Hacker Cinema
How We Got to Now
2014 · TV series · documentary · 1 season
Created by Steven Johnson
How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson is a six part documentary series that reveals the story behind the remarkable ideas that made modern life possible; the unsung heroes that brought them into the world – and the unexpected and bizarre consequences each of these innovations has triggered.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
I recall visiting the museum many years ago and seeing a demo where they heated a glass rod and pulled a fiber. This was probably when fiber optics was in its infancy. It was definitely a highlight for a young science nerd. I would love to go back some day.
Along those lines I highly recommend the episode of the show “How we Got to Now” about glass [0]. It tells the story of how clear glass was developed, something I always took for granted, but early glass was not clear and took a major effort to create. The show then goes into how Corning took it to a new level for fiber optics. The whole series is excellent and similar to James Burke’s excellent series “Connections”. [1]
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4160136/
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ&list=PLf02uWXhaGRng_YzH-Ser_VEV4lGSLX_1
“How We Got to Now” tv series https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3106210/
Fascinating look into ideas that transformed our society, like glass, time keeping, sanitation, etc. takes seemingly mundane topics and explores what a mess things were like before them.
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, check out Steven B. Johnson’s “How We Got To Now”, which discussed this. https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/
It’s only six episodes, and quite fascinating.
While visiting London today, I stopped by the location of the pump from Snow's Cholera map:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5133626,-0.1366315,3a,75y,189.49h,75.97t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYuG6zRfL8xHbyVSwH3Q_8g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
There's a pub there named after John Snow, but the area seems otherwise unremarkable.
His contributions are discussed in the first episode of How We Got to Now, which is a pretty good documentary available on Netflix:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_We_Got_to_Now