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.

It's 1948 and hydro-electric power is transforming Scotland's Grampians.

After 10 years of tests and 12 billion Euros invested, the state-of-the-art Airbus jet completed its...

A promotional film for the Ford Company detailing the introduction of the Cosworth engine into Formu...
The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.
A documentary about Prague's Old Town Astronomical Clock. In addition to the technical and artistic ...

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...

Classic Fighter – the story of the great piston-engined fighters of World War Two. A tribute to the ...

‘Spitfire— Birth of a Legend‘ tells the story of the Spitfire from a radical design on the drawing boa...

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later n...

Looks at the engineering of the Knights Templar, the religious order that marked the rise of the Mid...

Author David Macaulay hosts CATHEDRAL, based on his award-winning book. Using a combination of spect...

This film provides a lively introduction to the professional and personal lives of three female engi...

The Concorde remains a legend of the sky. In both looks and performance, it was incomparable, and th...

The documentary, Bob Gurr: Turning Dreams into Reality, tells the story of one of Walt Disney's earl...

Heralded as a palace among minor and major league baseball stadiums, Silver Stadium set a standard o...

The construction of the Aswan dam as seen by those who took part in it: engineers, workers, Egyptian...

Several hundred million kilometers away, the space probe "Rosetta" and the small lander "Philae" orb...

A unique behind-the-scenes access to NASA’s ambitious mission to launch the James Webb Space Telesco...