James Burke Connections - 03 Distant Voices
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2024
- "Distant Voices" suggests that telecommunications exist because Normans had stirrups for horse riding which in turn led them to further advancements in warfare. Deep mine shafts flooded and scientists in search of a solution examined vacuums, air pressure, and other natural phenomena. Documentary Connections.
A crime there's no more shows like this.
I watched it when first broadcast every episode
I got scared af !
So did I.
I remember this show vividly on the Learning Channel, when it was still an educational channel.
Not the Leering Channel?
@@trollathlete
The Leaning Channel (leaning in the direction of stupid)
Every minute of this show can yield libraries of information. Imagine compiling all this pre-Internet?! Absolutely amazing!! 😮
Fun Fact:
The actor playing Henry V in the St. Crispin's Day speech scene is the same Mark Wing-Davey who would later play Zaphod Beeblebrox in "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
"We few, we happy...you know what? Forget about this, let's get zappy."
@@TomFynn "We few, we happy few, we band of hoopy froods who really know where our towels are!"
I'm glad someone else noticed that!!
I found myself staring and staring at that face, trying to place him. Almost got there via the voice.
Thanks for keeping me from going a bit more insane.
(I suspect that James Burke nearly always knows where his towel is, even now.)
Great bit of trivia
All the James Burke shows are pretty good, but none compare to the sheer magic of the original Connections. The amount of planning and preparation it took to pull this off on film was enormous.
I completely agree.
Absolutely the best example of near-perfect timing in the history of television: the closing scene of the episode "Eat, Drink and Be Merry"
"If you release those two gases into a confined space with a hole at the other end of it, and mix them as you do so, and then set light to them, you get...that."
He points to the launch pad behind him, just as a rocket lifts off.
Agree. Actually I can pass on the ones that followed, the first series was a classic.
The genius of the original "connections" was that it proposed a thesis, and each successive episode built towards a carefully constructed conclusion, while the sequels were disjointed piles of stand-alone episodes.@@PraiseDog
Its still one of my favourite documentaries. Btw James Burke is still around. He's in his late 80s and just did a new Connections last year for the Curiousity Channel.
This was a great show ... 50 or so years ago.
Back when they made shows like this,
I loved it.
This wouldn't entertain today's mob as they wouldn't understand most of it. Truly, the education system has fulfilled its purpose.
1978; forty-five years ago...You nailed it, within five years.👍
Nobody's got the attention span necessary for it; Mr. Burke himself mentions this in the episode "Yesterday, Tomorrow and You" So much more information to absorb, and so much less time in which to do so, and all that.@@jr7392
@@jr7392 seeing the world only through the “European Lens” is dumb.. the mob today sees all the wyt washing of history 💫
I've wanted James Burke's productions to be on TH-cam for years. _Connections_ was great but I think _The Day the Universe Changed_ was even better.
James Burke is still around, in his late 80s and did another Connections just last year, its on the Curiousity Channel.
This show sparked two life long interests in me, science and history. While I never pursued them as a career I have been endlessly fascinated by both. Thank you James for enriching my life and, no doubt, so many others.
Me too. In fact, I arrogantly believe that education in the history of technology should be mandatory.
Same
I remember watching this when it debuted on PBS in the fall of 1979 (broadcast the year before in the UK). I was 15 then and absolutely glued (the original broadcast included a hosting by E.G. Marshall who had an aftershow panel of 3 giving comments about the show's topic for the evening--kinda miss that. Is that around somewhere?).
I'm much older now and still absolutely glued. Journalist James Burke's excellent historical & scientific understanding, looking at technological change in a post-modernist kind of way (i.e., non-linear) combined with those lavish and wonderful incomparable BBC production values makes Connections a timeless classic. One of the all time very BEST!.
I'm the same age and had the same experience. Surprised how it holds up today. Fantastic show.
You cant find eg marshall on youtube ??
@@joestitz239
E.G. Marshall, sure.
E.G. Marshall hosting Connections episodes giving introductory overviews and the hosting of the after-commentary--no.
