Connections
James Burke's Knowledge Web pulls all the content below into a visual surfable web.
Note, the BBC has sent takedown notices, so many of the links below no longer work; some is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Y5nMlY_Q8
Connections II (Connections 2) is a twenty-episode documentary television series created, written and presented by science historian James Burke in 1994. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention and demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology. The series was noted for Burke's crisp and enthusiastic presentation (and dry humour), historical reenactments, and intricate working models.
II1 pulled by BBC
II 2 Sentimental Journeys - What do these have in common -- Freud, lifestyle crisis, electric shock therapy, hypnotherapy, magnetism, frenology, penology, physiology, synthetic dyes, the Bunsen burner, absorption, Fraunhofer lines, astronomical telescopes, chromatic aberrations, and surveying? Follow James Burke on the trail of discovering the connections between these and others in "Sentimental Journeys" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41HYYkqnMN4
II 3 Getting it Together - James Burke explains the relationship between hot air balloons and laughing gas, and goes on to surgery, hydraulic-water gardens, hydraulic rams, tunneling through the Alps, the Orient Express, nitroglycerin, heart attacks & headaches, aspirin, carbolic acid, disinfectants, Maybach-Gottlieb Daimler-Mercedes, carburetors, helicopters, typewriters, punch cards, and IBM. 22 min. Begins w/ SWAT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShHNWBbek3Y
II-4 Published on Jul 12, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dFSLUdiq5A
Whodunit? - This episode starts with a billiard ball and ends with a billiard ball. Along the way, Burke examines Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica (1st techno best seller, , how mining supported war (Anton Fugger, Hispanola Chs V, sn Phil II) , the role of money, the Spanish Armada, large ships, problems posed by a wood shortage, glass making, coal, plate glass, mirrors, the (James Hadley precison glass) sextant, barometers, the discovery of granite and seashells in the mountains, which enabled a new view of the age of the earth, and Darwin's theory of evolution, Francis Galton's Eugenics, and the forensic use of fingerprints. 22 min
Connections II #5 - Something for Nothing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cklz-u41BK4 How do Space shuttle landings start with the vacuum which was forbidden by the Church? Burke takes us on an adventure with barometers, weather forecasting, muddy and blacktop roads, rain runoff, sewage, a cholera epidemic, hygiene, plumbing, ceramics, vacuum pumps, compressed air drills, tunnels in the Alps, train air brakes, Tesla hydroelectric power, the electric motor, Galvani's muscle-electricity connection, Volta's battery, and gyroscopes.
Connections II #6 - Echoes of the Past http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmU_fepE5s The past in this case starts with the tea in Dutch-ruled India, examines the Japanese tea ceremony, Zen Buddhism, porcelain, the architecture of Florence, Delftware, Wedgewood, Free Masons, secret codes, radio-telephones, cosmic background radiation and—finally -- radio astronomy, which listens to "Echoes of the Past".
Connections II #7 - Photo Finish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKo2glmGu8 Another series of discoveries examined by Burke which include Eastman Kodak's Brownie, the disappearing elephant scare of 1867, billiard balls, celluloid as a substitute for ivory, false teeth that explode, gun cotton, double shot sound of a bullet, Mach's shock wave, aerodynamics, nuclear bombs, Einstein's relativity, Einstein's selenium, movie talkies, the vacuum tube amplifier, radio, railroad's use of wood, coal tar, gas lights, creosote, rubber, the Zeppelin, the automobile and finally how Adeline vulcanizes tires.
Connections II #8 - Separate Ways http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woZ5nhFvaGg Burke shows how to get from sugar to atomic weapons by two totally independent paths. The first involves African slaves, Abolitionist societies, Sampson Lloyd II, wire, suspension bridges, galvanized wire, settlement of the wild West, barbed wire, canned corn, and cadmium. The second path involves sweet tea, rum, a double boiler, the steam engine, Matthew Boulton, English currency, the pantograph, electroplating and cathode ray tubes
Connections II #9 - High Times http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulU78I7TfQQ The connection between polyethylene and Big Ben is a few degrees of separation, so let's recount them: polyethylene, radar, soap, artificial dyes, color perception, tapestries, Far East goods, fake lacquer furniture, search for shorter route to Japan, Hudson in Greenland, the discovery of plentiful whales, printing the Bible, Mercator map, Martin Luther's protest, star tables, Earth as a flattened sphere, and George Graham's clock which of course leads to Big Ben.
