The Secret Life of Machines
Date de parution : 1 janvier 1987
 | Saison 1 - épisode 1 | The Vacuum Cleaner Before the invention of the vacuum cleaner, carpets and upholstery were taken outside and beaten once a year to get the dust out (the 'Spring' clean).... |
 | Saison 1 - épisode 2 | The Sewing Machine The first patent for a sewing machine was taken out by an English cabinetmaker called Thomas Saint in 1790. It's doubtful whether he actually built... |
 | Saison 1 - épisode 3 | The Central Heating System At first Roman houses simply had a fire in the middle of the room (the Latin for hearth is focus). But they probably had trouble with smoke as the... |
 | Saison 1 - épisode 4 | The Washing Machine The earliest form of automatic washing was the nautical practice of towing clothes behind the ship. The combination of agitation and a constant flow... |
 | Saison 1 - épisode 5 | The Refrigerator Commercial refrigeration equipment was first developed in Australia, where the winters weren't cold enough to produce much natural ice. A brewery... |
 | Saison 1 - épisode 6 | The Television Set John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor, developed an electromechanical TV system in the 1920's and gave frequent public demonstrations. The... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 1 | The Car Cars started to become popular in the 1890s. Their success was partly due to the bicycle, which had given people a taste for a personal means of... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 2 | The Internal Combustion Engine The first internal combustion engine was made by a Frenchman called Etienne Lenoir in 1859. He simply modified a steam engine to suck in and ignite... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 3 | The Quartz Watch All clocks and watches work by 'counting' some event which takes a fixed period of time, like the swings of a pendulum. The higher it goes the... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 4 | The Telephone The forerunner of the telephone was the telegraph. By 1870 all major towns in Europe and America had telegraphs, sending messages in 'on' and 'off'... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 5 | The Radio Set Any electrical spark creates radio waves and acts as a transmitter. You hear sparks on a radio as interference. That's why lighting makes radios... |
 | Saison 2 - épisode 6 | The Video Recorder The principle of magnetic recording was invented by a Danish telephone engineer called Valdemar Poulsen in 1899. He used an electromagnet to record... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 1 | The Lift (Elevator) The Colosseum in Rome is thought to have had a lift to carry the Emperor Nero to his balcony. By the 18th century, Mr Villayer was touring the... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 2 | The Word Processor The name 'Word Processor' was invented by IBM. Their first machines were very difficult to use because they had no screen. A draft version was typed... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 3 | The Electric Light A Scottish chemist called Joseph Swann tried passing electricity through fine wires (filaments) to make them glow white hot in 1860. Despite... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 4 | The Photocopier James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, patented the first copying machine, because of the disastrous inaccuracies that had occurred due to... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 5 | The Fax Machine The world's first fax machine was patented in 1843 by Alexander Bain. He came from a remote croft in Caithness in Scotland and, for his early... |
 | Saison 3 - épisode 6 | The Office Today, over 50% of jobs are in offices, but 160 years ago the figure was only 1%, and the only office workers were 'Dickensian' clerks. They had... |