@@sail2byzantium call google. Try to find dept that records-has what you seek. Its likely there, just not popular
Rather James Burke than Professor Brian Cox and Lucy Worsley!
Anyone with a passion and reverence for what they do is a treat to listen to.
This is wonderful funny, and prescient
The sarcasm at 18:53 and 21:05 about the peasants getting ahead and having money/good standard of living not being liked by the rich and powerful sums up the last 50 years of US economic history.
Thats all human history bud
Touche
Sad, but oh so true.
For the wealthy in America, their own success is not enough. It needs to be coupled with the suffering of others to make them feel complete.
nepotism, like insider trading, I can't imagine big players not buying/selling &/ or trading inside info amongst their class of/with mutual interests..
Something else to consider: If the difference between rich and poor is so great, how has the standard of living been for a poor person over the last 50 years? Does a rising tide lift all boats?
"Still, it was such a good way to slaughter people, there had to be some way to make it work." I love how he so nonchalantly captures the very real thinking of so many throughout history.
Yea all you need to do today is turn a key, push a button and hay presto 20 million dead kinda takes the fun out of it.
Also: "This was serious. It wasn't just costing lives, it was costing MONEY!"
"An exciting new way of killing people was tried out by a bunch of passing Germans." 😢
A good example of "Dry British wit".
James Burke is still alive 2023!
Yes, which means he knows that the Arecibo telescope collapsed.
@@jerometaperman7102
he was pre- internet internet minded..
born 1936, been BBC science presenter programmer since 1965,
watching him as a teen on PBS in US,
it's rare to have teacher professor keep my attention & I've known read good ones & appreciate their art.
It must be sad for him to see the world fall so fast into despair. Sadly the fast progress in stupid inventions, has made everyone a moron.
@@Ponk_80: The vast majority have always been morons! Look at that Trump!
I remember watching this chap when i was a young boy now im 55,damn.Cant believe they are that old,they were very entertaining and educational, something we no longer get anymore.
James Burke is still kicking it, too. He already looked old 40-some years ago. I dunno how old he is now, but he must be really getting up there.
I loved this show. I thought it was so eye-opening how it connectec seemingly unrelated developments to illustrate history in a way school never did or could.
I remember as a teenager watching this series and thought it was the best bit of telly at the time. It’s of the same genre as Johnny Ball’s Think again. What I mean by that is they both made you interested in how they presented the material. I can only think of one other person who does the same is David Attenborough
Agreed
In my opinion, James Burke occupies a completely different league than that of Sir Attenborough, with the former at a much higher level of quality at that.
Of the science communicators of the time, it was James Burke, David Attenborough and Carl Sagan that were at the very top of the tree.
Jacob Bronowski was no slouch!
He has a new Connections series on Curiosity Stream!
RIP Arecibo Observatory
It’s my hope that one day we’ll see it restored and used again. It feels wrong for it to be abandoned as it is.
And a warm welcome to Heaven's Eye in Guizhou, southwest China.
F
That white leisure suit is fabulous! Much sneered at in its time, but this one is beautifully cut and really stands the test of time.
I posted above before I saw your comment. Clearly we differ on the suit.
I think it's extraordinary how they let him just lean on tombs and sit in thrones and manhandle antiquities. No boundaries for Jim!
BBC....they could do whatever they wanted.
This show did have werid luck, first epo. had Burke on World Trade Center and flight called 9/11. Now here with the Arecibo radio telescope, which was destroyed in the last hurricane to hit Puerto Rico.
@@TK199999on that first episode, @ 9 mins 11 seconds, can hear tape of the pilot of Scandinavian flight 911 trying to touch down in NY during a power outage in 1965, no power to tower, no air traffic control, no lights on landing strip,
they had to use the radios from pilots of planes on the ground to radio those in the air to guide them in.
@@mindsigh4 I'd've flown the damned thing back to Sweden.
Not to mention manhandling "mercury" or walking around busy streets with a bomb in a suitcase.
8:02
Carmina Burana
9:16
Prokofiev -- Romeo & Juliet
35:22
Milhaud
Boy, this guy loves Classical Music.
