Mark Williams TV - Fred Dibnah TV - Josh Fox & Gasland TV - David Suzuki - Horizon TV - Horace Mann
How to serve beer more quickly ... Bramah set himself the task of coming up with a solution to serve beer through a pipe to the bar: a beer engine ... The Bramah Press. Patented in 1795 it’s the same principle as the two syringes. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e5: Under Pressure, Discovery 2005
But Armstrong was going to use hydraulic power for something butcher than kitchen gadgets. Something that would give the ship-building industry quite a boost. And make him even more money. ibid.
The accumulator provides power at the turn of a valve. There’s no reason why it couldn’t provide power for lots of machinery. In fact, if you had a big enough accumulator and long enough pipes, you could provide power for a whole town or a city. And that’s what this company did – the London Hydraulic Power Company. ibid.
By 1847 Armstrong had given up practising law; he opened his Elswick works on the banks of the River Tyne where he manufactured hydraulics and all sorts of other engineering equipment. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e4: Men of Steel, BBC 2006
By 1867 the Armstrong company had begun to build iron warships, and in the first fifteen years they built twenty. ibid.
The greatest armament supplier of the time. ibid.
By the 1890s the manufacture of arms and battleships had become one of our major industries. ibid.
‘Hydraulic fracturing has been characterised as environmentally risky and inadequately regulated. Press reports and websites alleging that six states have documented over 1,000 incidents of ground water contamination resulting from the practice of hydraulic fracturing – such reports are not accurate.’ Josh Fox, Gasland ***** evidence to sub-committee on Energy & Minerals, 2010
Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health. David Suzuki
A rush for energy in America – for a type of gas that appears cheap and plentiful. One with just one way of getting it out of the ground – hydraulic frackturing, or fracking. Horizon: Fracking – The New Energy Rush, BBC 2013
It is supposed that the ancients were ignorant of the law in hydraulics, by which water, in a tube, will rise as high as the fountain-head; and hence they carried their stupendous aqueducts horizontally, from hill-top to hill-top, upon lofty arches, with an incredible expenditure of labour and money. The knowledge of a single law, now familiar to every well-instructed school-boy, – namely, that water seeks a level, and, if not obstructed, will find it – enables the poorest man of the present day to do what once demanded the wealth of an empire. The beautiful fragments of the ancient Roman aqueducts, which have survived the ravage of centuries, are often cited to attest the grandeur and power of their builders. To me, they are monuments, not of their power, but of their weakness. Horace Mann