Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 1720 The two Silk Roads: One by land, the other by sea.  Today, the Silk Road goes to sea.

Episode: 2936 George S. Parker and the Parker Brothers.  Today, for the love of games.

Episode: 1719 Edgar Allen Poe's amazing cosmology.  Today, gothic cosmology.

Episode: 2933 Math and The Dreyfus Affair.  Today, courtroom drama.

Episode: 1718 The Rev. Dionysius Lardner: keeping up with a world in flux.  Today, old books with a message for the present.

Episode: 2931 G. H. Hardy, mentor and apologist.  Today, a friendship and an apology.

Episode: 1715 The first flight around the world -- in 175 days.  Today, we circle the earth.

Episode: 3210 Scourge of the Sea, the long search for a cure for scurvy.  Today, a medical cure, lost and found.

Episode: 1714 The mischief, in space, of the "infinite reservoir" thought model.  Today, let us fill infinity.

Episode: 1713 George Seldon, Henry Ford, and Clyde Champion Barrow.  Today, patents and public relations.

Episode: 2930 Overhanging Books.  Today, we stick out.

Episode: 1712 Florence Nightingale's graph: Learning what really happened.  Today, Florence Nightingale draws a graph.

Episode: 2928 When 1 = 1/2 = 0.  Today, that can’t be, can it?

Episode: 1711 In which melting glaciers open up the archaeological record.  Today, we follow melting glaciers.

Episode: 1710 Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Today, a new look at an old encyclopaedia.

Episode: 2926 Nerd Nite and the etymology of the word Nerd.  Today, bazinga!

Episode: 1709 Cap Wigington.  Today, a remarkable architect.

Episode: 3209 Net of Life: Can Technology Protect Us from Ourselves?  Today, a net of life.

Episode: 1707 In which virtual reality is more real than we'd expected.  Today, information, too dense to be objective.

Episode: 1706 The Two Eiffel Towers.  Today, Eiffel builds two towers.

Episode: 2924 Not In This Universe: When the possible really isn't.  Today, we do a lot of typing.

Episode: 1705 A 3000-year-old woman with an artificial toe.  Today, a big toe made of wood.

Episode: 2923 The opossum: nature's little sanitary engineer.  Today, nature’s sanitation engineer.

Episode: 1704 Restorative Justice: a rare inventive response to necessity.  Today, invention and crime.

Episode: 1703 The IBM 360 computer: an imprint upon the Palouse wheat fields.  Today, a new computer.

Episode: 2922 Gearing up: the continuously variable transmission.  Today, we change gears.

Episode: 1701 The sewing machine in American life.  Today, the sewing machine.

Episode: 2919 The Roomba.  Today, we clean up.

Episode: 1699 Çatalhöyük: An ancient city, held together by plaster.  Today, the surprising cement that held an ancient city together.

Episode: 1698 The Holland Tunnel -- a story you've heard before.  Today, an oddly familiar story.

Episode: 3208 How Computers are Chipping Away at Reading Comprehension.  Today, computer comprehension.

Episode: 1697 Where did Delphic prophecies come from? And where did they go?  Today, the oracle speaks.

Episode: 2918 Norman Brinker and the History of Restaurant Chains.  Today, one link at a time.

Episode: 1696 Harriet Quimby, first American woman licensed to fly.  Today, Harriet Quimby.

Episode: 1695 On wanting to build my own crystal set.  Today, we try to make a radio.

Episode: 2917 The NBC Opera Theatre.  Today, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.

Episode: 1694 In which we learn that technology is communication.  Today, technology has something to tell us.

Episode: 2916 Charles K. McNeil and the Point Spread.  Today, we make book.

Episode: 1693 Glenn Curtiss' motorcycles: before airplanes.  Today, the other life of an airplane-maker.

Episode: 1692 Charles Hall's star-crossed attempt to reach the North Pole.  Today, Arctic ice.

Episode: 2914 Charles Loring Brace and the Orphan Trains Movement.  Today, for the love of children.

Episode: 1690 The Arts and Crafts Movement reflected in a book for young people.  Today, we make things.

Episode: 2910 Something big: The world's largest manmade enclosure.  Today, something really big.

Episode: 1689 Numismatics -- coins as a historical record.  Today, let's read what's written on coins.

Episode: 1686 In which steam engines struggle to teach us thermodynamics.  Today, a story about theory and practice.

Episode: 2908 Kurt Vonnegut, engineers, and scientists.  Today, so it goes.

Episode: 1685 Lord Mad Jack Byron, James Watt, & George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron.  Today, a strange connection between Lord Byron and steam power.

Episode: 2907 Quantum Computing.  Today, it’s magic.

Episode: 1684 In which we study an old machinist's handbook.  Today, a revolutionary's handbook.

Episode: 1682 Count von Zeppelin learns about flying in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Today, see if you can guess our mystery inventor.

Episode: 2906 The Octopus Mind.  Today, alien intelligence.