II 11 New Harmony - A dream of utopia is followed from microchips to Singapore, from the transistor to its most important element, germanium, to Ming vases and cobalt fakes (which contribute to the blue in blue tiles used in special Islamic places), and mosaics in Byzantium, the donation of Constantine, Portuguese navigation by stars, the "discovery" of Brazil, Holland's tolerance, diamond merchants, optics, microscopes, beasts of science, Frankenstein's monster, and finally New Harmony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRFthRfxcCM
Connections II #12 - Hot Pickle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXHPtUq5Hf8 Burke starts out in a spice market in Istanbul where you can find hot pickle, recounts the retaking of Istanbul by the Turks in 1453, follows the trail of pepper and tea and opium and the exploitation of addicts, moves to the jungles of Java, then to zoos, the use of canaries as carbon monoxide detectors, how George Stephenson used his consolation prize to build a locomotive, which led to the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack. Next we visit a sea island off the coast of South Carolina, where children of slaves are schooled. By the way, they picked cotton, which leads us to gaslight and air conditioning. Georgia Cayvan's glass dress leads to the neodymium glass laser, (which was used in the Gulf War). And the armed switch for firing a missile is also called "a hot pickle."
Connections II #13 - The Big Spin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3oZDfTRM0U it's what California's lottery TV show is called. And lottery being a game of chance, from here Burke takes us through Alexander Flemming's chance discovery of penicillin, to Rudolf Virchow's observation that contaminated water is related to health, to Schliemann's search for the City of Troy, the theft of a discovered treasure, and to Virchow's criminology. From there we proceed to anthropology, the classification of life forms, Francis Bacon, the statistics of mortality, life expectancy, statistical math, Priestley's carbonated water, the soda fountain, petroleum oil, some French fossil hunters, seismology, and impossible-to-predict earthquakes
II 14 Bright Ideas - gin and tonic was invented to combat Malaria in British colonies like Java, which leads us to Geneva where cleanliness is an obsession. Here tonic water was sealed with a disposable bottle cap, and razors became disposable, leading us to Huntsman's steel, invaluable for making clock springs and chronometers. We take a little trip through lighthouses, the education of orphans, psycho-physics, the law of the just noticeable difference, which is the idea behind stellar magnitudes, which leads us to discovering the size of the universe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o4GxOMtrJ0 keffid distance Hubble
II 15 Making Waves - a permanent wave in ladies' hair is aided by curlers, and this leads us to explore borax, taking us to Switzerland, Johann Sutter's scam, and Sutter's Mill, and that means the discovery of gold leading to the 1848 California gold rush. Americans then cut into the English tea market with the aide of the Yankee Clipper, which played a big role in the gold rush. A fungus from America created the Irish potato famine, resulting in the importing of corn, but laws prevented the Yankee Clippers from being used until it was too late to save Ireland. Finally the laws were changed, leading to franking fraud, which was overcome by special printing of postage stamps, which gave us wallpaper, and a thickening agent, leading us to the Canal du Midi, the American war for independence, resettlement in Scotland, highlanders in Nova Scotia and---finally---the RMS Queen Elizabeth II. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaI46YD9LPQ
Connections II #16 - Routes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHojp8uslrA Jethro Tull, a sick English lawyer, recuperates sipping wine and contributes the hoe to help fix farming problems. Farm production is not going so well in France, either. François Quesnay (doctor of King Louis XV's mistress) suggests a solution based on his complete misunderstanding of English farming techniques. Laissez-faire was his erroneous idea. It also got the people to demand social laissez-faire. His inciting the public's rebellion against the monarchy led to France's invasion of Geneva. The French Revolution led to personal exploration of the senses. Berlin doctor Müller reasoned that each sense does a different job and the nervous system analyzes what the senses are telling you. Helholtz's pupil, Hertz, discovered that sound and electricity have a wave-like nature in common. Guglielmo Marconi takes this a step further by sending and receiving signals very long distances across the earth. The BBC realized that the radio waves were reflected by the ionosphere, and Hess was the first to suggest that the ionization was due to "Hess rays" later related to solar activity. But World War II started and adding machines were needed to aim artillery and so digital computing was invented. Thus was enabled the GPS which tells you your "Routes."
