How We Got to Now (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Glass - full transcript
The invention of the mirror gives rise to the Renaissamce; glass lenses reveal worlds within worlds worlds; glass is essential; for communication in the deep ocean; glass lens allows millions to watch a man walk on the moon.
Imagine a world
without glass.
We'd be living in dark,
windowless homes.
Those of us who need spectacles
would spend our lives
struggling to see the world
in focus.
There's be no microscopes,
no telescopes,
no movie cameras,
and worst of all
for me right now,
no TV screens.
It's kind of crazy that
something as ordinary as glass
has been instrumental
in the greatest revolutions
in science.
It's thanks to people like
the British physics teacher
who liked to fire crossbows...
The strange physical properties
of glass
would open up a whole new world
of possibilities.
and the electrician
who used glass
to bring a vision
to the whole of humanity.
The existing technologies
were useless
on the surface of the moon.
Neil Armstrong:
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
These are classic examples
of the kind of people
who actually made
the modern world.
People you've probably
never heard of.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
These were hobbyists,
garage inventors,
and obsessive tinkerers.
Ordinary people
doing extraordinary things.
The discovery of the
amazing properties of glass
set in motion a surprising
chain reaction of ideas.
From art and our understanding
of the universe,
to food production,
combating disease,
and global communication,
I'm going to show
how all these apparently
unconnected worlds are linked
through the inventions of
the unsung heroes of glass.
I'm Steven Johnson.
I write about ideas
and innovation,
and this is the untold story
of How We Got to Now.
How We Got to Now
was made possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass is so familiar
to us today
we might not realize
it performs
a million different roles.
It's on our laptops,
inside our phones,
on our faces, and we drive
around in it.
We have such a love affair
with glass,
we encase ourselves in it.
Over 50 million tons a year
are produced
of this kind of flat glass,
most of it for construction.
And a building like this is
basically 40 stories of glass.
It's a nightmare
to keep clean.
Oh, did you guys think
I was actually outside?
No, I've got this harness on
in case I trip and accidentally
spill my drink.
Glass is resistant to heat,
cold, water, and high winds
and can withstand
extreme pressure,
as much as that created
by 100,000 elephants.
[ elephant trumpets ]
Glass is a beautiful
and robust material.
It's the ultimate
architectural decoration.
And because of its
extraordinary properties,
we now live in these
cathedrals of glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Our lives are completely
dependent
on this wonder material,
yet it's made from one
of the most simple
and common resources
on our planet: sand.
Thousands of years ago,
our ancestors figured out
that if you heated sand
at extremely high temperatures,
it would cause
the individual grains
to fuse together,
creating glass.
Many people at the time
thought that glass
had magical properties.
Many ancient civilizations
had the ability
to make ornate glass items,
but it came out opaque,
often colored, and you could
barely see through it.
But figuring out how to make
truly clear transparent glass
would change the course
of history.
It's a story whose roots lie
in a time of extreme violence.
And it played out here:
Venice, Italy.
From the early 13th century,
a whole generation
of glassmakers arrive here,
fleeing from the battles
being fought in Turkey
during the time
of the Crusades.
While the Venetians
like the promise
of exquisite glassware,
there's a problem.
The city is overpopulated,
and its buildings
are almost entirely
made out of wood,
which turns out to be
a little bit of an issue
when your business revolves
around blazing furnaces.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
So in 1291,
the local authorities force
all the glassmakers onto
the nearby island of Murano.
While the Venetians
want the furnaces
away from their wooden homes,
the glass brings money
into the city.
[ cash register chimes ]
They're keen to keep any
trade secrets from escaping,
so the government passes
a second, more shocking law.
In a pretty Draconian turn,
the new law forbids
the glassmakers
from ever leaving Venice,
threatening them with
the death penalty if they do.
All the master glassmakers
are forced to live
and work together on Murano,
unable to leave
for fear of their lives.
This inadvertently creates
a cluster of expertise,
turning Murano into a center
of innovation.
When we think about invention,
we tend to talk about it
in terms of the single
heroic inventor --
Graham Bell with his telephone,
Edison with the phonograph
or the light bulb --
but the truth is
the most important innovations
are collaborative in nature.
