
you might now be able to tell an Air from a Boost.
But there is one thing that really makes each individual
brand stand out.
Our next component is the most recognisable part of every trainer.
Whether it's a swoosh or three precisely-placed stripes,
it has been designed to catch your eye and make you part
with your hard-earned cash.
It's the logo.
Look, you might not be a sneaker-head, but I am sure
you still know some of the big brands just from their logos.
How much of a difference does the logo make?
It makes a huge difference.
That is Dr Catherine Jansson-Boyd.
She is a consumer psychologist.
The brand has representation.
The style has representation.
And that's what you're going to go with.
It's not just that they are looking for the best possible
high-performance shoe.
It's what this makes them look like and how it makes them feel.
Yes, absolutely.
Of course, we want something that's good on our feet as well.
But they will want the symbolic value. Once someone actually
remembers the logo,
you will kind of integrate it into your memory bank, but it also
needs to work kind of aesthetically.
And a good example is actually the famous swoosh,
because everybody knows it.
So you see it on its own and you just know,
"Right, we know what that represents."
It's not just the fact that you've got three triangles
and a word, it's what that brand represents, what that brand
means to people. Yes.
So, of course, it's not just the logo, like you said,
that wouldn't work, because humans are complicated.
We want to know who wears it, why do they wear it?
It gives people a representation of what the shoes actually
stand for and what it should be associated with.
Logos, as we know them, started to appear in the 19th century
when laws came in to protect companies' designs.
The first UK trademark came about thanks to one of Britain's
favourite pastimes - going to the pub.
Beer brand Bass Brewery registered their distinctive
red triangle logo on New Year's Day in 1876.
Medicine, tobacco and alcohol brands took the early logo lead.
But by the turn of the century,
recognisable emblems were everywhere.
With the rise of the sports shoe, companies like Keds and Converse
began to trademark their logos.
Chick-a-boom, chick-a-boom, chick-a-boom-boom!
PF Flyers are the shoes for you.
Look for the letters PF on the shoe!
And in 1949, Adidas registered their iconic design.
But to understand the life of this logo, we need to delve
into the history of the company and find out how a tale of two
brothers resulted in a trainer of three stripes.
Hidden beneath Adidas HQ are the archives.
It's the best feeling you can get in the world.
Every time I come here in this archive
is really... I feel the goose bumps.
Meet Sandra Trapp, Adidas historian.
She and her team are the guardians of this brand museum.
We have around 40,000 products in here. Not that many
shoes, around 12,000.
The oldest one, it's very, very special because it's almost
100-years-old. Wait a second.
In the 1920s, brothers Rudolf and Adolf Dassler started a shoe
company from their parents' home in southern Germany.
Rudolf was the salesman, and Adolf was the amateur cobbler.
This is not an Adidas shoe. This is a brother Dassler shoe -
Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik.
Handmade by him, still in the old laundry room
of his mother. And this shoe's from 1925.
He was not even trained as a shoemaker at that time.
Like many other German businesses, the Dasslers joined the Nazi Party
in the 1930s, and because of the regime's focus on sport,
the company did well during the early years.
But in the 1940s, production halted and the factory was converted
for weapons manufacturing.
There wasn't a lot of brotherly love between the Dasslers after the war,
and rumours around their rift are rife.
Some claim their split was political.
They say Rudolf had been more sympathetic to the Nazi cause,
while others say there was a love triangle involved.
But what's the official line, Sandra?
We don't know it,
the story from the brothers themselves.
But what we know is that they had different ideas,
really, how to run the business.
Both of the brothers had different experience during the war,
and that was the main reason why they decided, in 1948, to really
split the companies, and both of the brothers founded
their own brand.
The elder brother, Rudolf, went off and created a little brand
that you might recognise...
..Puma.
His jumping cat logo was to represent agility,
athleticism and speed.
And younger brother Adolf started his very own new brand.
But first, he needed a name.
