The Nature of Things Season 9

E1: Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison wasn't merely a lone inventful genius. He invented modern research team makes possible technology shaping our world.

E2: Human Engineering

E3: Materials

A review of history of man's oldest materials: wood, stone, iron, bronze and glass.

E4: Structure

Defying force of gravity, man has strewn his structures across earth. This program looks at some of them.

E5: Communications

Much of this program deals with basic communications problem of getting a signal through noise.

E6: Canals And Tunnels

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.

E7: Central Power

One test of civilization is ability to organize sources of energy. Central power was something new in 1876.

E8: Man And Machines

The Greek inventor, Alexander Hero, first defined five basic devices which make all machines possible: lever, wedge, wheel, pulley and screw.

E9: Land And Water

This program shows how man changes his environment by shaping land he lives on, reclaiming land from sea, making new lakes and rivers.

E10: Man Aloft

This film looks, sometimes whimsically, at examples of old and modern flying machines.

E11: Portable Power

Man's first "portable power" device was part of his own body, energy from contraction of long molecules in presence of sugar: muscle power.

E12: Machines And Man: Transportation

Are problems of urban transportation insurmountable? The traffic jams which are a regular feature of city life make it appear so.

E13: Machine And Man: Systems Engineering

A system, according to Oxford dictionary, is a whole composed of parts in orderly arrangement, according to some scheme or plan.

E14: Audubon

A study of life and work of Jean Jacques Audubon, great painter-naturalist who captured beauty of American wildlife on canvas.