Ideas are shared and discussed
and built upon.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Economists call this
information spillover.
Pack people together,
and ideas have
a natural tendency
to flow from mind to mind.
It's in this innovation
hothouse
that a maverick glassmaker
called Angelo Barovier
enters the story.
He would create
a brand-new type of glass,
and, in doing so,
change the world forever.
I've managed to track down
one of his descendants,
Rosa Barovier.
Your family has been here
an incredibly long
amount of time.
Certainly, the Baroviers were
living and working in Murano
in the beginning
of the 14th century.
Do you think there was
an advantage in clustering
all of the glassmakers
together in this small space?
Yes, every new idea
very quickly spread
all over the town.
You have this mix of competition
between the individuals;
there's a lot of sharing and
collaboration at the same time.
They all are relatives,
so they exchange
knowledge, ideas,
but in the same time,
they want to be the best.
[ tower bells chiming ]
Barovier is a tinkerer
and a perfectionist,
and like many of us, he likes
experimenting with stuff.
He doesn't want to make
the usual cloudy glass.
He wants to make
the clearest glass possible.
And so he devotes his life
to doing just that.
Before, there was
the so-called "white glass,"
but it was not pure,
so Angelo attended some lessons
of a famous philosopher.
He meant more like as
a scientist at that point.
If you're trying to be
an innovator,
you don't go to
philosophy classes.
An alchemist, eh?
So he learned the methods
of alchemists
to prepare raw materials.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Inspired by the alchemist,
Barovier starts to experiment.
Now, it might sound strange,
but glassmakers
would often add burnt plants
to the molten sand mix
to try to remove impurities.
Barovier tries out a plant
called saltwort
that he imports from Syria,
hundreds of miles away.
Barovier takes the plant,
burns it,
and purifies the ashes
to extract minerals fromt,
and when he mixethis into
the molten mix of the glass,
it creates this:
the clearest glass
the world has ever seen.
He calls it "cristallo"
because it resembles
the clearest of quartz crystals.
It's the birth
of modern glass.
It might seem like
a small improvement,
but Barovier's transparent,
colorless glass
triggers a revolution
that spreads around the world.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
[ exhaling ]
It makes greenhouses
possible.
Transparent glass houses
allowed fruit and vegetables
from the Mediterranean
to be grown in colder climates.
That revolutionizes our diet,
saving many from
malnourishment.
But there's more.
With the creation of glass
flasks and test tubes,
our understanding of chemistry
explodes,
and that drives
a revolution in science.
And then there's the production
of giant windows.
The immense glass skyscrapers
of the modern city
owe a debt of gratitude
to Barovier
and the glassmakers
of Murano.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
With ideas and techniques
passed down
through the generations,
today, Murano is still
an innovation powerhouse.
Davide Salvadore
is a 12th-generation
master glassmaker.
So how long have you
been doing this?
[ speaking in Italian ]
TRANSLATOR: I started working
in a furnace
when I was 10 years old,
so I think I've got
quite used to glass.
We love each other.
How much do you --
do you learn
from other people on Murano
who are your competitors?
Do you share techniques,
or are you pretty much
competitive with them?
I have probably learned more
in the evenings
drinking a glass of wine
with the old masters
and chatting to them
than actually working.
I love thinking about
that there's 1,000 years
of expertise
that's been built up.
The kind of craftsmanship
that's been stored here
in this space on Murano,
we get to see it at work.
How long does it take
to become a master glassmaker?
A lifetime.
And maybe it is not enough.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The creation of crystal-clear
glass
wasn't just to make fancy
chandeliers or vases.
By looking through
this magical material,
innovators would revolutionize
the way we see the world
and our understanding
of our place in the universe.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
It all starts with a cry
for help.
In the churches and monasteries
of medieval Europe,
aging clergymen
are finding it hard to read
their sacred scriptures.
It's glass that comes
to their aid.
Now, at the time,
curved chunks of glass
were known for their magical
ability to magnify the world.
People would take
these glass orbs
and run them along the page
to enlarge the words.
And it actually does work!
That's amazing.
Unfortunately,
I can't read Latin.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Depending on its shape
and thickness,
glass has a natural ability
to bend light
and magnify the world.