Our father's name is Adolf Dassler, and he made an abbreviation first
of his first name, Adolf, and Dassler.
He took his nickname, and his nickname was Adi.
So that's why it was called Adidas, then.
Next, he needed a logo,
a simple and easy way for people to see
and recognise his brand.
He was, of course, looking for a trademark, to get the best
visibility on the track and field tracks.
The brothers had used two stripes on their early shoes, but when Adi
started his new company, he had to do something different.
And what's better than two stripes?
This is one of the prototypes we have in the archive.
If you have a very close look,
you see that the third stripe was added in the middle.
Thus creating the now iconic three stripes mark that graces virtually
every Adidas product made.
And it's not just the Adidas logo that has a legendary back story.
Take Lacoste.
In the 1920s, French tennis star Rene Lacoste's captain promised
to buy him a coveted crocodile suitcase if he won his next match.
Well, he lost, but the press christened him "The Crocodile".
Rene loved the nickname and sewed a croc onto his clothes.
And with that, the snappy little logo was born.
And that iconic swoosh?
Well, that one came about when Nike co-founder Phil Knight asked design
student Carolyn Davidson to create something fluid that conveys motion.
Knight said of the swoosh, "I don't love it, but it will grow
"on me," and paid Carolyn the princely sum of $35,
although she did later get some stock options that are probably
worth a little bit more.
Today, the top logos are worth billions.
They are the instantly recognisable face of our brands.
But a logo is nothing without the marketing campaign behind it.
And there is one crucial marketing tool that trainer companies use
to get us to love their logo and buy into their brand.
And that's celebrity endorsement.
PHONE RINGS
Hello. Are these going to sell out?
Let's go back to Cathrine.
There's different things they can do, but the celebrity aspect
is a very, very big aspect, because sales often goes
up somewhere in the region of 4% with the right
kind of celebrity.
And if you're thinking about a huge global company, that is, you know,
millions and millions and millions of pounds, of dollars.
So it makes a huge difference.
But what brings even bigger bucks is when those celebrities bring
out their own limited edition trainers.
Almost everyone's got a pair, but some people now collect them
as a hobby.
Probably got between 150 and 200 pairs.
These are so sought-after that the resale of sneakers,
the buying and selling of second-hand shoes, is big business.
But some unlucky people
don't end up getting quite what they paid for.
This is a fake pair of Adidas Yeezys.
These - a pair of fake Jordans.
And I've been reliably informed that they're quite a convincing
fake as well.
That is because there is now an entire industry of people out
there making incredibly convincing replicas of the real thing, sticking
on all of the logos that we know and love so well and trying to cash
in on all of the hype around sneakers.
Now that is sneaky.
So how can you tell if you're buying the real thing?
Well, I've been allowed into eBay's secret
sneaker authentication centre.
Each day, thousands of trainers sold for £100 or above are brought
here to be verified before being sent to the buyer.
Some of these shoes will be reaching up to, like, £5,000.
£5,000? Yeah.
Meet Tallulah Jones, lead authenticator.
Why are they worth so much money? So, like this shoe, for example,
it's actually a collaboration with Travis Scott.
In case you aren't down with the kids,
he's a superstar American rapper.
The second you're getting a collaboration, you'd expect
the value to go way up.
And then this one has, like, the reverse swoosh on it.
So it's very unique in that way.
The counterfeit trainer industry is thought to be worth a
mind-boggling $450 billion.
Are there ones that you still have to authenticate?
Yeah. We can live authenticate this right now. Amazing.
So, OK, before we open the box, then, I mean, I don't even know
what brand... This is a Yeezy.
So a Yeezy was the super successful Adidas collaboration
with musician Kanye West.
But...
Now, the clothing giant Adidas has cut its ties with the musician
Ye - you might remember him as Kanye. Kanye West.
It comes after the rapper posted anti-Semitic comments.
The ending of this relationship is thought to have cost Adidas
at least $250 million.
