How the Universe Works TV - The Universe TV - Horizon TV - Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - Jacob Bronowski TV - Bettany Hughes TV - Jeremy Black TV - Fred Dibnah TV - Mark Williams TV - Ronald Top TV - Samuel Smiles - Charles Collins - Jim Al-Khalili TV - Birth of the Universe TV - Richard Miles TV - Michael Cremo - George Orwell - Mark Miodownik TV -
Iron absorbs energy. From the moment a massive star creates iron it only has seconds to live ... In a few seconds supernovas create more energy than our sun ever will. How the Universe Works s1e4: Stars, Discovery 2010
It rains iron on brown dwarfs. The Universe s4e9: Liquid Universe, History 2009
The Earth developed a large core of iron. Horizon: Message in the Rocks, BBC 1979
Transform the planet: the age of iron – an age we still live in today. Mankind: The Story of All of Us II, History 2012
The fourth most common element in the Earth’s crust. ibid.
A super-fuel – charcoal. ibid.
Iron ushers in a new age of warfare: Sparta v Greece. ibid.
A new type of technology – cast iron. ibid.
Iron is a later discovery than copper because at every stage it needs more heat. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 4/13: The Hidden Structure, BBC 1973
This was a heroic age – Thomas Telford felt that, spanning the landscape with iron. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 8/13: The Drive For Power
People had discovered a new metal much more readily available that bronze – iron. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain: 1500 B.C.- 43 A.D. Channel 4 2003
Great Britain: Two-thirds of the world’s coal and half its iron. Professor Jeremy Black, Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here, BBC 2013
It were really coal and iron that started the industrial revolution. Iron to make the boilers similar to this one, and coal of course to burn in them to make the steam to drive all the machinery. Fred Dibnah’s Industrial Age e3: Iron & Steel, BBC 19999
Robert Stephenson was in the forefront of creating a railway network which was to transform the lives of millions. It was the age of iron. Fred Dibnah’s Victorian Heroes s1e1, BBC 2001
The Lake District isn’t really an area most people associate with our industrial past and heavy industry. Once upon a time round Workington and Barrow in Furnace there were great industrial centres and they mined iron ore in the hundreds of tons, and it were some of the best iron ore in all of England. You know. Alas, it’s all gone. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain e3: The Source of Iron, BBC 2005
All the ore mined at the Florence mine came here to the Workington steel works where is were converted by Bessemer converters into steel to manufacture railway lines. ibid.
We’re now in Falkirk which of course was the place where the industrial revolution in Scotland all started. And here there is a great iron foundry called the Carron Iron Works that were opened in 1760. After thirty years it employed a thousand men and became the biggest iron smelting plant in the whole of Europe. Fred Dinah’s Made in Britain e4: Castings
In 1950 there were more than two-hundred foundries like this in central Scotland. Now this is one of the only ones left. ibid.
Ironbridge: This is the world’s first cast-iron bridge. Iron was so important round here that this place was regarded as the beginning or the cradle of the industrial revolution. It wasn’t just bridges they made here. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e1: The Industrial Landscape, BBC 2006
‘Up until the 1850s they only really cast iron, you know. And they really needed something a bit tougher. And along came Henry Bessemer in 1855 and he invented this thing – a giant eggcup.’ ibid. Fred
It was the growth in iron production that led to the great increase in the demand for coal. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e8: Riches Beneath the Earth
A beautiful piece of working iron: a standardised Telford gate design to be found all over his roads. Looks almost Art Deco. Except it’s 1820 not 1920. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e5: Working Iron, Discovery 2002
What fired Telford’s ambition to create this incredible structure? The answer lies in the specification for this wrought-iron suspension bridge. The iron is to be best quality Shropshire iron. The world’s first iron bridge had been constructed only forty-seven years before the Menai over the River Seven in Shropshire, the heart of the iron industry. ibid.
In 1709 Abraham Darby got a patent for a new method of casting pot-bellied cooking pots ... in sand. In 1709 he moved from Bristol to here. And also in 1709 he did an amazing thing: because he discovered a way of smelting iron with coke ... He truly was the Father of the Industrial Revolution. ibid.
Wrought iron made for much stronger lighter rails. Mark Williams on the Rails: Rocketmen, Discovery 2004
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 Men of Sweden, Discovery 2005
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.
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Samuel Smiles, Men of Invention and Industry, 1884
Any old iron, any old iron,
Any any old old iron? Charles Collins, Any Old Iron, song 1911
5So what makes iron so special? It stems from the unique structure of its nucleus. The twenty-six protons along with the neutrons combine in a very special way to make iron incredibly stable. For some reason Nature has decreed this as the number that allows the strong force and the electromagnetic force to balance each other perfectly. Jim Al-Khalili, Atom: The Key to the Cosmos, BBC 2010
Iron is a very special atom. The protons and neutrons inside its nucleus are very tightly bound together. So that even the extreme temperatures inside stars couldn’t get it to fuse into heavier elements ... Forming these missing pieces would take some of the most powerful explosions the universe has ever seen. Birth of the Universe, 2006
A pitiless age - the Age of Iron ... Civilisation would re-emerge, tempered in the flames of conflict, tougher and more resilient than ever before. Richard Miles, Ancient Worlds II: Age of Iron, BBC 2010
The Mycenaeans ... had learnt the arts of civilisation from the Minoans. ibid.
The catastrophe of the sea peoples is one of the break points of our story. ibid.
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood. Otto von Bismarck
Miners have found these very interesting round metallic objects – I call them metallic because they’re made of hematite which is a naturally occurring type of iron ... The parallel grooves that go around the centre of each of them ... They’re about one or two inches in diameter. Michael Cremo, author Forbidden Archaeology, radio interview ‘Hidden History of the Human Race’
Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under the blow. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
The Romans were experts at manipulating iron. Mark Miodownik, Metal: How It Works I, BBC 2017