While these glass orbs
helped the poor-sighted clerics
with their reading,
they aren't that practical
when walking around.
What was needed
was a new innovation.
We don't know exactly
when or where it happened,
but at some point, glassmakers
started experimenting
with shaping the glass
into these small discs,
and they called them,
in Italian,
"discs for the eyes."
And they would put them
in these two frames,
and they would join
the frames together at the top,
and the result would be
the world's first spectacles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Now, while you might imagine
people would be crying out
for these new eyesight
accessories, for some time,
spectacles remain
a bit of a secret.
By the turn of the 14th century,
talk of spectacles
is all the rage in the corridors
of cathedrals and monasteries
throughout Europe,
but your average
medieval villager
hasn't even heard of this
newfangled device,
much less tried on a pair.
Life for them is still
mostly a blur,
particularly in old age.
It's one of those cases where
a technology exists,
it just isn't widely
distributed yet.
For spectacles to explode
onto the global mass market,
it would take an innovation
in a completely unrelated
field.
It may sound odd --
and bear with me here --
but the story of how spectacles
go mainstream
actually kicks off
in the vineyards and wineries
of medieval Europe.
In the mid-1400s, there's a guy
in Germany
who has what he thinks
is a really great idea.
He wants to explore
a completely new use
for an ancient piece
of technology, the grape press,
used by winemakers
for thousands of years.
Only he's got a problem:
he's a bit strapped for cash,
but he manages to persuade
some investors
to back his project,
kind of like the start-up
funding we have today.
But the idea still sounds
strange.
He wants to take a machine
designed to press grapes,
modify it a little,
and start printing bibles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
That man is
Johannes Gutenberg.
This is a great example
of someone
adapting an existing technology
to create a new innovation
in a totally different field.
Gutenberg takes
the basic architecture
of the grape press,
breaks it down,
adds in moveable typefaces,
and creates a printing machine,
one of the greatest inventions
in the history of humanity.
Suddenly we are able
to mass-produce books,
and that opens doors
to the spread of knowledge
across a wide audience,
not just of religion,
but of brand-new ideas,
from political manifestos
and scientific theories
to fiction, poetry,
and even pornography.
But Gutenberg's printing press
has an additional unexpected
consequence
that's crucial to the story
of how glass changed our lives.
As reading
becomes widespread,
people suddenly start realizing
that their vision
isn't all that good.
I mean, up until that point,
you didn't have that many times
in your life when you had
to stare at something
that close to your eyes.
But with the appearance
of books and pamphlets,
all of a sudden,
all over Europe,
people are staring
at tiny letters on a page.
The invention
of the printed book
creates a surge in demand
for spectacles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glasses immediately improve
the lives of millions.
Literacy levels go up,
empowering people
to think for themselves.
And failing eyesight
could now be remedied,
allowing people to work
well into old age.
With the addition of bars
that hooked your spectacles
over your ears,
today glasses have become
a way of expressing
your identity.
[ laughs ]
Gai Gherardi is one
of Hollywood's most celebrated
eyewear designers.
Was there a point
in more recent times
when glasses really became
part of fashion?
The classic story is that
men don't make passes
at girls who wear glasses,
so something happened there
to bring glasses
into a comfort level
that they could somehow be
an accessory to your beauty
rather than this sort of
deterrent.
Not only they take away
all of your sex appeal,
but they would give you some!
Now it's become this space --
a sense of kind of playfulness,
of creativity where you're
expressing yourself
by the design of these glasses.
It has the ability to transform
a face more than anything.
You can have, instantly,
a little facelift,
you can be given a hairline
if you don't have hair,
you can elongate your nose
you can give yourself full lips
by putting on a pair of glasses.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Ironically, glasses today
are actually more likely
to be made of plastic,
but the iginal
glass spectacle lenses
play another significant role
in our lives
and sit at the heart
of a completely different set
of innovations.
Back in the 16th century,
something profound is about
to happen.
The convergence
of quality glass,
the printing press, books,
and a growing expertise
in making lenses
will unlock a new door
in the history of ideas.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Spectacle makers across Europe
start experimenting
with their lenses.
They stumble upon
brand-new uses
that would extend our vision
to see previously invisible
worlds.