5:40
Mahler
8:25
Stravinsky - L' histoire du Soldat
Another classical music lover
Shame that that man-made wonder at Arecibo Puerto Rico was allowed to collapse into a scrap heap. What a testament to our current situation.
Remember this episode well enough to predict each connection before it was revealed. Loved this programmes, BBC at its apex. It saddens me to think what the BBC has become over the last 40-years
I absolutely loved watching this show in the 90’s when it was replayed on cable. Was like going down a rabbit hole on the internet. 👏👏👏😊
It was aired when TLC was actually The Learning Channel. It blew my young mind!
Along with Cosmos, the best show about humans.
This was the Internet before the Internet! This was Wikipedia, and TH-cam, way back before we had those things. I used to watch this show with my father.
When I was a kid, you could buy powdered sulfur and potassium nitrate in a couple of drugstores and hardware stores. Those were the days. The charcoal was easy too, as Cub Scouts used to sell charcoal door-to-door. I did. Mix those three things together, and I was making firecrackers when I was 10. Yes, those were the days... 🙂
I learned to make gunpowder from Star Trek when Cpt. Kirk fought the Gorn.
@@kirklarson4536 I didn't remember that, although that's an episode I remember! (There's quite a few I don't recall well.)
@@kirklarson4536
And Kirk didn't even have any pig manure...
Fascinating!
And, heated slowly in a pan with sugar, you could make solid rocket fuel. I helped a teacher make a rocket out of a piece of galvanized steel pipe - a pipe bomb with fins! Ah, those really WERE the days!
@@2011Asterix Damn. Pushing 60 and still learn something new every day. Never heard that trick. Amazing, chemistry is...
I recorded this show when it was broadcast on PBS in 1980 I had every episode on a betta tape. Watched it over and over again.
Harold should've done that "Braveheart" thing with the tree-spears. Then we would all be speaking like We Gardena in geardagum,. þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,. hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,. monegum mægþum, meodosetla ..
"Connections." What a show. Was on late night in NYC some 30 years ago, this very episode and it blew me away. Burke's mind is like lightening flashes. Like all Renaissance Men, an aggressive, prowling intelligence.
Thank you for loading this up. I recall watching it long ago as a young man. It was always enlightening and fun to watch James Burke.
Way better than modern documentarys
You know it's British television when you see a fully naked woman being bathed. No censor would allow that in America even on PBS if they knew about it.
But funnily some of the naughtiest TV was on PBS in the form of shows like this and Monty Python because they weren't censored the way locally produced shows were.
They didn't have the time to preview the entire show before they hit the play button...
Much to our everlasting enjoyment.
Thank goodness (or naughtyness) for low budget PBS.
RIP Arecibo Radio Telescope!
I watched this in grade school. I am now reading along some of the historical books he is discussing while laying in bed.
Opening sequence is referred to by Mario Puzo novel the ""4th K""".suitcase 💣 bomb detonation by time's square NYC... God I 😍 loved this series
I loved this show; his enthusiasm, and the recreations!
A friend of mine knew I was so dazzled by this series he made up vcr tapes of series...I looked on Amazon for DVD 📀 but couldn't find...Bravo for this link..❤️ 😍 loved his series..🧠 brain food for the soul
One of the unique aspects of this show is how fast paced it was. Nowadays, it seems pretty "normal" in its pacing, but at the time, it was markedly atypical of shows in general, much less a _science documentary!!_
There was a shift in movies during the 1980s, due to, of all things, MTV -- music videos, if they are to be anything more interesting than "hey, he's the band..." are, essentially, short films. Now, combine the following factors:
1 -- telling a short story in a small amount of time needs a quick pace for the story, which requires a kind of visual shorthand.
2 -- Video editing software made editing stuff considerably more straightforward, compared to the previous film-based techniques.
3 -- It's a heck of a lot cheaper to test a new, upcoming directorial talent by giving him/her 100k for a video than to risk 5 or 10 million on a movie.