You've got to be careful which celebrity you get into bed with.
Sorry, Tallulah, you were saying.
So, even the box itself, there's a lot of things
that we're looking for here.
We look at, like, fonts, the colour of the packaging.
Go on, let's have a look inside.
I'm checking things like the shape, the material used,
you know, the stitching.
And obviously, we're going to give it a sniff. Like, that's our
famous sniff test.
So you've got to get your nose in there.
It's part of the job.
We do sniff any shoe that's new. Like, different glues
have different smells?
Yeah, there's like a smell that fakes will have, a smell
that real ones will have,
so you've got to train your nose as well as your eyes.
Wow. A little bit of chemistry involved. Exactly.
OK. And how did these do? These passed the authenticity guarantee.
They're real? These are authentic, yeah.
Are you ever impressed by what the counterfeiters can do in terms
of how good the results are?
Oh, it's definitely getting very sophisticated.
You know, to a member of the general public, it would look identical.
If the real object is indistinguishable from the object
that you get, does it really matter?
I see what you're saying.
But as a sneaker-head, you want the real deal.
You know, it's a feeling you get like, "Yeah, I'm wearing
"the real thing."
I do think there's something really interesting about the idea
that you can have two objects next to each other that are essentially
identical, indistinguishable from one another, and yet one
is so much more prized than the other.
And I think it demonstrates that sometimes sneakers
have this quality about them that really just transcends the idea
that they're just something you put on your feet.
Whatever it is, the swoosh on the side, the colourway,
the stripes. The way that the brand makes you feel, all of it is there
to have you really buy into this idea
and, ultimately, part with quite a lot of money, apparently.
Creating an association between your product and a celebrity
to sell more stuff might seem like a modern marketing ploy,
but actually, it started over 250 years ago with a man and a tea set.
What do multibillion dollar trainer companies have in common
with 18th-century potter Josiah Wedgwood?
Now, I know what you're thinking.
That sounds like the beginning of a bad dad joke.
But you'd be wrong.
Actually, it's the beginning of a quite intriguing story.
Turns out, both know the power of celebrity endorsement.
ARCHIVE: All Wedgwood ware is carefully checked at every stage.
And, as in the days of old Josiah, anything not perfect is smashed.
Wedgwood wanted a way to differentiate his pottery
from the competition.
His solution was to get the attention of the big influencer
of the day.
What Josiah Wedgwood did is spend some time crafting a beautifully
exquisite, delicate cream tea set, just like this one, and then took
it as a gift to the ultimate influencer herself -
Queen Charlotte.
Queen Charlotte was so delighted with her gift that she declared
Wedgwood as "Her Majesty's potter".
Something which Wedgwood could really dine out on a lot.
He even renamed his tea set as Queen's Ware.
You can even see on the bottom how he made everyone
know of the Queen's connection.
"Queen's Ware" - just there.
Wedgwood was the first person to use celebrity endorsement
to sell stuff. A smashing idea, sir!
Right, tea break over.
Back to trainers.
150 years later, the trainer company started using Josiah's trick,
and it all began with all-star Chuck Taylor in 1917.
ARCHIVE: Jesse Owens was the fastest human of his day, and he took both
the 200 and 100m titles...
Adi Dassler was hot on endorsements from the get-go, when he convinced
sprinter Jesse Owens to wear his shoes in 1936.
And, of course, Michael Jordan was a slam dunk for the swoosh.
But for some of us, we might choose our shoes based not on the celebrity
selling them, but on the fit.
Our next component is the reason our sneakers are comfortable.
It's the form-fitting fabric that makes up the top part
of our trainers.
We call it the upper.
Our trainer tops might look simple, but when you get
down to it, our uppers are pretty sophisticated.
Ready?
Right, time for more sneaker surgery.
When it comes to the upper of a trainer, unsurprisingly enough,
it's anything that is in the upper part of it.
