Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life. The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.
The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.
Documentary where rich social history frames a spirited debate on the development of water infrastru...
The Concorde remains a legend of the sky. In both looks and performance, it was incomparable, and th...
A unique behind-the-scenes access to NASA’s ambitious mission to launch the James Webb Space Telesco...
The Erie Canal was an engineering marvel in its time and remains so today. This documentary travels ...
‘Spitfire— Birth of a Legend‘ tells the story of the Spitfire from a radical design on the drawing boa...
Several hundred million kilometers away, the space probe "Rosetta" and the small lander "Philae" orb...
The documentary, Bob Gurr: Turning Dreams into Reality, tells the story of one of Walt Disney's earl...
A documentary interspersed with acted scenes, this portrait of John DeLorean covers the brilliant bu...
A documentary about Prague's Old Town Astronomical Clock. In addition to the technical and artistic ...
"Give me ten million dollars and trust me, we'll deliver a low-cost microprocessor compatible with I...
They raised children, baked cakes... and built world-class fighter planes. Sixty years ago, thousand...
Documentary on psychedelic potash mines, expansive concrete seawalls, mammoth industrial machines, a...
With building collapses happening around the country, activists band together to confront the real e...
Treats drafting as a means of visual communication and a key to organized training and planning. Dis...
Just how far can engineering go? This program explores the feasibility of constructing several extra...
For over three decades, NASA and an international team of scientists and engineers pushed the limits...
Who invented time, who invented the clock? Why 1 hour, why 60 minutes, why 60 seconds? Since prehist...
Join self confessed petrol-head Guy Martin as he learns about the alternative to the internal combus...
Nearly 200 years ago, the train revolutionized our lives. It redrew the maps of states and nations, ...