This adds up to, during the 1980s, a slow increase in the visual pace of movies -- instead of "shot.... shot.... shot", it was "cut!cut!cut!cut!!!!". TV did not catch up until the 1990s, but by the early-mid 90s, old people (stuck in the classical camp) disliked "modern" movies because "they're all bang! and boom! and wham! bam!!", while younger people born after 1990 are going, "is anything gonna HAAAAAppen here?". Case in point, all three of the main chase sequences of _The Great Escape_ , _Bullett_ , and _The French Connection_ ... When those were released, they were intense, and got lots of praise and attention for how effective they were. Fast forward to 2010 or later, and it's like, "WtF?" they are really just long, drawn out scenes of a car moving about. Part of this is a steady increase in the professional expertise of Stunt Men and Stunt Coordinators, who started to become people with engineering degrees who understood physics. But it's also a lot to do with the fast-paced intercut of scenes keeping the _feel_ of motion and action going.
I digress. Yes, Connections was awesome for its time, and is still excellent, though the polyester pants suits are amusing (and yeah, I wore them, too!)
Great series!
*I love how directors shot and edited documentaries in the 1970s, like a David Lean movie! Carl Sagan's **_Cosmos_** etc. I guess that style began with Kenneth Clark's **_Civilisation_** in 1969. These days, documentaries are shot in a rather bland manner. We need to get back to that full-blooded, poetic style when dealing with the fundamentals of the Earthly and Cosmic sagas...*
Loved the section about the electricity madness - a real joy to watch!
Really enjoying the series 👏🏽🏆
RIP to that radio telescope
This is a very interesting program. Very educational.
You wouldn't find any such edifying television programming today on any television station in the world.
Cause we are in The "dumb down" Phase of human development.
There are still many people making advancements in their respective fields. I give you the phenomenal James Webb Space Telescope as an example of a recent leap forward in practical science.
But there is also some "dumbing down" as you say. This refers to those who feel overwhelmed by the very knowledge and science that we are talking about and therefore refute its possibilities so that they can remain in a comfort zone.
This is nothing new though, I recall that I turned down the opportunity to take the first ever computer course offered in my high school in 1977, because I thought they were just glorified adding machines.
Boy, was I wrong, and how I regret that myopic outlook that I thankfully outgrew.
@@charlie-obrienYes, that comment is absurd on its face. I'm 68, and I get so sick of old folks with that everything-was-better-back-then nonsense.
1975 or thereabouts, I watched this and saw the mystery of science and decided to make that my life. With my interest in everything here and God's gift of an IQ of 185, I began to change the world. Several million people have had their lives improved by what happened then.
I LOVE learning and every second of this is jam packed with learning!!! 😊😊😊
I really like the show but I wish he had mentioned Michael Faraday after Oersted. His contributions to understanding electromagnetism are foundational.
Love this show ❤️
Loving the dymo labels, obviously very neat criminals here. Also the suit 😍
James Burke just walking around with a suitcase nuke.
Some people get all the best toy's.
I've always loved that into! 😀
I love the optimism at the end of how global tele-communication will bring us together and even prevent wars... this was of course long before the internet and the birth of social media which has polarised us seemingly irreparably and brought us ever closer to a cultural war that could even result in an actual war (looking at you USA)
Thanks for the upload! Very interesting, a great way to learn :)
JB is impecable!.. sempre sensacional!
Love this
Just discovered this series, very entertaining.
I remember watching this show when it was first broadcast. still the best of all of his shows. Sad to see the closing of this episode on the now destroyed Arecibo antenna in PR. It took 40 years of neglect and government de-funding to allow it to decay until it finally collapsed. This more than anything represents to me that the U.S. is a has-been power. Now lead by zealots and greedy people dead set on destroying any great accomplishment of the past.
It was a truly great show.
If the collapse of the receiver on the Arecibo telescope signifies to you 'more than anything' that "the US is a has been power", then you should probably have your head checked, preferably by a professional. Since the ACTUAL reason for the collapse was the huge additional weight of the Gregorian reflector assembly to the suspended receiver and two hurricanes that damaged the cables suspending it. You know, the Gregorian reflector that was added in the mid-90s at an additional cost of tens of millions of dollars during that supposed "40 years of neglect and defunding"? You know nothing of this telescope, its history, or the causes of the failure, and seemingly know even less of the nation that built it; you simply enjoy scratching out tired and contrived polemic vitriol on any topic that happens to float into your view in hopes of making yourself sound more intelligent than you actually are.