This has to work with the shape of your foot, but it's a lot to ask
because the foot itself is incredibly complex.
You have got 26 different bones in there.
You've got 33 different joints, you've got ligaments, you've got
muscles, you've got all sorts going on.
And I think... Can I borrow it for Halloween?
Oh! There's typically around 20 individual parts to an upper.
Oh, my gosh.
There's a lot going on here. Oh!
SHE GROANS
So, the first thing to look at is around the heel.
You want something that grips
your heel bone and yet something
that is loose enough that your Achilles tendon, which
sits here, has enough room to bend and stretch as you're running.
So, if I show you the inside of this heel, this is the thing
that I was struggling to cut so much.
This is the heel counter.
So, it sits around the back and to the side.
And this is pretty rigid.
Right? It's kind of like a hard bit of plastic.
That's the thing that gives the heel a nice structure.
Then there's a softer bit where your Achilles sits.
All of these different layers inside it, cushioning your tendons
and making sure that you have got enough room for your heel to operate
as effectively as it can.
Round the sides and over the top of the shoe,
it's all about the materials.
And this is where the breathability of the shoe comes in.
So it's covered with a very flexible material that has lots of holes
in it, just to make it as breathable as possible.
I don't know if you can see that.
That's because we have around 125,000
sweat glands in each foot, which is more than your armpits.
Seriously.
And finally...
..this is the bit that's known as the toe box.
And the idea behind this is that you want to give your toes
structure, but enough room to be able to splay.
I think once you see it laid out, actually, you realise
just how complex this upper is.
It has to really, beautifully hug the foot
so that the sole can do all of its magic.
And that there concludes my surgical dissection of the trainer.
But how did we get into this highly engineered, lightweight
upper of today?
For most of sneaker history, there have been two choices
for our trainer tops - leather or canvas.
But in the 1950s, companies started to look for new synthetic fabrics,
which could offer the best of both materials, something
that was lightweight but durable.
The surprising solution would come from a brand-new wonder material
that was transforming everything from military parachutes
to ladies' stockings -
nylon.
Could you tell us just how it's made?
Well, it's quite a story.
I guess our story starts in 1935.
A guy called Wallace Carothers, he was a researcher at a company
called DuPont in America.
This is material scientist Dr Anna Ploszajski.
So, what were DuPont doing?
DuPont had been trying to make plastic, basically, so man-made
materials that would mimic materials' properties
that we currently could only find in the natural world.
Chemistry lesson coming up.
So, natural materials like cotton or silk, they're made of long chains
of atoms known as polymer chains.
It's a little bit like the links on a bracelet.
Carothers discovered that by combining different chemicals,
they could recreate this structure and make new synthetic materials.
This is adipic acid, and this is hexamethylenediamine.
Now, these chemicals make nylon.
They're derived from fossil fuels, and can be pretty nasty.
Hence the rather dashing get-up.
This is the second chemical - you'll see it floating on top.
A bit like oil on water.
Look at that. Smoking as well. Yeah.
Do you know what?
I feel like I've just stepped into a posh cocktail bar in Soho.
Probably don't drink this cocktail.
THEY LAUGH
Where the chemicals meet, the molecules bond together
and form polymer chains.
Get down and have a little look. What can you see between...?
Oh, yeah. It's almost like a film.
And that is our nylon. Is it?! Mm-hm.
Oh, wow. Look at that.
As we pull it up, you're reacting more and more of the liquids
together.
Oh, my gosh. It keeps going.
Extraordinary.
Yeah.
It's quite disgusting, actually, isn't it?
It's quite slimy.
But look, it just keeps going.
So that is freshly-made nylon.
And this is what the scientists did back in 1935 to make
this new chemical.
It could be easily drawn out into very thin fibres, which is why
one of its first uses was in tights.
ARCHIVE: By a miracle of modern science,
such commonplace things as coal, water and air have been transformed
into threads more elastic than silk.