Episode: 1681 The Literary Digest tells us about science in 1904.  Today, a bright new century.

Episode: 2904 Chatterbots and the Turing Test.  Today, we chat.

Episode: 1679 The last days of Pompeii, rather like our own lives.  Today, we visit Pompeii.

Episode: 1678 Weave a circle and change history.  Today, we close a circle.

Episode: 2903: Delicately Engineered Hummingbirds.  Today, life as a blur.

Episode: 1677 In which I encounter the 16th Century in a Fort Worth Museum.  Today, we trick the eye.

Episode: 2902 ELIZA: Artificial Psychotherapist.  Today, mindless conversation.

Episode: 1676 Some 2500 year old Chinese bells harbor a secret.  Today, some very-old bells with a surprising secret.

Episode: 1674 Fulton's last boat: the steam-powered Battery-Catamaran.  Today, Fulton's last boat.

Episode: 3207 Repairing New Zealand's Damaged Ecosystem.  Today, what once was.

Episode: 1673 Who was Marie Lavoisier, amanuensis or collaborator?  Today, meet Marie Lavoisier.

Episode: 2900 Hayek: the economist's contributions in neuroscience and philosophy.  Today, a man who crossed over.

Episode: 1670 John Tyndall: measuring sound without electronics.  Today, how did people measure sound in the nineteenth century?

Episode: 1669 Linus Torvalds, and giving away Linux.  Today, a parable about giving versus selling.

Episode: 2898 Keynes and Hayek: The nuances of their economic perspectives.  Today, how different were they?

Episode: 1668 Scientific instruments creating a new rhetoric.  Today, new sciences, new languages.

Episode: 2895 Measuring up: How we measure, and perceive, inclines.  Today, measuring "up."

Episode: 1667 In which we look at the problem of seeing what we expect to see.  Today, we try to see what we're looking at.

Episode: 1666 In which we watch books growing old.  Today, we watch books grow old.

Episode: 2894 Wastewater Treatment.  Today, the unmentionable.

Episode: 1665 Making Artificial hearts and minds in the sixteenth century.  Today, artificial hearts, minds, and voices.

Episode: 2891 Specifics and Generalities: teaching and the problem of universals.  Today, what exactly is that?

Episode: 1664 Nomogram: the analog computer in one of its early incarnations.  Today, nomograms, analogs, and a forgotten world.

Episode: 1662 A book on water: between two worlds in an old library.  Today, we're between two worlds in an old library.

Episode: 2889 An important step toward solving the twin primes conjecture.  Today, almost twins.

Episode: 1661 Where are all the Engineers? Appearing to be something else, it would seem.  Today, where did all the engineers go?

Episode: 2887 Apple's most famous flop: The Newton.  Today, before there was "i."

Episode: 1659 Otto Lilienthal and Orville Wright -- one died and the other lived.  Today, one pioneer of flight dies while another lives.

Episode: 1658 A skill eliminates itself: from drafting to computers.  Today, a skill eliminates itself.

Episode: 3206 Australia Wins The America's Cup.  Today, they came from the land down under.

Episode: 1657 In which nature multiplies outcomes.  Today, nature and multiplication.

Episode: 2886 Not Just Gadgets: The Science of Engineering Systems.  Today, beyond gadgets.

Episode: 1656 Electric power comes to Telluride, Colorado.  Today, we install a dynamo on a mountaintop.

Episode: 1655 After the flood: Freeze-drying the history of desegragation.  Today, we Freeze-dry our past.

Episode: 2883 A dead salmon points the way to better brain imaging.  Today, outrageous research.

Episode: 1654 The forgotten renewable energy source, tidal (or lunar) power.  Today, solar power and lunar power.

Episode: 2879 The Economics of Empty Shipping Containers.  Today, empty boxes.

Episode: 1653 Aeolian harps, transmission wires, and vortex wakes.  Today, the Aeolian harp.

Episode: 1652 Justus von Liebig and the first R&D laboratory.  Today, we create the first research laboratory.

Episode: U-boats in the First World War.  Today, full speed ahead.

Episode: 1650 Learning about the stability of aeroplanes in 1916.  Today, we worry about airplane stability in 1916.

Episode: 2875 Pierre Fauchard, Father of Modern Dentistry.  Today, a profession comes of age.

Episode: 1649 Reginald Fessenden endows radio with sound.  Today, we add sound to radio.

Episode: 1648 Building a dirigible to get to the California gold rush.  Today, some thoughts on success, failure, and flying to California.

Episode: 2872 The Stimpmeter: Golf's Supremely Simple Maintenance Tool.  Today, low tech in a high tech game.

Episode: 1646 Thinking about who had done what by what age.  Today, who did what by when?

Episode: 2870 The Canal du Midi.  Today, coast to coast.

Episode: 1645 Figuring out the value of Pi.  Today, let's talk about  -- and not the kind you eat.

Episode: 1644 An 18th-century doctor helps great-grandmother raise grandpa.  Today, we raise a nineteenth-century child.