@@Muonium1OUCH!
@@johnkelly7757tt5rree3e3 sea e rewards😊😊
The day the universe changed I have the companion book, great show to watch with the kids.
I have missed the James Burke history connections showe!
TY!
Wow, not one minute in and I'm already wonderstruck by the idea of made-in-Britain batteries. There's something you don't see anymore
Nissan in Sunderland will tell you otherwise!
BRAVO!!!!!!!
I don’t remember these being repeated and we didn’t have a VCR in 1978. This might only be the second time I’ve ever seen this. I WAS a 70s Pop Science Kid
The church said the vacuum doesn't exist? For once we don't need to argue. Since the vacuum, by definition, is nothing, and of course nothing, by definition, doesn't exist.
12:42 - Yes, France had 15,000 nobles in battle. They had 250,000 nobles by the French Revolution - and each had his (or her?) own system of weights and measures, a tradition started by CharleMagne. So many systems of weights and measurements prevented trade, which is why one of the world's breadbaskets experienced famine. And Dr Guillotine invented the "National Razor" to shave the nation bald of leadership - the name didn't stick.
Thanks that was excellent...haven't seen this series in Years..
A lesson to learn from the Mongols, and this presentation for the spread of gunpowder: History isn't written by the winner, it's written by those who write things down.
11:10 Ah yes - Zaphod Beeblebrox himself, minus one head (totally belgium, man)!
provide virtually free electricity didnt age well, my supplier boasts 100% nuclear, but the price is thru the fkn roof.
Those were very optimistic days.
Cost, not what was charged.
One of the points that they were trying to make was that no one knows how they will react when under fire. The tough guy who can't wait to get at the enemy, falls apart when faced with the reality of combat. The insightful guy who thinks he's got it all nailed down until he finds himself in the action and discovers that he was only partly right. And of course, there's "Joe Everyman," full of fear and self-doubt, wanting to do the right thing, to be brave, to fulfill his duty, and be a good soldier. Each one hits the wall and finds a way over it. By the end, they become soldiers who are able to do what soldiers must do to win battles and to survive. At least one of three likely died or received the "million dollar wound" that took them out of action and sent them home for the duration. That's just the way things happen in war.
“Some of them ( the peasants) even started washing…..” Not in Salford they didn’t
Always hated physics etc at school . Loved James Burke
H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM, In nuclear weapon design, there is a trade-off in small weapons designs between weight and compact size. Extremely small (as small as 5 inches (13 cm) diameter and 24.4 inches (62 cm) long) linear implosion type weapons, which might conceivably fit in a large briefcase or typical suitcase, have been tested, but the lightest of those are nearly 100 pounds (45 kg) and had a maximum yield of only 0.19 kiloton
"The more he rubbed his glass balls, the weirder things got..."
I saw the thumbnail and thought, "who's this old codger then", and was treated to a very interesting and well crafted program! Side note, that white outfit was a brave choice!
the French army up since 7am arguing who should be in charge....😂😂
Love that there's a French astronomer called Jean (Luc?) Picard at c.39.30.
JLP was named by Roddenberry after physicists Auguste and Jean Piccard who I haven't been able to figure out if they were related to Picard the astronomer that discovered barometer light.
I wish someone would go and remaster all of James Burke's documentaries to high def.
I tried to put it as high as possible, but youtube always lowers the quality.
@ Thanks for trying.
I've enjoyed the many historical films and books by Mr. Burke. In some, he makes a point of saying that the 'propeller heads' often seem to be "obsessed" in some way? Considering the (from the point of view of the suggested historical times) the apparent difficulty of the questions being tackled, it sort of makes sense, maybe. And as history has usually shown, humanity is much better off for those earlier folks. The US PBS doc programming such as NOVA and so on seem to agree with Burke's conclusions. Also enjoyed the humorous way of his various dialogs.