And by the 1970s, our trainer tops were nylon-tastic.
Nike uppers are made with nylon
and nylon mesh, and they've done so for three reasons.
Number one, it's very lightweight.
Number two, there's no break-in time.
And number three, it's ideal for all-weather running.
Since the introduction of nylon,
synthetic fibres have taken over our uppers.
But they are not the most sustainable choice.
They're created from fossil fuels
and the strong polymer chains don't break down easily.
I guess there's always recycling?
One key problem with recycling materials is that
objects like trainers contain ten,
20, 30 different materials.
Nylon can be recycled, if it is removed from the trainer,
but, you know, how often do you sit down when you're going to throw your
trainers in the bin and cut all the different materials out
and put them in the recycling? You're not going to do that.
Trainer companies are starting to use more sustainable
and recycled materials, but there is no doubt that they need to do more.
And maybe we will need to buy fewer pairs.
Back in Germany,
they've got a futuristic new elite running shoe upper that they
hope will perfectly support the complexities of a runner's foot.
So, tell me what you do in here, then?
This is basically the foot assessment room.
Meet Athlete Services Director
Fabian Schweizer.
He has the unenviable job
of examining a lot of feet. Luckily, it's not hands-on.
We look at different things, pressure mapping, 3D foot scans,
functional tests, sometimes,
just really understanding the foot inside out.
Those of a squeamish disposition, you can turn away now.
But foot fans, hey, you can stay tuned!
What we do here is basically take a 3D scan of your foot.
We'll start with your left foot.
So, this is like a fancier version of when you were a kid
and you went into a shoe shop. Exactly. Just relax.
The idea then is that you have this really accurate
picture of what the foot looks like, from which to build a shoe.
Yes. So, this basically is your foot.
You see veins, you see all your toes, obviously, everything normal.
So, my very normal feet will now be added to their database.
Just imagine we have hundreds of thousands of foot scans.
We look at all the different feet geometries
and also we look at certain maps, for example,
where you have stress and strain, how is the skin moving,
and from that, we create specific uppers for different sports.
This time, all that fabulous foot data is being used to create
a totally new type of trainer top for elite runners.
I thought I'd seen the last of those horrifying scans!
Does anyone's feet look pretty on that? No, never.
That's Clemens Dyckmans, Technology Creation Manager.
This is what we call strung.
It's an entirely new process, more seamless,
so it doesn't consist of several individual elements any more.
It's more like a cocoon for your foot, ultimately.
Using their athlete data,
they plot out precisely where they need to place each
piece of yarn around the foot, giving some areas more support,
while making some areas more breathable.
A robot takes this design
and knits it together to create a single piece of material,
which they say also produces less waste than traditional
manufacturing methods.
Lots and lots of structure around the back,
presumably thinking about the direction it will be pulled in.
To the side of the foot, there's many more holes,
air breathing, same with the front.
The cross-section, when you look on the side, is quite revealing,
where you're going from areas that are a bit thinner to areas
that are a bit thicker, where you have this sling, and you
taper in a very, very organic way, similar to how your foot is.
I know the seamless nature and the lightweight might give you
a wrong judgment, but it is complicated because it is so simple.
After more than five years of R&D,
the team have just launched their new trainer top.
I can see how
incredibly useful this would be if you were a high-performance
athlete, but, um, it may surprise you to learn I'm not one.
Nevertheless, it's still a product that you and me can run in and
enjoy and probably break personal records, rather than world records.
I hear ya!
In just over 100 years, our sports shoes have completely transformed.
But as we pack them with evermore clever technology in the
pursuit of speed, are they becoming too smart for their own good?
The future is controversial.
Some people have criticised.
Technology, they say, is giving competitors an unfair advantage.
No human is limited.
Over the last few years,
a new generation of super techy super shoes, like the Nike Alphafly
NEXT and the Hoka Carbon X,
have been helping athletes to smash world records.
