Brits Who Made the Modern World

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[edit] General Information

Science, Technology Documentary hosted by Peter Snow, published by History Channel in 2008 - English narration

[edit] Cover

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Brits Who Made the Modern World A Documentary looking at the untold stories of British scientific innovations. Join Peter Snow as he tracks down the people who fought against all the odds to create the incredible technology that helped Britain Make the Modern World. This series covers the invention and creation of the APT Tilting Trains, Mobile Phones – The Vodafone Story, Rockets – The Black Arrow story, Computer Games – the first 3d game and the incredible Harrier Jump Jet.

[edit] Tilting Trains & Formula One

In this first episode Peter Snow traces the history of the UK's experimental tilting trains of the 1970s and 80s. The Advanced Passenger Trains were intended to rival France's TGV and Japan's bullet train, but negative press and complaints about motion sickness helped scupper the project before it could get going, also in this episode the Lotus 25, an early 1960s racing car with a “revolutionary design that changed the world of Formula One forever

[edit] Computer Games & Mobile Phones

In this episode Peter Snow meets the British engineers who led the mobile phone revolution in the early 80s. The story of the race between two companies’s to be the first to launch a mobile phone service in Great Britain The tiny company Racal – which became Vodafone - which challenged BT in the 1980s to create Britain's first mobile phone network; and Snow traces the development of Britain's £1.4 billion computer-game industry, which owes its success to the pioneering work of Cambridge undergrads David Braben and Ian Bell. Against all odds, their computer game Elite became a hit in the mid-1980s.

[edit] The Harrier & The Black Arrow Rocket

Peter Snow meets the two designers of the Harrier Jump Jet also he tells the story of the inventors of the little known ˜Black Arrow, a satellite launching rocket. Back in the heady days of the mid 20th century, there was a growing feeling among British astrophysicists that they had as good a shot at space exploration as America or the USSR did, provided they could secure the funding. The usual Whitehall wrangle ensued, and a relatively small amount of money (£9m) was set aside for the so-called Black Arrow project, which would aim to build a cleverly powered launch device for satellites.