Revolution: Ideas That Changed The World

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Revolution: Ideas That Changed The World

The Airplane gave us a great superpower - the ability to fly. But how we got it is a story full of passion, danger and death. We start with a Moorish scholar jumping off a cliff 11 centuries ago, with feathers on his arms. The key to flight is to master the air. That starts even...

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Season 1
Robots are everywhere. They build cars, electronics and consumer goods. They've revolutionised the modern world and they're about to revolutionise our homes. So how did we get here? It's an extraordinary tale. It begins in 800BC, with Homer's tale of Hephaestus, the God of fire and metalworking. He forges two golden, mecha...
The telescope allowed the greatest discovery ever - the universe itself. It is a tale of extraordinary twists and turns, involving a sea-shore plant, an ancient scholar, a New York property boom and a spilt bottle of mercury. Without these events, we may never have discovered the cosmos. We begin in Portugal, with some of ...
Few inventions have revolutionised our everyday existence like the smartphone. It put the world's knowledge in our hands, democratised news gathering, photography, and, through social media, connected billions of people in a way that wasn't possible before.
The rocket has the potential to change our species, allowing us to become citizens of space. But its origins are surprisingly old and strange. It starts in ancient China as a monk named Li Tian searches for bat droppings in a cave. The droppings are rich in one of the three key ingredients of gunpowder.
Over the last century, the car has become the ultimate freedom machine, but in fact its story begins 9,000 years ago. Archaeologists unearthed an ancient settlement 300 kms north of Siberia and found the remains of dogs. The settlers had evolved these animals from the grey wolf and adapted them to pull their sleds to hunt ...
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