Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 2576 Are screw caps good for wine?  Today, a turn of the screw.

Episode: 2687 Getting to know the organisms that live on and in the human body.  Today, what lives within us.

Episode: 3367 In which Scientific American Magazine gets wrong, the airflow during singing.  Today, Scientific American gets it wrong.

Episode: 3366 The throw-away bottle cap: More than it seems to be.  Today, we invent the bottle cap.

Episode: 1545 The English and 18th century ballooning.  Today, we ride the first hot-air balloons in England.

Episode: 1544 An operetta about electric lights, written before Edison's light bulb.  Today, an electric-light opera.

Episode: 1543 Archimedes' pump, rediscovered by Ceredi, heralds the new science.  Today, meet the person who reinvented Archimedes' pump.

Episode: 2575 The illustrious history of Prime Numbers.  Today, some numbers for the ages.

Episode: 3228 Designing safe computer controls.  Today, flying by computer.

Episode: 3365  A 1906 set of Shop Notes offers a lesson in technological change.  Today, a manual tells us more than it means to.

Episode: 1542 In which Francis Bacon pushes a strict Aristotelian Agenda.  Today, science tries to find its way.

Episode: 1541 Do 'Horseshoe Nails' really alter human history?  Today, we ask if horseshoe nails are real.

Episode: 1540 The Korean Turtle Boat - the first ironclad.  Today, we meet a turtle with an iron shell.

Episode: 2572 Melville and Anna Bissell and the Carpet Sweeper.  Today, a husband and wife engineer success.

Episode: 3363 Richard Sutton and reinforcement learning.  Today, reinforcement learning.

Episode: 3362 A 1914 Engineering Magazine teaches us much about the evolution of our technology.  Today, a revealing old magazine.

Episode: 3361 The versatile, intelligent, Raven has much to teach us.  Today, ravens in thin air.

Episode: 1539 In which a thin layer of fluid determines whether an airplane flies.  Today, a wind blows by us.

Episode: 1538 In which the various centuries show their faces.  Today, we ask what a century looks like.

Episode: 1537 John Wilkins talks about life on the Moon, in 1638.  Today, life on the moon.

Episode: 2570 Celebrating Human Ingenuity.  Today, a story in two parts.

Episode: 3360 The incomparable sound of the legendary Fender Rhodes.  Today we consider "The legendary Fender Rhodes".

Episode: 3359 An very special lineage: Charles Darwin: Grandson of Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin.  Today, Charles Darwin's grandparents.

Episode: 3358 Onesiphore Pecqueur and the invention of your car's differential gears.  Today, let us meet Onesiphore Pecqueur.

Episode: 1535 The mechanical clock as tactile philosophy.  Today, we invent the mechanical clock.

Episode: 1534 Making sense of the slippery concept of acceleration.  Today, let's think about falling.

Episode: 2563 The Prolific Isaac Asimov.  Today, science or fiction?

Episode: 3357 Backpropagation: The idea that powers modern AI.  Today, backpropagation, the trick behind modern AI.

Episode: 3356 A form of decorative calligraphic art emerges from penmanship instruction at 19th century business colleges.  Today, when handwriting became art.

Episode: 3355 The rise of the lowly and ubiquitous Tin Can, and its various openers.  Today, let us make tin cans.

Episode: 1533 The Triple Nickel: the first Black paratroopers become smoke jumpers.  Today, a secret WW-II battle.

Episode: 1532 The invention and selling of the typewriter.  Today, the typewriter teaches us its purpose.

Episode: 1531 On restoring the word theory.  Today, let's theorize.

Episode: 2562 Paul Samuelson and the textbook Economics.  Today, a book that helped educate the world.

Episode: 3354 Wharton Esherick's finely-crafted furniture, objects, and art enliven the studio building he designed and constructed.  Today, building an autobiography.

Episode: 3266 Fireworks, Firecrackers, and Lunar New Year.  Today, we ring the new year in with a bang.

Episode: 3353 An example showing how music, like other technologies, evolves.  Today, a lesson from an old song.

Episode: 1530 Medieval masons and the mischief of success.  Today, we meet a medieval mason.

Episode: 1529 Osborne Reynolds: of sand Reynolds Numbers.  Today, a great Victorian engineer.

Episode: 1527 How Clean Water triggered the Great Polio Epidemics.  Today, we wonder where polio came from.

Episode: 2559 Going, Going, Gone! A look at auctions.  Today, going, going, gone!

Episode: 2035 The Gunpowder Plot: Terrorism little-changed in four hundred years.  Today, historian Cathy Patterson asks us to "Remember, remember, the fifth of November.