Portland Public Library

How we got to now, a Nutopia Ltd. production for PBS in association with OPB and BBC ; executive producers for Nutopia, Peter Lovering, Jane Root, Michael Jackson, and Steven Johnson ; series producer, Diene Petterle ; producer[s] and director[s], Nic Stacey, Julian Jones, Paul Olding

eng

videorecording

TV parental guidelines rating: Not rating

How we got to now

890438700

Originally broadcast by PBS in 2014

a Nutopia Ltd. production for PBS in association with OPB and BBC ; executive producers for Nutopia, Peter Lovering, Jane Root, Michael Jackson, and Steven Johnson ; series producer, Diene Petterle ; producer[s] and director[s], Nic Stacey, Julian Jones, Paul Olding

360

How We Got To Now

Join best-selling author Steven Johnson to hear extraordinary stories behind remarkable ideas that made modern life possible, the unsung heroes who brought them about, and the unexpected and bizarre consequences each of these innovations triggeredClean: Dirty water has killed more humans than all wars of history combined. A maverick engineer lifted the city of Chicago with screw jacks to build America's first sewer system. John Leal added chlorine to Jersey City's water without authorizationTime: Johnson boards a submarine to discover what a lack of natural light means for a sailor's working day and visits Heathrow, the world's busiest airport, to try to get timings right at air traffic control. Learn how advancements in navigation, the way we work, technology and travel would have been impossible without these advancementsGlass: Johnson considers how the invention of the mirror gave rise to the Renaissance, how glass lenses allow us to reveal worlds within worlds and how, deep beneath the ocean, glass is essential to communicationLight: Johnson tells the story of the people who took us out of the dark and into the light, including the invention of Edison's light bulb and how an 18th-century shipping community discovered a source of illumination by putting a kid inside a whale's headCold: Johnson explains how entrepreneur Frederic Tudor made ice delivery one of the biggest export business in the U.S. and where Clarence Birdseye, the father of the frozen food industry, experienced his eureka moment. He also travels to Dubai to see how cold has led to penguins in the desertSound: Steven Johnson journeys to the Arcy sur Cure caves in northern France, where he finds the first traces of the desire to record sound. He also learns about the role radio played in the civil rights movement and reveals the Hollywood star who designed a WW2 weapon that would make possible the modern cell phone network

live action