So, this is a normal shoe, which you could bend like that.
You could bend very easily, yeah.
And this is... Considerably stiffer. Yeah. Yeah.
They contain materials you might expect to find in Formula One
cars or in the aerospace industry.
Dissecting this super shoe reveals the black carbon plate,
which helps runners feel like they are springing off the tarmac,
and has helped shave seconds and minutes off race times.
While some argue that they are just the next inevitable innovation,
others say it's like technical doping.
It's going to be a race between the manufacturers,
rather than a race between the athletes.
Back at Adidas HQ, Athlete Science Manager Mel Knopp
and the team are putting their latest super shoe
through its paces. And then you can just minimise it. Yeah.
In 2021, their Adizero range helped athletes to break seven world
records. What's so special about this that means that it can
help break records? Yeah, so, essentially, the things that's
different between this and the previous non-technology shoes,
as we call them, is so here we have a higher stack height,
so this is the 39mm,
which as you can see is higher than, like a normal running shoe.
The other part is the super soft foam, which, as you can feel,
it's very soft and has high cushioning. Oh, yeah!
And also very high energy returns.
But hidden in the midsole is their secret tech weapon.
Those are the energy rods, so essentially,
there's five of them, which would mimic the five bones in your foot.
These carbon-infused spines also make their super shoe super stiff.
They act like a propulsion system,
rocking your foot forwards.
And so, essentially, you can't bend the front of the shoe,
which means you kind of glide from one step into the next.
In previous shoes, you would bend the shoe
and that would use up energy, to bend the shoe and then spring back.
And all of that is kind of saved with this new technology,
that's the stuff element.
I see what you mean about it rolling forwards.
It does look a bit different to normal shoes. Yeah.
There's no sort of bend in form of it.
Does it make you feel faster? A lot faster. Does it really? Yeah.
Amazing. Does there not come a stage where this is kind of cheating?
I mean, are you sort of, in a way, just doing non-chemical doping here?
Yeah, so this is the one that's within the rules,
so this is the 38mm stack height, with the regulations as under 40.
But we also do have a shoe, which is our Prime X, which is
like the pinnacle of all Adidas innovation.
That is over 50mm, as you can see it's higher.
That's insane! That's massive!
What you're doing here then is you're just saying,
"Right, sod the rules." Yeah.
What would happen if we just made a shoe that will make you
go as fast as possible? Exactly and that's our goal,
is to let whatever athlete they want to run as fast a possible.
Have you run in these?
I have, yes. Are they fun? Yes! Are they? Yeah.
You're actually even like smiling. A beam just appeared across your face.
They're very soft and you can definitely even still feel
a difference between these two.
Suddenly, everyone becomes an athlete. Yeah!
So, what's the future, then? If this is where we are at now,
with cheating shoes... Yeah.
..do we ever get to a stage where you've got little
rockets in the back of them? Let's see! Let's see!
But essentially, for us,
we're working towards the individualisation and customisation
of shoes, so that we can give every athlete what they need to get
to the best performance, or whatever goals they're striving for.
Which, for me, is just to run 5K without stopping.
And we have shoes for that!
This generation of super shoes might split the crowd,
but they are the culmination of 100 years of sneaker ingenuity.
Revolutions in material science and engineering have given us
the springiest midsoles.
Advancements in data capture have led to better grip
and more comfortable uppers.
And maybe one day, I'll get my rocket-powered sneaks.
You know? I think my attitude towards trainers has actually
changed during the course of making this programme.
Now that I understand the kind of tricks that go into making those
shoes seem as appealing as possible, I think
I'm a little bit less likely to get sucked in by it.
But on the other hand, now that I've seen just how much science
and thought and design goes in to making these shoes
perform as best they possibly can, I mean,
I'm just never going to wear uncomfortable shoes again.
To explore the interesting dilemmas behind some familiar
pieces of technology, and hear some of my own thoughts, go to...
..and follow the links to the Open University.