Discovering Treasure

[akirlu]

Hal and I watched another episode of James Burke's BBC series Connections last night. Wow this is fascinating stuff! I never watched the series when it aired in the late 1970s, but it holds up surprisingly well for television that's three decades old. Burke is a science historian, and each episode traces the scientific and technological breakthroughs that were stepping stones to some modern technological necessity. The path through the intervening history is always complex and circuitous and each individual stop is a story in itself. The show skips lightly from exotic location to historical re-enactment, guided along by Burke's puckish narration, and inevitably draws connections that I had no previous idea of. For instance (and this will sound mega-dorky) I had simply no idea how interesting and varied is the history of coal tar. The damn' stuff turns out to be crucial to everything from artificial dyes (mauve!) to oxy-acetylene welding to the illumination of London to the invention of artificial fertilizers. And there I thought it was just good for dandruff shampoos... For anyone who means to write alternate history or alternate technology fiction, this series seems like an absolutely invaluable grounding. For that matter, for anyone doing home schooling, they could do a lot worse than getting this series for their charges. If, like me, you've somehow managed to miss it up 'til now, by all means go forth and seek it.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

It's both a fantastic series, and something that is a shining beacon of how good science TV can be, and by comparison, how poor some recent "science" TV has become ... only earlier today I exchanged comments on a journal blog about how bad the Horizon show has become (I believe it is a BBC WGBH (Boston) co-production), and Connections was brought up as the standard against which all other science shows are judged.

Highly recommended.

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

I LOVE CONNECTIONS!

I even had the PC based video game they made!

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about that show this morning. It was wonderful, but you couldn't explain to anyone afterwards. At least, not if you were about 12.

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

I loved that show back when. I even went to a lecture he gave in Seattle back in the mid-to-late 1980s.

I have a the video tape collection of his The Day the Universe Changed if you want to borrow it. (I don't think it is available on DVD.)

[joyful-storm.livejournal.com]

Ooooh! Must corrupt samildanach.

akirlu, thanks for posting on this! I keep on meaning to see if I can get me some James Burke through Netflix, but somehow it's never when I'm near a computer.

It's amazing stuff, but as you say, it's hard to explain to people why you're so excited about this show about coal tar, but it's not about coal tar really, that was only in passing, and you want them to join you watching it. . . why?

"Because it's AWESOME!", while true, may not be sufficient.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I find that in order to explain even part of what's cool about it I end up narrating a good chunk of any given show, which can only convey the narrative coolness, without the various boffo-spiff visuals, like the re-enactment of the opening of the Wuppertal monorail by Kaiser Wilhelm, using the actual still-running Wuppertal monorail as setting...

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I will mention The Day the Universe Changed to Hal -- we might be very interested in borrowing it, if it's not findable by Other Means. I *think* we still have ways to play tape...

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"I have a the video tape collection of his The Day the Universe Changed if you want to borrow it."

Thanks for the offer, but we've um... already liberated it, in a torrential manner {nudge nudge, wink wink}. Connections 2 & 3, too.

[carbonel]

Series 2 are all shorter (25 minutes or so), and nowhere near as good. Series 3 doesn't really manage the connections as well, IMO, but it's back to an hour and more satisfying.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Connections remained great even into the 80s (when it was being rerun on PBS) despite some of the computer stuff being a shade dated. The next several series were of decreasing interest, but if you're a Burke fan I recommend following at least the next one (The Day The Earth Changed) and keep going.

Much better than Civilization, which was pretty but exceedingly limited. I flixed Ascent of Man recently, and it holds up. Also try the three part Guns, Germs and Steel.

And yes, coal tar was the plastics of its day. For fen of a certain age, ditto masters' aniline dye will forever have an associated smell.