WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are innovators, inventors. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We transform the resources of our planet into new powers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [Music] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But as life accelerates, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 new perils and mankind's greatest triumphs. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet most species will fail. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But for one all the pieces will fall into place. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is our story the story of all us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Richmond Virginia, April 1865. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The climax of the American civil war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Union troops close in on the confederate capitol. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [screams] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the confederates decide not to defend their city. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Their plan evacuate, regroup keep fighting. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [screams and gunshots] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The orders passed to young soldiers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Captain William Herring, Adjunct Linden Kent. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Without knowing it they will help bring the war to a sudden end. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The American civil war, the bloodiest war in U.S. history. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 600,000 Americans dead, more than in World Wars one and two combined. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But in the modern age the key to the success of mankind is mass production. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Wars are now won by harnessing the power of industry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Giving the Union a massive advantage. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Four out of five factories are in the North. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Making 25 more weapons, six times more ammunition. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [music] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Many southener's still live a rural life, based on farming. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Crushed by the industrial might of the north. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They are on the brink of defeat. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Richmond their last stand. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Abandoned. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Herring and Kent are meant to burn the South's most valuable commodity. Tobacco 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And to destroy food and supplies, anything that could be of use to union troops. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Richard Machowicz: Wait a second, I was just fighting to protect this city. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And now, you want me to burn it to the ground. Are you insane? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 George Wunderlich: The shock and the horror of this idea, must have been the most terrible thing in the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the question comes, do you follow orders and burn what you have defended? Or do you let it be? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Soldiers: Are we really going to do this? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Confederate's want to destroy the warehouses, but leave Richmond in tact. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ready for their return. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Richmond is a concept a belief. As long as Richmond exists so does the Confederacy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the fire spreads out of control. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A thousand buildings burn. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Munition dumps explode. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Confederate's lay waste to their own city. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's apocalyptic, it's the only way to describe it. The Confederate's are leaving a Capitol ablaze, a Capitol in ruin. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An idea in ruin, a political system in ruin. It's the end. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Six days later the South surrenders. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The world's first industrial war ends. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now the men and machines that fought the war, fight for a new cause. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Progress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An explosion of technology. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Man the tool maker charges into the modern age. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Prof. Henry Gates: The period immediately following the Civil War. Was curiously enough a time of enormous optimism. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A time when people embraced the idea of progress like they had never done before. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People believed everything could be done faster, bigger, better. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Jim Rasenberger: Every other day there would be a newspaper article about some new extraordinary invention. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Some new technology. some new breakthrough that was just on the cusp. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Narrator: In the U.S. alone 400,000 patents in 40 years. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 New inventions mass produced. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [music] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Identical parts made separate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Put together on the assembly line. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 High volume, low cost. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Around the world chain reaction. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Industry expands 700 percent. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mass production sweeps through North America and Europe. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then spreads east to Asia. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japan for 200 years cutoff from the rest of the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A medieval way of life isolated from Western progress. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [bell rings] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But even here change is coming. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A barber shop in old Tokyo. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One man will help launch Japan into the modern age. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was Saki Yaterio. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Visionary, reformer, Samurai. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Determined to embrace the future. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He will cut ties to the past. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Samurai have ruled Japan for 600 years. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A warrior class, who live and die by the sword. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mike Loades: During the several hundred years that Japan shut its doors to the world, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the cult of the Samurai was elevated to this mystical status and at the heart of it the worship of the sword. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [music] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Narrator: The soul of every warrior and his sword. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Made from hammered steel, 32,000 layers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Each 100,000th of an inch thick. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sharp enough to slice thru five human bodies at a time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the Samurai's ancient feudal keeps Japan living in the past. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was Saki from an old Samurai family, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he will reject the old order, by removing his top knot. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Traditionally cut off in defeat, an act of humiliation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For Saki it was liberation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He enters the barber shop of Samurai. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He leaves an entrepreneur. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 1884 Saki rents an old ship yard the base for his company. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mitsubishi 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The expertise that made swords will make ships, from steel. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An Iron and carbon alloy honed over centuries. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Steel is a man made super metal. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Up to ten times stronger than pure iron. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Today we use 1.3 billion tons of it every year. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Enough to build the Empire State building 20,000 times. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Saki recruits western experts to learn the secrets of modern industry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By blasting oxygen thru pig iron, its possible to make steel ten times faster. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In just over a century, Mitsubishi becomes the worlds largest corporation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Building ships planes and cars. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Asia's first industrial nation, develops faster than any country on Earth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Japan learns in a decade what the West developed in a century. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Today its the planets third richest nation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 6,000 miles away Belfast Ireland. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Workers build a giant steel structure, a monument to the ambition of the age. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 2,000 steel plates, 3 million rivets, 900 feet long, 46,000 tons. