Engines of Our Ingenuity

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.

Episode: 2739 Evolution of the Hall from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.  Today, a room without a view.

Episode: 1526 Learning speech: the Paleolithic technological explosion.  Today, we learn to talk.

Episode: 1525 Liberty ships: an amateur takes over the trade.  Today, an amateur builds ships.

Episode: 1524 The other great fire of 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin.  Today, the other great fire.

Episode: 1523 On saying goodbye to lighthouses and cabooses.  Today, we say goodbye to lighthouses and cabooses.

Episode: 2556 Euclid's Elements, David Hilbert, and modern notions of mathematical abstraction.  Today, making a point.

Episode: 3352 A Taste of Orange.  Today we are "Tasting Orange".

Episode: 3350 Today honoring a special group of women scientists.  Pickering's Harem.

Episode: 3351 The curious struggle of the Crossbow.  History is full of instances where armies cling to outmoded weapons.

Episode: 1522 A 1950 prediction of technology in the year 2000.  Today, we go fifty years into the future.

Episode: 1521 John P. Parker, slave, freedom-fighter, inventor, and businessman.  Today, we follow a slave out of slavery.

Episode: 1520 In which automobile makers gradually learn aerodynamics.  Today, aerodynamics and automobiles.

Episode: 2555 The brave new world of digitizing books for the Web.  Today, this old book.

Episode: 2862 Randomness out of Nothingness.  Today, let's talk about how to pick random numbers out of thin air.

Episode: 3349 The Inhuman Distances of the Speed of Light.  Today, inhuman distances.

Episode: 1519 Learning to acquire knowledge and create it at the same time.  Today, we wonder where knowledge comes from.

Episode: 1518 A concern about computers and the redefinition of reality.  Today, we try to tell fact from fiction.

Episode: 1517 The very odd bridge that Roebling almost built.  Today, a strange bridge.

Episode: 1516 In which we must save the lore as well as the plants.  Today, we have to save more than the endangered plants.

Episode: 2554 The Creativity of Slogans and Jingles.  Today, "think different."

Episode: 3090 Friedrich Richard Petri.  Today, drawing the frontier.

Episode: 2881 Racial Mythologies: Hans Günther vs. Julian Huxley on the Concept of Race.  Today, poison in the library.

Episode: 1515 The would-be discovery of oxygen and scientific revolution.  Today, let's try to find out who discovered oxygen.

Episode: 1514 The resistance movement: a look at ongoing evolution.  Today, we watch creatures evolving around us.

Episode: 1513 The Accidental Creationist: In which science changes with the telling of it.  Today, the problem of telling about science.

Episode: 1512 The corner store: a retail outlet that is lost but not forgotten.  Today, let's buy candy at the corner store.

Episode: 2552 Frederick the Great, Patron of the Arts.  Today, what made Frederick great?