Iron turned Sweden into one of the almighty nations in Europe. But it owes its strength to one man: Christopher Polhem, whose genius forged its power. 1620: and the survival of Sweden depended on its ability to produce high quality iron ... Through a quirk of geology it sat on one of the richest iron-ore deposits in the world. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e9: Iron Man of Sweden
To produce sixty tons of iron you need a hundred and twenty tons of charcoal. Now, to produce a hundred and twenty tons of charcoal you need to slowly burn twelve hundred tons of wood. ibid.
Swedish iron is free of impurities such as sulphur and phosphorus so it is very strong. ibid.
The elaborately decorated material was in such demand that by the last 1700s hand-woven Lyon silk made up over a third of France’s exports. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e10: King Silk
Jacquard was back in business. In 1804 Napoleon called him to Paris in order to mechanise the Lyon silk industry. It was there that Jacquard made a surprise discovery ... the prototype to an automatic loom. ibid.
The new and improved Jacquard loom: the big change that Jacquard had made ... The punchcards now control the loom. ibid.
They realised Jacquard’s system could be applied to any fabric; they decided to use it. And by 1833 the British had over a hundred thousand looms based on Jacquard’s system, driving the world’s biggest textile trade. ibid.
The first threshing engine was invented in 1786 by a Scotsman Andrew Michael. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e1: Bread, Beer and Salt
Now in the 1880s they ditched the grindstones and water-mills and they replaced them with rollers and a turbine. ibid.
Without mass produced beer, bread and salt, workers would have starved and the industrial revolution would have ground to a halt. ibid.
During the industrial revolution there was an unprecedented demand for new buildings ... If the building industry was going to keep up with demand, brick-making would have to increase output dramatically. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s4e2: Europe s4e2: Building Europe, Discovery 2006
Berlin decided to clean up its act, and made plans to replace this time-consuming tram journey with a modern rail link and a modern train. And the most modern of all these trains were powered not by steam but by 1898 onwards by electricity. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e3: The City
By the 1760s they could use a Spinning Jenny: a glorified spinning wheel with several spindles: but even it couldn’t keep up with demand. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe 4e4: Cotton, Linen and Rope
Arkwright built a series of mills across the north of England. This is Cromford: the first. His appetite for cotton was insatiable. ibid.
In 1889 this was the tallest building in the world – three hundred metres high and designed to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution ... This is still the world’s most famous iron tower. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e5: Eiffel’s Tower
Eiffel’s use of open girders massively reduced the wind resistance. Not only were they cost effective they were an engineering triumph. ibid.
Not one of Eiffel’s workers died during construction of the Tower. ibid.
Two of motor power’s most innovative pioneers – Karl Benz und Gottlieb Daimler. Their dream of a fast self-powered road vehicle changed almost every aspect of modern life. And it helped define the twentieth century. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e6: Exploding Engines
When steam-power really got going as a moving force it wasn’t on the roads, it was on the railways. By the 1860s locomotives were criss-crossing Europe, but on the roads self-powered vehicles were in for a bumpy ride especially in England. ibid.
This is a single-cylinder four-stroke engine which uses petrol as a fuel. ibid.
It was the first time the world saw a motorcycle, and it is the first ever petrol-driven vehicle. By an amazing coincidence just sixty kilometres away another motor-car pioneer was testing a rival prototype. Karl Benz had made a fortune making engines for industry but his real goal was to create a car. And that’s exactly what he did in 1886. ibid.
In a hot air balloon invented by a pair of dabbling amateurs ... it was paper that first inspired the French brothers’ interest in flight. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e7: High Fliers
A few months after the Montgolfiers’ first flight the Paris Academy launched a hydrogen balloon. ibid.
In 1906 Graf von Zeppelin recorded a twenty-four hour flight. The German government commissioned an entire fleet. ibid.
The Wright Brothers experimented with box-kites and concluded that two sets of wings would increase lift ... Their plane – Flier 1 – looks very like a box-kite, except the Wrights added a system of controls and a lightweight engine. In 1903 the Wright brothers completed the first powered flight in a winged craft. It was a magnificent achievement but it lasted less than a minute. ibid.
On July 25th 1909 [Louis] Bleriot used it to fly across the English Channel. ibid.
It was huge. It was two-hundred-and-forty-five-metres long ... This was not a party balloon: the Hindenburg had enough life to carry four one-thousand-and-fifty-horsepower engines. ibid.
The Hindenburg fire brought the age of the airship to a tragic end. ibid.
The exquisite porcelain of the far east was the most sought after tableware of the eighteenth century’s wealthiest people. However, the secret of its manufacture had evaded Europeans for hundreds of years. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s4e8: Europe – Perfect Porcelain
Kaolin powder was brought into Delph along canals by barges. ibid.
Paddle-steamers were not designed for tourists. They were cargo ships ... A hundred and fifty years after they first appeared paddle-steamers are still one of the best ways of exploring the alpine landscape. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e9: Steaming up the Alps
British pioneer George Stephenson came to Switzerland in the late 1840s to advise on railway construction. The trouble was a conventional train could never climb such a steep slope because the smooth train wheels don’t have enough grip against the smooth rails ... The funicular railway is amazingly simple. Two cars on a cable, some water and a pair of buckets! ibid.
It was all about cogs and teeth. ibid.
Welcome aboard the steepest rack railroad in the world ... Over a hundred and fifteen years later tourists are still happy to trust their lives to a nineteenth century technology of cogs and racks. ibid.
In the late eighteenth century Sweden had no heavy industry to speak of ... A canal was built linking all these lakes together. They called it the Gota Canal. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e10: Swedish Waterwork
Look closely and you’ll find the British were behind almost every big advance that shaped the modern world. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e1: Buildings, Discovery 2006
There is something about a bridge which is a bit special: these are among the biggest man-made structures in existence ... Tower Bridge: this is the most fairytale bridge in the world ... It’s really an iron bridge clad in stone, and that’s the secret. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e3: Bridges
The biggest and most expensive Meccano set ever made: the iron bridge in Coalbrookdale ... The world’s very first iron bridge ... Darby’s bridge cost £6,000. ibid.
The revolutionary Menai Straits Bridge ... a radically new way to build bridges: this is the first time anyone had tried to suspend a big road from towers using metal cable: a suspension bridge. ibid.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel wanted to build the biggest suspension bridge in the world spanning the greatest distance. An elegant bridge that seemed almost to float across the sky ... Brunel never ceases to amaze ... What Brunel called his Little Darling. ibid.
To a bridge whose stories begins with a disaster ... What was created was the greatest civil engineering project of the nineteenth century. A marvel of girder and rivet – the Forth Rail Bridge ... The biggest rail bridge in the world ... The art critic William Morris described this bridge as ‘the supremest specimen of all ugliness’. ibid.
An engineering leviathan ... the Humber Bridge. This bridge is over two kilometres long and is made up of 27,500 tons of steel and 480,000 tons of concrete ... Opened in 1981 ... Until recently the biggest in the world. ibid.
The era of metal seafaring machines was beginning ... And with the SS Great Britain he [Brunel] planned a new kind of ship to link Britain with its empire and former colonies. Brunel aimed at nothing less than a revolution in seafaring. Rory McGrath, Industrial Revelations s5e5: Ships
Think of the ultimate icon of art deco and here it is: the Queen Mary. ibid.
This is it: the world’s first fast-slipway lifeboat. ibid.