More Industrial Revelations Europe Episode Guide

Episode Guide

• Big Bang

  Alfred Nobel's discovery of dynamite, at a cost of several destroyed factories and the death of his brother in a failed experiment

• Bread, Beer and Salt

  A look at how food production kept up once the advent of industrialisation drew more men to work in towns and cities rather than to toil in the fields

• Building A Revolution

  A look at how the Industrial Revolution led to a construction boom and how the industry responded by introducing new materials

• Building Europe

  How the industrial revolution took place, leading to a huge increase in demand for building materials

• The Canal King

  The story of Pierre-Paul Riquet's construction of the Canal du Midi, which linked the Atlantic to the Mediterranean

• The City

  A look at how cities coped with rapid population growth once society entered the railway age

• Cotton, Linen and Rope

  Ronald Topp discovers what happened when machines took over from manual labour in the creation of clothes

• Eiffel's Tower

  How iron engineering progressed enough to allow the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889

• Exploding Engines

  Historical attempts to build motor cars, revealing the stories behind several plans to build steam-powered road vehicles

• Generation Electric

  The work of electrical power pioneers Ernst Werner von Siemens and Johann Gerg Halske

• Heavy Metal

  A look at the Cornish mining industry and its below-sea mines

• High Fliers

  How paper, fire, a cock, a duck and a sheep led to man discovering how to fly

• Hot Metal

  The rise of the printing press as a means of distributing information, which was revolutionised by Belgians Christoffel Plantijn and Jan Moretus

• The Impossible Railway

  A look at the locomotive designed by Joseph Anton Maffei to run on the Semmering railway over the Alps - a combination of two engineering marvels

• Industrial Espionage

  How William Cockerill provided the continent with the designs for a steam engine to power textile looms in the 19th century

• Iron Men of Sweden

  How Sweden cornered the market in cast iron during the 17th and 18th centuries, eventually supplying all of Europe

• King Silk

  How textiles made Lyon a rich city due to the difficulty involved in making French silk, and the impact of Jacquard's invention of the automated loom

• Perfect Porcelain

  Ronald Topp examines the new techniques that allowed local potteries to grow into an international industry

• Pottery

  The history of the pottery trade across the continent, investigating how producers exploited technological advancements to turn their craft into an international industry

• Reaping the Whirlwind

  How the Dutch used wind power to save them from the waves and fuel their shipbuilding industry, leading to their domination of the sea

• Steam on the Water

  The invention of the paddle steamer by Frenchman JC Perier, before which European boats were at the mercy of the winds

• Steaming up the Alps

  Ronald Topp investigates how mass tourism improved comfort levels through a total transformation of rail travel

• Swedish Waterways

  Ronald Topp explores Sweden's canal network, discovering how a system designed and built in the 17th century is still proving viable today