Connections II #17 - One Word http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmjXkrj-Oss The one word that changed everything was "filioque", but we must make a trip to Constantinople, visit the Renaissance, meet Aldus Manutius of Venice, explore abbreviations, learn about Italic print, which resulted in an overload of books, requiring the development of a cataloging system. And that brings us to church intolerance, James Watt and the Industrial Revolution, cerium, the asteroid Ceres, Gauss's mathematics, and cultural anthropology.
Connections II #18 - Sign Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMyiSEmpfvg
Murphy's Law says you need insurance from Lloyd's of London, so pack your bags to study international law and protect yourself from piracy by calculating the probability. You better study Pascal's math for that, but you might find yourself jailed for free thinking. While you are in jail, study some sign language, or at least learn to speak better than Eliza Doolittle. Henry Higgins's waveform recordings lead you to the telephone, the invention of shorthand, the radiometer, gas flow, the Wright brothers' airplane, lubrication, ball bearings and a ballpoint pen so you can "Sign Here".
Connections II #19 - Better Than The Real Thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aif3q1zqkuU starts in the 1890s with bicycles and bloomers and then takes a look at boots, zippers, sewing machines, and infinitesimal difference. Speaking of small, we look at microscopic germs, Polarized light, sugar, coal, iron, micro-bubbles, the spectroscope, night vision, beri-beri resulting from polished rice, chickens, war rationing, and finally, we arrive at vitamins in a pill.
Connections II #20 - Flexible Response http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOtaCB2RaZg A whimsical look at the myth of the English longbow, Robin Hood (Maid Marian) , Flanders flat geography transhipment pt) sheep, the need to drain land with windmills, the effect of compound interest, decimal fractions, increased productivity, the Erie Canal, railroads, telegraphs, department stores, Quaker Oats, X-ray diagnostics, bio-feedback, and servo control systems in a Panavia Tornado aircraft.
CONNECTIONS III
III #8 - Fire from the Sky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKcfEgV76Q (ad?) - Thanks to Continental Drift and Alfred Wegener's passion for mirages, magic images from the sister of King Arthur, whose chivalry supposedly triggers the medieval courtly love answer to adultery, which were in turn inspired by the free love ideas of the mystical Cathars, who lived next to the mystical cabalists who were fascinated with mystic numbers that spark Pico of Mirandola's ineterest in Hebrew, which then brings trouble for Johann Reuchlin, not helped by his nephew, the Protestant Melanchthon, who had a feud with Osiander, who rewrites the work of Copernicus. Osiander's Italian pal, Dr. Cardano, who cures the asthmatic Archbishop John Hamilton, executed for helping Mary, Queen of Scots, whose lover, the explosive bearing Earl of Bothwell, ends up in Scandinavia with a friend of astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose assistant, Willem Blaeu, makes maps updated in the first true atlas by the Englishman Dudley, working in Italy for Bernardo Buontalenti, who got opera started, which was a rave success, especially with the French Cardinal Mazarin, whose library inspired the secretary of the English navy, which eventually buys French semaphore, after which Gamble gets the patent for canned food that feeds explorers like Hooker, who transplanted rubber trees to Sri Lanka. As a result of all that, we have rubber to mix with gasoline to make napalm, which is "Fire from the Sky."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpKcfEgV76Q 52 min
