Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

[ARWadsworth]

Just found this on on the BBCiPlayer for those that are interested and can view it

info. Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements.

Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments - a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.

Electricity is not just something that creates heat and light, it connects the world through networks and broadcasting. After centuries of man's experiments with electricity, the final episode tells the story of how a new age of real understanding dawned - how we discovered electric fields and electromagnetic waves. Today we can hardly imagine life without electricity - it defines our era. As our understanding of it has increased so has our reliance upon it, and today we're on the brink of a new breakthrough, because if we can understand the secret of electrical superconductivity we could once again transform the world.

[ARWadsworth]

Just to point out, I copied and pasted this bit, I did not write it:-)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Watched this earlier - a bit tough for old Lodge, wasn't it? Still, he went on to make plenty of spark plugs.

[Huge]

>> More info.

And very good it was, too.

[Another John]

:-( You 'ad me fooled Adam!

Thanks for the heads-up!

J.

[jgharston]

Followed by a repeat of the history of the National Grid TAAAW. They don't do public sector infrastructure project like that any more.

JGH

[ARWadsworth]

is also

listened to it yet)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Too many fecking nimbys.

[Andy Champ]

Seem to be a lot of wind turbines going up lately.

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

There will be a lot going down in a year or so..

Dash for cash right now.

Almost certain the govt will cut back on subsidies. Once Huhne is nicked.

[Weatherlawyer]

I haven't watched it but summoned enough interest to follow the thread as I had just been reading stuff in old copies of Scientific American (circa 1884.)

The invention of the arc light by Farraday was almost ignored until late in the century it was realised a pair of rods could be used in parallel when separated by an insulator (plaster of paris) does the panel think that the problem with arc lights would not have been such a problem if it was known that sparks could be maintained between metal "contacts" (?) as in a spark plug.

And why was this a riddle in the dark ages?

[Bob Minchin]

>

This was part 3 - I've not been able to find any links on Iplayer to parts 1 and 2? Any clues?

TIA

Bob

[geoff]

In message , Bob Minchin writes

It was on BBC4

it will be repeated, and repeated, and repeated ...

[ARWadsworth]

Then I can see parts 1 and 2.

[Steve Firth]

The BBC removed the links to the previous episode each week. I'm not sure if this is a licensing thing (e.g. it may soon be out on DVD), BBC has done similar things with other programs in the past.

[Dave Liquorice]

Stuff on iPlayer doesn't stay there for ever. It's only a catch up service not an archive. PITA, I'd have liked to have seen the previous episodes as well. I set the thing to record the last episode on series link so provided they don't muck about with the codes if they ever are repeated (and being BBC 4 this is quite likely) hopefully my recorder will grab 'em automagically.

[stuart noble]

All 3 available on Pirate bay

[Gordon Henderson]

And uknova - which is a somewhat more respectable, I reckon. However getting an account on uknova is somewhat problematic at times...

[Steve Firth]

Yes I realise this, however the majorityof programming on iplayer lasts for longer than a week. All six episodes of Planet Dinosaur are still on there, for example. The only reason I can see for the varying retention periods is the nature of the licensing agreement with the content provider.

[stuart noble]

I could have taped the thing so it's hardly piracy