Everyday Miracles - The Genius of Sofas, Stockings and Scanners
Sign in to watch this content please.
- Episode
- Home
- Broadcast Info
- 2014 (57 mins)
- Description
- Today, we all live like kings and queens! Our homes are comfortable pleasure palaces, filled with comfortable furniture, countless electronic gadgets and labour saving devices. There is light and heat at the touch of a button, and the world is brought to us through television, radio and the web. This modern miracle happens because we’ve all amassed a dazzling array of stuff a collection of metals, plastics, liquid crystals, plastics and ceramics, all assembled in very precise ways. Mark begins by looking at foam rubber. It’s everywhere whatever you’re sitting on, there’s almost certainly foam involved. As Mark discovers on a visit to a factory, there’s seemingly no limit to foam’s versatility. Even airline meal trays are made from foam. In the lab, Mark shows how foam was discovered by mistake in the 1930s. The razor blade was invented by King Camp Gillette in 1901, who claimed that he had saved the US economy $4.5m in time saved by not having to visit the barber’s shop. But he couldn’t have done it without a new mass production technique and an insight into how to harden steel. Steel is iron with carbon in it and when it comes to materials, two things are very often far better than one. Composites have hugely improved our lot. Concrete reinforced with steel has transformed what architects can do with space and light and plywood’s strength and versatility has improved the scope of the furniture designer and even brought us record-breaking aircraft. Plastic is perhaps the single biggest breakthrough material of the 20th century. It’s utterly ubiquitous and that’s because it’s so versatile. The ultimate material for mass production, as Mark discovers on a visit to a German toy factory. Back in the lab, Mark reminds us that plastic is nowadays something that even clothes us, showing us how nylon is made, before visiting a Derbyshire hosiery factory to show us how nylon and another synthetic fibre elastane (Lycra) have transformed the industry.
- Genre
- Culture; Technology
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Everyday Miracles - The Genius of Sofas, Stockings and Scanners". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/85947 (Accessed 11 Jan 2025)