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The largest moving object on the planet and its unsinkable. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 April 14th 1912, RMS Titanic bound for New York. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mankind puts it faith in technology. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On board a morse code message system, the wireless telegraph. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Operator Jack Phillips, 25 years old a communications expert. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He'll play a part in mankind's most famous disaster. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 940 pm, a warning from steamship mesba 8 miles ahead. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So much heavy packed ice and a great number of great large icebergs, also field ice. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Weather good, clear. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 An invisible message sent at the speed of light. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Radio waves have been produced by stars and planets for billions of years. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now physicist use electric currents to produce them at will. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Morse code. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Where once we communicated face to face, now we can send messages across the planet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 On board the Titanic, 1,316 passengers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More than half crammed into third class cabins. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Men like Thoedore Demold, a peasant farmer dreaming of a new life in a new world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He left his wife and children in Europe, his ticket the equivalent of a years income. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 James Meigis: The amazing thing about humans that we are never satisfied, we are incredible risk takers, we are always exploring, no matter how good life is there is always some effort to see sort of effort to see whats around the next mountain, next corner. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 With mass production comes mass transportation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Steamships power the greatest migration in human history. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Over half a century more than 1 in 20 people on the planet immigrate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The most popular destination across the Atlantic, America. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 100 ships a week arrive in New York. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 26 million people migrate to the USA. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They were leaving home, with very little money in their pocket. Just a dream, a dream that they could come to America and start their lives over make something of themselves and maybe become one of those rich people in first class. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 11:40 p.m. while passengers sleep Jack Phillips is busy sending personal messages for those in first class. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The iceberg warning doesn't reach the bridge. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The biggest ship on earth is at 22.5 knots, nearly full speed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Dan McNichol: It sails at speeds it should not have been traveling at. And its going through a minefield, a naturally made minefield of mountainous ice. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Iceberg straight ahead, engine full stop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Third class cabins flood first. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The iceberg tears rivets off steel plates in the hull, opening six gaps. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The new international distress signal SOS. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Telegraph operator: SOS SOS Titanic requires immediate assistance come at once struck an iceberg, sinking. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ten miles away another ship, the Californian close enough to save lives. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But its wireless operator turned off the telegraph and went to sleep 15 minutes earlier. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Six supposedly water tight compartments flooded. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 More than ten million gallons of water pour into the Titanic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To reach the lifeboats, third class passengers must pass thru second and first class decks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the doors are locked. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Screams 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You were trapped there because you were poor. That's when fear would have combined with rage. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Less than half of those on board will make it to New York. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Screams 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 April the 15th 1912, 2:28 a.m. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Two and three quarter hours after hitting an ice berg, Titanic the unsinkable ship sinks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Third class passenger Theodore Demolder clings to the wrckage. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The water is fatally cold three degrees below freezing. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He cold die of hypothermia in just 15 minutes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But Demolder is one of the lucky ones. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Three days later he arrives in New York. He will go on to land a job at the Ford factory in Detroit, a classic immigrants tale. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 1,503 passengers and crew never reach New York. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 James Megis: When the Titanic hit that iceberg, it set off a great period reexamination of our faith in technology. I don't think we've ever had quite the same optimism or trust that technology always serves our interest. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Narrator: In New York City one of natures wonders is about to be tamed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Inventor Charles Goodyear, determined, obsessed and broke. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From a tenement kitchen, he will kick start a transport revolution. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Native Americans in the Amazon have used it for century's , extracting the white sap from trees they call it Kau uchuu. Rubber. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Rubber is one of the most under appreciated miracles of nature. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Its up there with coal, steel, and bronze. Its become this kind of secret juice that has allowed us to expand beyond our limits. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In it's raw state rubber isn't very useful. It melts when hot, cracks when cold. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Goodyear tries to change it's chemical structure. To make it more resilient and useful. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Wunderlich: Goodyear is one of the interesting eccentrics in America, that is absolutely dogged by a single idea. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Narrator: For five years nothing, his debts consign him to jail. His family relies on handouts. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But Goodyear, believes he is divinely inspired. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is no object so desirable, so important and necessary to the human race, as making rubber for man's use. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then a breakthrough he adds sulfur. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The result, a material tough like leather, but flexible. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He calls the process vulcanization. After the Roman god of fire. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He lost his fortune several times, went bankrupt a number of times, but never gave up on the idea this something that will change the world, and he was absolutely right. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Almost every machine in the industrial revolution relies on rubber fittings and seals to withstand the pressure of steam. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Hundreds of parts in a model T Ford are made from rubber. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Freeing mankind to travel further and faster than ever before. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Demand for rubber skyrockets. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Six thousand miles from Goodyears tenement, Africa one of the worlds great sources of natural resources. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Congo, 900,000 square miles, over two billion rubber plants. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Under brutal colonial rule, the heart of darkness. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But one man will make a stand and change Africa's fate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Insallah, rubber tapper, husband, family man. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Alice Harris, activist, reformer, Baptist missionary from Britan. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Insallah doesn't know her but has no where else to turn. He wants the world to know what he is carrying. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Dog barks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The severed hand and foot of his daughter. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The previous day his village was attacked, his wife and daughter slaughtered. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Alice Harris: I'm going to help you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For nineteen years, Belgium's King Leipold has run the Congo as his own private estate. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Millions forced to tap rubber, the profits lined his pockets. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Prof Nell Painter: Since there was no one looking over his shoulder he exploited it and exploited the people as well. Almost anything could happen and anything did unfortunately. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When workers don't make their qouta,