I remember watching this at the time. It was all a bit tenuous and long winded and never quite caught my imagination, though generally better than today.
Love how he pronounces irrevocably correctly @5:51!
The British always have the correct pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn!
@@charlie-obrien: Well our language began there!!!
"...contact with the Galactic civilizations that are *_almost certainly_* out there in Space..." ✌🏼🙂👍🏼
I like that closing statement! 🤘🏼😉👌🏼
Especially the bit just before, where he mentions the means of communications making the world smaller and bringing us together.
Basically nodding heavily towards today's *internet! 😊👍🏼
I believe this chap, James Burke, is relatively famous for being very accurate with his predictions - technological and societal.
* (Which would've obviously been still in its infancy at the time of this programme. "ARPANET" I think it was called? Developed by a few US universities and Stanford Research Institute, used by the US military and Universities on both sides of the pond for sharing resources.)
I would like to hear the stories of the geniuses who came up with these ideas like the plow and the horseshoe.
You would have to hear hundreds of stories about incremental steps of how they came about over thousands of years (at least in the case of the plow), hardly anything useful like that came in to existence fully formed.
"Getting ahead" is recognized as extortion by Adam Smith. A major factor in the difference was the Western place value math system, conferring the capacity to solve division problems to one and all.
Full of errors. Jean Picard wasn't walking around with a barometer, he was visiting the late Tycho Brahe's observatory in Denmark. Picard removed the late Brahe's barometer from a storeroom and noticed the mercury in the vacuum glowing purple.
Stephen Gray was poor. He never worked out how to be paid for science. The flying boy wasn't Hausen, it was Gray.
The electric kiss wasn't Francis Hauksbee, it was Mathius Bose at the University of Leipzig.
Shocking monks with a Leyen jar was compte de Volta shocking soldiers in Paris with a voltaic pile (battery).
"Some even started washing". What a country! 😂😂😂
"Crop rotation in the fourteenth century was considerably more widespread before... John."
دوران نوجوانی
یادش بخیر
جیمز بروک عزیز
دورانی داشتیم
OMG I love the puns!!! 😅😅😅😅
Only Cosmos, written and presented by Carl Sagan can rival James Burke's Connections as a television event in my lifetime. And Cosmos only dealt with one subject, albeit a very large one.
Master influencers like Burke and Sagan are very few and far between.
Trying to give an example or allegory about how much they changed our outlook on the world around us, is near impossible. But as James so brilliantly illustrates, he needs only the reach the "right" individuals to have these seeds take root and boy have they ever.
Look at the world of advancements since that duo came to us in the 70's.
This was one of the things that got me into science.
Or was it?
“handlamp battery 991. Made in Britain”. Not any more, it isn’t.
Thought me so much,🫶🫶🇮🇪🇮🇪legend
Thank you. I have woken up still drunk at 4am, and this is interesting and educational. I was expecting that the answer to the end of the long bow was gun powder, but it turns out it was the plow and capitalism. Also, pee and poo were essential to gun powder, wow! 😂
Back in the days when the rich & powerful participated in pitched battles for honor & glory.
These days for the jousting scenes you would take some well-chosen shots from Game of Thrones and The House of the Dragon (and maybe other spinoffs by the time you read this) and it would have looked much more realistic!
Great documentary!
They need to follow the Connections for that god-awful leisure suit he is always wearing.
48:30 The jump from SETI to grand community in the stars is an awfully large one.
Ironic the program ends with the radio telescope in Puerto Rico that a few years ago, collapsed after hurricane Maria and lack of proper maintenance.
History, before it became re-written.
.
I knew it was coming, but that was still a _helluva_ lead-in to
the introduction of the English longbow ... 🙂
.
I saw these first time around....I'm concluding that there has been little better since...
It's a pity the big radio telescope in Puerto Rico broke a main cable and would need a complete rebuild to use it again.
I studied History and Philosophy of Science for three years. I would have come up with something like the development of radar from a completely different yet equally valid and logical sequence of events. I could trace its origins back to Ancient Greece. Still, it’s good to compare.