Revolutions: Telescopes

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Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World

Documentaries

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The amazing story of how we made the modern world, told through six fantastic inventions.

In a major new series for BBC Four, Jim Al-Khalili takes a mind-blowing science-led journey through human history to explore the incredible story behind six remarkable inventions.

‘It takes more than one mind to change the world’ - Jim Al-Khalili
In this major new landmark series for BBC Four co-produced by PBS, Jim Al-Khalili explores the extraordinary story of six remarkable inventions: The Aeroplane, The Car, The Rocket, The Smartphone, The Telescope, The Robot. They are familiar, yet hidden within them are thousands of years of thought, struggle, sacrifice, determination and insight.

The series is littered with visionaries. We peer into their original notebooks and sketches, use state of the art experiments, ground breaking drama and CGI to shed new light on the discoveries of well-known icons, like Galilei Galileo and Leonardo Da Vinci; lesser known individuals like female pioneers, Ada Lovelace and Bertha Benz; many, like the medieval scholar, Ibn al-Haytham, most viewers will have never heard of.

Each episode explores little-known stories and is packed with incredible ideas: Like the beginnings of robotics 2,000 years ago or the Hollywood
starlet and inventor who, while trying to defeat the Nazis, made today’s mobile network possible. We see time and again where a completely
chance discovery leads to an application that no-one was expecting.
The result is a mind-blowing science-led journey through human history, full of unintended consequences and incredible connections. It reveals how science, invention and technology build on one another to change everything. Mostly, it celebrates the achievements of the some of the greatest minds in human history.


BBC Four

Jim Al-Khalili

Derrick Pitts

Brett Salmon

Dan Coe

Fabio Silva

Shelley James

Binh Danh

Lindsey Smith

Iain Riddick

Ben Bowie

Chris Riley

Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World: Series 1: The Telescope

The Telescope

Series 1

BBC Four - Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World, Series 1, The Telescope

Jim Al-Khalili on the incredible tale of the telescope and how we discovered the universe.

Jim Al-Khalili on the fascinating story of the telescope. How it took a seashore plant, a bottle of mercury and a property boom to give us the machine that discovered the universe.

'The telescope gave us what might be the greatest discovery of all – the universe itself.' - Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili and a team of experts explore the fascinating story of one of our greatest inventions, the telescope, using original notebooks, stylish visualisations and sophisticated computer graphics. It is a tale full of twists and turns, involving a seashore plant, a New York property boom and a spilt bottle of mercury. Thanks to these events, the telescope allowed us to discover not just our place in the cosmos, but our origins too.

Jim travels to eighth-century Baghdad to witness the first experiments in optics. Many regard this as the birth of science itself, culminating in Ibn al-Haytham’s extraordinary book explaining how light can be manipulated. 

In 12th-century Venice, a secret process using a seashore plant allows the manufacture of clear glass and with that, the first precision lenses. 250 years later a Dutch optician makes a chance observation: a particular arrangement of lenses magnifies distant objects. Months later, an Italian mathematics teacher, Galileo, constructs his own version and points it into the night sky. It is a revolution not just in astronomy but also in humanity’s perception of itself. 

In Paris, an accident with mercury allows Louis Daguerre to make highly sensitive photographic plates. Now cameras are attached to telescopes allowing celestial images to be analysed with mathematical precision. Later, a New York property boom allows a wealthy donor to fund a full-sky survey. Working on this project, Henrietta Leavitt notices that some stars undergo regular changes in brightness, which allows astronomers to measure their distance from the Earth. Edwin Hubble, using Leavitt’s discovery, measures the vast distances of entire galaxies. Hubble also discovers that the universe is expanding, implying that before the Big Bang, it must all have been in the same place. 

With the Hubble Space Telescope, we have reached the limits of our vision, but a new generation of telescope is about to be launched. The James Webb Space Telescope will see as far as it is possible to see, revealing new features of the vast universe we call home.


Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World: Series 1

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

The amazing story of how we made the modern world, told through six fantastic inventions. Dramatic, exciting and full of bizarre twists and surprising turns.

‘It takes more than one mind to change the world’

In this major new series for BBC Four, co-produced by PBS, Jim Al-Khalili explores the extraordinary story of six remarkable inventions: the aeroplane, the car, the rocket, the smartphone, the telescope and the robot. All are familiar, yet hidden within them are thousands of years of thought, struggle, sacrifice, determination and insight.

The series also reminds us of both the visionaries we are all familiar with and those that many viewers will discover for the first time: Galileo Galilei, Leonardo da Vinci, female pioneers Ada Lovelace and Bertha Benz, and medieval scholar Ibn al-Haytham, to name but a few. We peer into their original notebooks and sketches, and use state-of-the-art experiments, groundbreaking drama and CGI to shed new light on their discoveries.

Each episode explores little-known stories and is packed with incredible ideas, from the beginnings of robotics 2,000 years ago to the Hollywood starlet and inventor who, while trying to defeat the Nazis, made today’s mobile network possible. We see time and again how a completely chance discovery led to an application that no-one was expecting. 

The result is a mind-blowing, science-led journey through human history, full of unintended consequences and incredible connections. It celebrates the achievements of the some of the greatest minds in human history and reveals how science, invention and technology build on one another to change everything.


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