The Nature of Things - Season 9
1 - Thomas Edison
Air Date: September 26, 1968
Thomas Edison wasn't merely a lone inventful genius. He invented modern research team makes possible technology shaping our world.
2 - Human Engineering
Air Date: October 3, 1968
3 - Materials
Air Date: October 10, 1968
A review of history of man's oldest materials: wood, stone, iron, bronze and glass.
4 - Structure
Air Date: November 7, 1968
Defying force of gravity, man has strewn his structures across earth. This program looks at some of them.
5 - Communications
Air Date: November 14, 1968
Much of this program deals with basic communications problem of getting a signal through noise.
6 - Canals And Tunnels
Air Date: November 21, 1968
The great engineers of past - men like DE Lesseps of Suez fame and Panama infamy and Bradley - whose canals were arteries of industrial revolution, sacrificed health and fortune, and sometimes lives.
7 - Central Power
Air Date: November 28, 1968
One test of civilization is ability to organize sources of energy. Central power was something new in 1876.
8 - Man And Machines
Air Date: December 5, 1968
The Greek inventor, Alexander Hero, first defined five basic devices which make all machines possible: lever, wedge, wheel, pulley and screw.
9 - Land And Water
Air Date: December 12, 1968
This program shows how man changes his environment by shaping land he lives on, reclaiming land from sea, making new lakes and rivers.
10 - Man Aloft
Air Date: December 19, 1968
This film looks, sometimes whimsically, at examples of old and modern flying machines.
11 - Portable Power
Air Date: December 26, 1968
Man's first "portable power" device was part of his own body, energy from contraction of long molecules in presence of sugar: muscle power.
12 - Machines And Man: Transportation
Air Date: January 2, 1969
Are problems of urban transportation insurmountable? The traffic jams which are a regular feature of city life make it appear so.
13 - Machine And Man: Systems Engineering
Air Date: January 9, 1969
A system, according to Oxford dictionary, is a whole composed of parts in orderly arrangement, according to some scheme or plan.
14 - Audubon
Air Date: March 18, 1969
A study of life and work of Jean Jacques Audubon, great painter-naturalist who captured beauty of American wildlife on canvas.