James Burke : Connections, Episode 5, "Wheel Of Fortune", 4 of 5 (CC)

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Episode 5 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 main idea behind the Knowledge Web project; whereby sophisticated software is used to attempt to discover these subtle interconnections automatically. See http://k-web.org.

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[daddyofjames]

'Could never get a good screw when you wanted one'... Isn't it the way? :-)

[JamesBurkeWeb]

I never noticed that one... man.

[malcolmbryant]

In the film, the inventor John Harrison was played by Michael Gambon.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Read it. Was great. Would love to see the film. What was the title? Same as the book?

[LibBiblio]

This reminds me of the book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel about the invention of the marine chronometer...great book!

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Thanks, I found it! Looking forward to reading it.

- JBW

[BugsWisely]

Henry Ford also had a huge fail in the Amazon basin trying to grow rubber trees.

[BugsWisely]

Why is this information surpressed? The same reasons the CATHOLIC church censored Galileo. The information was slowly reintroduced to maximize profit.

[BugsWisely]

Personally i believe all these innovations were recorded by past advanced civilizations. For instance; the information leading to all of Tesla's experiments was procured by his father from the VATICAN library. The CHINESE still had the knowledge from previous advanced civilizations. I believe JAMES BURKE was fully aware of this as the program was being made.

[aghai17]

Are these episodes available on DVD?

[oker59]

@LibBiblio

Yes, the first marine chronometers were by Huygens no less; but, the first working chronometers weren't till ~1750s; so, the movie Master and Commander was vary inaccurate indeed technology wise!

[oker59]

@LibBiblio

I've heard some things about chronometers; how they keep thermal, mechanical, and vibrational(kind of related to the first two) factors stable.

I keep thinking that Master and Commander was inaccurate about the time keeping methods of the ships at that time(around 1810?). Well, maybe their chronometers at that time were not nearly as sophisticated as they'd become.

[oker59]

@LibBiblio

I've heard some things about chronometers; how they keep thermal, mechanical, and vibrational(kind of related to the first two) factors stable.

I keep thinking that Master and Commander was inaccurate about the time keeping methods of the ships at that time(around 1810?). Well, maybe their chronometers at that time were not nearly as sophisticated as they'd become.

[Ninja187Rules]

I love this series. Greatly put together. The stuff that SHOULD be taught in school but isn't.