The Repair Shop: Fixing Britain

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Factual: Antiques

Jay Blades delves into the stories behind the items restored in the Repair Shop.

Jay Blades delves into the stories behind the items restored in the Repair Shop, and finds out more about the show's team of craft experts.

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Jay Blades

Paula Fasht

David Sayer

Rob Butterfield

Emma Walsh

Ricochet Limited

The Repair Shop: Fixing Britain: Series 1: Episode 14

Episode 14

BBC One - The Repair Shop: Fixing Britain, Series 1, Episode 14

Jay shows how three items repaired in the barn helped shape our modern digital world.

Jay Blades revists three repairs – a cash register, a camera and a calculator - to show how they helped shape the modern digital world we enjoy today.

Jay Blades revisits three items from the predigital age that together have helped influence the microchip-driven technology that we take for granted today. 

The episode begins with an analogue cash register owned by Judy Evans. Jay tells the story of how the first tills were designed to stop embezzling at an American saloon in the 19th century, and how they made it over to this side of the Atlantic. He also shows how these early versions paved the way for a piece of tech that survives to this day, despite the impact of decimalisation and the move to cash-free transactions. 

The next item is a beautiful camera owned by the great-grandfather of Phil Jones during the First World War. It’s one of the pioneering devices that appeared at the turn of the century and laid the foundations for the cameras that are now so ubiquitous today. Jay uses archive to tell the story of pioneering war photographers and how cameras like this one laid the groundwork for today's digital photography. 

Finally, an old-fashioned manual calculator brought in by Donald Creasy and his family. Jay charts how the humble lever-driven machine owned by Donald led to the calculators that we take for granted today.

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The Repair Shop: Fixing Britain

Series 1

Episode 14

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