WEBVTT
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Nobody knows
where they got the theory from to build a chimney.
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from metal workers or smithies,
but what a difference it made!
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Look at this.
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That's the plan of the old manor hall you saw just now.
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And this
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is the plan of this house. Look at all those rooms!
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Now you don't build those rooms, unless you can heat them.
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The idea was that if you put a fire up against a wall
like that why not put a fire on the other side of the wall?
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They could both use the same flue -
you'd get two fires for the price of one.
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Well, the first major change the chimney caused
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was the separation of the classes.
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The lords and ladies left the bedding down here in the great
hall to the dogs and the servants and passing strangers
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and cleared off to live in their own private apartments.
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And the upper and lower classes
never came that close again.
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Cozy little office, this. Don't you think?
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This was the next kind of room they put a fire into so that
the scribes could do all their work throughout the winter
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without all the ink freezing in their inkwells,
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which it had done before.
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That did the European economy a real favor, you know.
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I mean being able to conduct your business
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right the way through the year.
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Oh. Like the staircase?
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What's new about that?
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It is.
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See, with fires in every room
you could build up just as well as you could build out.
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Servants downstairs, of course. Upstairs was warmer.
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It was getting so cold, that even the painters noticed it.
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I mean, take a look at that Breugel.
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Frozen ponds
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Snow everywhere
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Little village with the chimney pots working see?
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Now, that was only worth painting because it was
a totally new experience being that cold.
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Indoors they hung cloth on the wall to keep out the draft
and later on they turned into these fancy tapestries.
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And they put rugs everywhere, even on the tables.
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They kept their bodies warm
with two major 13th century inventions:
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Here's a bit of 13th century art.
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Very nice too.
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But look what the Virgin's doing.
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See? One of those two inventions.
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Knitting.
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The second invention also kept people pretty snug.
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Buttons.
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And a lot less people died of cold.
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And now we come to the high great chamber
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Not bad for a living room, is it?
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And everything again done for warmth,
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the woven matting on the floor,
Oh, and look here underneath the tapestry
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wooden wainscoting good against drafts.
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And admire if you will this very beautiful plasterwork.
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That's originally a mini ice-age idea,
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in the first place they put it round the chimney
because it was fireproof,
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then they put it on the walls to plug up the drafty cracks,
then finally they molded it and painted it like that.
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and as people's indoor lives got warmer
their habits changed.
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They started playing more games, like backgammon,
draughts, shuffleboard;
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there was a lot more music;
a lot more reading;
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a lot more intellectual activity in general;
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oh, and a lot more furniture.
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But the place where the biggest change took place was here:
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in the bedroom.
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Private little place, isn't it?
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Never used to be like that,
everybody used to sleep in the hall.
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But, with separate fireplaces,
sleep and undressing and sex
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became things you only did *in private*.
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Our modern preoccupation with privacy
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starts here.
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So does cleanliness,
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hot fires, hot water
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hot baths.
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And if it got too cold to go to the toilet outside, well
you could always try one of these indoor portable varieties.
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Note the padded seat for winter use.
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Or you could build yourself one of those rather rude
half inside half outside affairs...
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like that.
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Another Bruegel.
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In the 14th century you could eat in your
private dining room by the fire.
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And hygiene began to affect table manners
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you washed your hands before dinner.
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You used a fork.
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There were separate table settings
and there were separate chairs instead of benches.
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And, they used table linen.
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Already it's remarkably modern.
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And, of course, the kitchen,
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again, thanks to the fireplace, a separate room.
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By the 15th century they knew enough about
hot air going up the flue
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to put turbines in chimneys
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And run roasting spits with them via gears and a
drive chain like on a bicycle.
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And, the hotter the fire, the faster the turbine spins,
the quicker the meat turns, doesn't get burnt.
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Clever, aye?
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You must admit it is a very nice piece of property.
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But why it matters so much to our story is that in every
single one of its heated rooms
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it had this:
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a glass window.
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But, it had so many more glass windows than anybody else
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that, at the time, this place was known as:
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Hardwick Hall more glass than wall."
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[♪ Baroque ♪]
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Now this is just one of the places that got built
in the great 16th century property boom.
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And as the houses went up
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the forests came down.
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And these guys were the villains of the piece:
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the people cutting down trees to make charcoal for the
fuel for their glass making furnaces
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to make the windows everybody wanted.
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So much wood was going up in smoke
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the government passed laws to try and save the forests
for the people who'd be really sunk without wood:
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the Navy!
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But, by the beginning of the 17th Century,
things had got desperate.
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There had to be somewhere else the glassmakers could go
and chop their firewood.
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And then they found the ideal place.
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[♪ Lone English Horn ♪]
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See, glass making needs sand and wood mainly.
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And that's just what there was tons of here.
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And in 1608 it was all absolutely free.
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The one year old colony at Jamestown, Virginia
was built on sand. And as for forests?
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You couldn't see the wood for the trees!
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So, the master plan
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was to send glass makers over here to get on with it,
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by the boatload.
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If you think about it, things must have been pretty far gone
to try a harebrained scheme like this.
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I mean, four thousand miles in a leaky boat to make glass
surrounded by Indians and wild animals.
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Well, they managed to talk a grand total of eight idiots
into coming to "blow bubbles" in America.
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But, one hard winter and they all gave up.
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[♪ Sad ♪]
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The plot now shifts from glass to iron.
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For one of the oldest reasons in the world.
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We come now to one of those
deeply meaningful moments in history
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where things change because of the basic drives in mankind.
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You know: a belief in progress,
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fundamental insight in the nature of things,
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a dogged persistence in making ideas work
the joy of discovery - that sort of thing.
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The extraordinary change that was to happen because of the
failure to bring boatloads of glassworkers here to Jamestown
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was a result of one of those visions people have
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in this case, the desire to make
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as much as possible
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as fast as possible
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of this stuff...
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Money☺
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So, if you're ready for a devious tale of
the uppercrust on the make, here goes...
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About 50 years before Jamestown,
Queen Elizabeth was desperate to make
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bronze canon
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A.) for the defense of the realm and
B.) because she got a cut in the profits.
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Now, you need copper to make brass and we,
in England, didn't have very much of that.
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So, so German miners,
with an eye to what they might make out of it,
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came over and in 1566 found copper.
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Now, the other thing Elizabeth wanted to do was to get
the wool market back on its feet
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so she could tax it
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But she didn't have enough brass
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to make these carding combs,
essential to the production of wool.
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So, some more German miners
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with an eye to financial gain
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came over and in 1566 they found
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Calamine, one of the essential ingredients in making brass,
near Bristol.
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Now, the metal making boom that followed
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used wood for furnace fuel
just as fast as the glassmakers had.
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And then, in 1611, enter Sir Edward Zouch, crafty courtier
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with an eye for a fast buck
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who says, me and my partners have come up with an
absolutely brilliant solution:
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let's use coal to make glass
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So, Zouch gives the King £1,000
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and in return the King gives Zouch a monopoly
to use his own coal furnace to make glass.
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Well then, Zou...