James Burke : Connections, Episode 6, "Thunder in the Skies", 2 of 5 (CC)

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Episode 6 of James Burke's most well-known series "Connections" which explores the surprising and unexpected ways that our modern technological world came into existence. Each episode investigates the background of usually one particular modern invention and how it came into being. These explorations are an attempt to locate the "connections" between various historical figures who seemingly had nothing to do with each other in their own times, however once connected, these same figures combined to produce some of the most profound impacts on our modern day world; in a "1+1=3" type of way.

It is this type of investigation that is the core idea behind the Knowledge Web project, whereby sophisticated software is being developed to attempt to discover these subtle interconnections automatically. See http://k-web.org.

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P.S. Sorry about audio quality here. I will repair that when I have time.

Nobody knows
where they got the theory from to build a chimney.

from metal workers or smithies,
but what a difference it made!

Look at this.

That's the plan of the old manor hall you saw just now.

And this

is the plan of this house. Look at all those rooms!

Now you don't build those rooms, unless you can heat them.

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?

They could both use the same flue -
you'd get two fires for the price of one.

Well, the first major change the chimney caused

was the separation of the classes.

The lords and ladies left the bedding down here in the great
hall to the dogs and the servants and passing strangers

and cleared off to live in their own private apartments.

And the upper and lower classes
never came that close again.

Cozy little office, this. Don't you think?

This was the next kind of room they put a fire into so that
the scribes could do all their work throughout the winter

without all the ink freezing in their inkwells,

which it had done before.

That did the European economy a real favor, you know.

I mean being able to conduct your business

right the way through the year.

Oh. Like the staircase?

What's new about that?

It is.

See, with fires in every room
you could build up just as well as you could build out.

Servants downstairs, of course. Upstairs was warmer.

It was getting so cold, that even the painters noticed it.

I mean, take a look at that Breugel.

Frozen ponds

Snow everywhere

Little village with the chimney pots working see?

Now, that was only worth painting because it was
a totally new experience being that cold.

Indoors they hung cloth on the wall to keep out the draft
and later on they turned into these fancy tapestries.

And they put rugs everywhere, even on the tables.

They kept their bodies warm
with two major 13th century inventions:

Here's a bit of 13th century art.

Very nice too.

But look what the Virgin's doing.

See? One of those two inventions.

Knitting.

The second invention also kept people pretty snug.

Buttons.

And a lot less people died of cold.

And now we come to the high great chamber

Not bad for a living room, is it?

And everything again done for warmth,

the woven matting on the floor,
Oh, and look here underneath the tapestry

wooden wainscoting good against drafts.

And admire if you will this very beautiful plasterwork.

That's originally a mini ice-age idea,

in the first place they put it round the chimney
because it was fireproof,

then they put it on the walls to plug up the drafty cracks,
then finally they molded it and painted it like that.

and as people's indoor lives got warmer
their habits changed.

They started playing more games, like backgammon,
draughts, shuffleboard;

there was a lot more music;
a lot more reading;

a lot more intellectual activity in general;

oh, and a lot more furniture.

But the place where the biggest change took place was here:

in the bedroom.

Private little place, isn't it?

Never used to be like that,
everybody used to sleep in the hall.

But, with separate fireplaces,
sleep and undressing and sex

became things you only did *in private*.

Our modern preoccupation with privacy

starts here.

So does cleanliness,

hot fires, hot water

hot baths.

And if it got too cold to go to the toilet outside, well
you could always try one of these indoor portable varieties.

Note the padded seat for winter use.

Or you could build yourself one of those rather rude
half inside half outside affairs...

like that.

Another Bruegel.

In the 14th century you could eat in your
private dining room by the fire.

And hygiene began to affect table manners

you washed your hands before dinner.

You used a fork.

There were separate table settings
and there were separate chairs instead of benches.

And, they used table linen.

Already it's remarkably modern.

And, of course, the kitchen,

again, thanks to the fireplace, a separate room.

By the 15th century they knew enough about
hot air going up the flue

to put turbines in chimneys

And run roasting spits with them via gears and a
drive chain like on a bicycle.

And, the hotter the fire, the faster the turbine spins,
the quicker the meat turns, doesn't get burnt.

Clever, aye?

You must admit it is a very nice piece of property.

But why it matters so much to our story is that in every
single one of its heated rooms

it had this:

a glass window.

But, it had so many more glass windows than anybody else

that, at the time, this place was known as:

Hardwick Hall more glass than wall."

[♪ Baroque ♪]

Now this is just one of the places that got built
in the great 16th century property boom.

And as the houses went up

the forests came down.

And these guys were the villains of the piece:

the people cutting down trees to make charcoal for the
fuel for their glass making furnaces

to make the windows everybody wanted.

So much wood was going up in smoke

the government passed laws to try and save the forests
for the people who'd be really sunk without wood:

the Navy!

But, by the beginning of the 17th Century,
things had got desperate.

There had to be somewhere else the glassmakers could go
and chop their firewood.

And then they found the ideal place.

[♪ Lone English Horn ♪]

See, glass making needs sand and wood mainly.

And that's just what there was tons of here.

And in 1608 it was all absolutely free.

The one year old colony at Jamestown, Virginia
was built on sand. And as for forests?

You couldn't see the wood for the trees!

So, the master plan

was to send glass makers over here to get on with it,

by the boatload.

If you think about it, things must have been pretty far gone
to try a harebrained scheme like this.

I mean, four thousand miles in a leaky boat to make glass
surrounded by Indians and wild animals.

Well, they managed to talk a grand total of eight idiots
into coming to "blow bubbles" in America.

But, one hard winter and they all gave up.

[♪ Sad ♪]

The plot now shifts from glass to iron.

For one of the oldest reasons in the world.

We come now to one of those
deeply meaningful moments in history

where things change because of the basic drives in mankind.

You know: a belief in progress,

fundamental insight in the nature of things,

a dogged persistence in making ideas work
the joy of discovery - that sort of thing.

The extraordinary change that was to happen because of the
failure to bring boatloads of glassworkers here to Jamestown

was a result of one of those visions people have

in this case, the desire to make

as much as possible

as fast as possible

of this stuff...

Money☺

So, if you're ready for a devious tale of
the uppercrust on the make, here goes...

About 50 years before Jamestown,
Queen Elizabeth was desperate to make

bronze canon

A.) for the defense of the realm and
B.) because she got a cut in the profits.

Now, you need copper to make brass and we,
in England, didn't have very much of that.

So, so German miners,
with an eye to what they might make out of it,

came over and in 1566 found copper.

Now, the other thing Elizabeth wanted to do was to get
the wool market back on its feet

so she could tax it

But she didn't have enough brass

to make these carding combs,
essential to the production of wool.

So, some more German miners

with an eye to financial gain

came over and in 1566 they found

Calamine, one of the essential ingredients in making brass,
near Bristol.

Now, the metal making boom that followed

used wood for furnace fuel
just as fast as the glassmakers had.

And then, in 1611, enter Sir Edward Zouch, crafty courtier

with an eye for a fast buck

who says, me and my partners have come up with an
absolutely brilliant solution:

let's use coal to make glass

So, Zouch gives the King £1,000

and in return the King gives Zouch a monopoly
to use his own coal furnace to make glass.

Well then, Zou...