Pavlov's investigations into dog digestion lead to phone addiction. A failed quest to find a safer refrigerant creates Teflon. A damaged delivery crate is instrumental in the invention of dynamite. And a chance encounter with a composer leads Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr to invent the basis for wifi.
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Pavlov's investigations into dog digestion lead to phone addiction. A failed quest to find a safer refrigerant creates Teflon. A damaged delivery crate is instrumental in the invention of dynamite. And a chance encounter with a composer leads Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr to invent the basis for wifi.
2022 • Technology
The failed experiment and the world's greatest crime-fighting tool. A clumsily dressed cut leads to the invention of plastics. How chance conversation and sausage poison changed the face of Hollywood. And a broken thermometer sets in motion a chain of events that frees a country from colonialism.
2022 • Technology
A dirty laboratory and a vacation lead to the discovery of our first real weapon against bacteria: penicillin. A scientist's determination to test the ‘wrong' solution gives us Kevlar. Unwashed hands and some unexpectedly sweet bread is to thank for Saccharin. A failed laser becomes the LED light.
2022 • Technology
A swiss chemist's attempts to make a lung drug results in LSD. The son of enslaved parents tires to reverse the fortunes of sharecroppers and inadvertently gives rise to PB&J. A failed dye becomes TNT. And a prison camp doctor and a fridge full of urine lead to improve mental healthcare.
2022 • Technology
A failed blood pressure medicine and an unexpectedly hairy woman lead to a cure for baldness. How messing around with a scientific toy gave us the x-ray. An attempt to stop the paper curling in a newspaper printer becomes air conditioning. And why war is responsible for the slinky.
2022 • Technology
A clumsy lab worker leads to the invention of superglue. And the accidents behind neuroscience, beer, and chemical hair relaxant.
2022 • Technology
A misguided attempt to make plastic wallpaper results in bubble wrap. The precursor to a blood clotting drug becomes rave favorite, MDMA. A mopped-up kitchen spill brings us smokeless explosive guncotton. A defective satellite lens leads to a new way to identify breast cancer.
2022 • Technology
The accidents behind the inventions of post-it notes, Ex-lax, Graphene and the way a walk in the snow almost leads to nuclear Armageddon.
2022 • Technology
The rise of the skyscraper coincided with the rise of America as a global superpower, and experts reveal how expert engineering and cutting-edge technology helped power humankind's race to conquer the sky.
S1E1 • Skyscrapers Engineering the Future • 2019 • Technology
First-hand accounts of those who made possible mankind's greatest achievement.
S1E3 • Blue Sky Metropolis • 2020 • Technology
Atari: Game Over chronicles the fall of the Atari Corporation through the lens of one of the biggest mysteries of all time, dubbed “The Great Video Game Burial of 1983.” As the story goes, the Atari Corporation, faced with an overwhelmingly negative response to “E.T.,” the video game for the Atari 2600, disposed of hundreds of thousands of unsold game cartridges by burying them in the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
2014 • Technology
Richard Clay, art historian and expert on semiotics and iconoclasm and the interplay between new technology and shifts in meaning, compares and contrasts cultural symbols from across the centuries, unpicking iconic images, music, and other cultural outputs to explain where ‘stickiness’ comes from.
2019 • Technology
Enlai explores how natural intelligence inspires artificial intelligence. He meets A.I. that is trained to think like artists, musicians, doctors, and scientists, and he learns how A.I. can outsmart us
S1E2 • Becoming Human • 2020 • Technology
In the first episode, Andrew looks at how people live in five of the world's biggest megacities: London, one of the world's oldest megacities; Dhaka, the world's fastest-growing megacity; Tokyo, the largest megacity on Earth; Mexico City, one of the most dangerous cities in the world; and Shanghai, arguably the financial capital of the world. Andrew compares the sleek skyscrapers and rapid modernisation of Shanghai to the colourful street culture and geographic sprawl of Mexico City. He spends a night living in a one-room shack in Dhaka's toughest slum, taking his turn to fetch water, cook and clean; and he rents a friend in the efficient and high-tech, but alienating, city of Tokyo. As he gets under the skin of each unique metropolis, Andrew discovers how the structure of each megacity defines every aspect of its inhabitants' daily lives. And he considers what the megacities of the future can learn from the metropolises of today.
S1E1 • Andrew Marr's Megacities • 2011 • Technology