In the 1590s, in a small town
called Middelburg
in the Netherlands,
a father and son team
of lens makers
called Hans and Zacharias
Janssen
start playing around
with their lenses.
Only instead of putting them
side by side
the way you would with
a pair of glasses,
they line them up like this.
And when you do that,
they discover
that they can see tiny objects
much larger than you would
with an unaided eye.
They invent the microscope.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Thanks to the Janssens
and the magnifying properties
of glass lenses,
we could now see down into
the world of the very small:
the discovery
of microscopic animals,
individual cells,
single-celled organisms,
and the smallest life on earth,
bacteria.
According to microbiologist
Professor Steven Ruzin,
the microscope played
a significant role
in our understanding
of disease.
Science is really driven
by our instruments,
and prior to this,
the scientists at the time
were limited
by what they can see.
Microscopes for about 100 years
were really difficult to use.
They saw the bacteria,
but they were blurry,
and they didn't know
what they were.
At this point here,
from, say, 1820s or so on,
scientists could see bacteria
really well,
and then that's when
the great study
of the cell theory, the
bacterial cause of diseases --
So effectively the ability
to see these invisible creatures
with real clarity then sets up
whole new ways
- of understanding the world.
- Exactly.
Microscopes like this
allowed the scientists
to look at bacteria
and to now start
really moving forward
in the actual science
of studying bacteria
and, of course, the bacterial
cause of diseases
and so on and so forth.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The invention of the microscope
opens the door
to the creation of antiseptics,
antibiotics, and vaccines,
completely transforming
our ability to combat disease.
But simple glass lenses
had more to offer
those curious enough
to tinker with them.
They would help extend
our vision
to see further
than ever before.
About 20 years after
the invention of the microscope,
just down the road,
in the same small Dutch town,
another spectacle maker
called Hans Lippershey
is watching kids play
with his lenses.
They claim to see
something magical in them,
and when he looks through
the lenses,
he sees faraway objects appear
to be so close
you can almost touch them.
The telescope is born.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
[ squeaking ]
So both the microscope
and telescope are invented
by two different lens makers
from the same town.
Glass now opens our eyes
to worlds beyond our world.
As inventions go,
glass is one of the most
transformative materials
ever created,
and it helps us understand
the unpredictable
yet wonderful way
that innovation works.
Someone uses a grape press
to publish bibles,
which makes people realize
that they have poor eyesight.
That in turn opens the door
for a market for lenses,
which opens the door
to a scientific revolution
that not only saves lives,
it transforms our understanding
of the universe.
In the 19th and 20th centuries,
the lens would once again
take a giant leap
in changing society.
And as with
so many innovations,
it revolved around
a simple idea:
you take a lens, you bolt it
onto a box,
and you use the lens
to focus an image
on light-sensitive material.
It's the invention
of the camera.
[ clicks ]
[ ♪♪♪ ]
With cameras, we could now
capture a moment in time.
By capturing a series
of images, we create a movie.
And with innovations
in electronics,
we could now transmit
a live image,
giving birth to television.
In the late 1960s,
one man would create
a new kind of camera
to share the most astonishing
vision
with the whole of humanity,
and it all hinged
on the humble glass lens.
MAN OVER RADIO:
Okay, all flight controllers,
going to go for landing.
- Retro?
- Go.
- Guidance?
- Go.
NEIL ARMSTRONG:
Tranquility Base here.
- The Eagle has landed.
- MAN: Roger, Tranquility.
Landing Neil and Buzz
on the surface of the moon
was an amazing technological
achievement, obviously.
But I'm interested
in something else.
How in the world did NASA share
that moment live
with 600 million people,
a fifth of the population
of the planet at that point?
The answer to that question
involves a network
of innovators
and one of history's great
unsung heroes.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
For the first time,
man is about to set foot
on the moon's surface.
Electrical engineer Stan Lebar
leads the Apollo TV Lunar
Camera Project.
He's asked to create
a TV camera
that would broadcast
live pictures from the moon,
but he faces many challenges.
In the late '60s
there were small cameras,
but they all used film,
which had to be developed.
You couldn't shoot
a live image with it.
And the video cameras that were
used for live television
were huge -- they were the size
of a fridge.
So the existing technologies
were useless
on the surface of the moon.
Lebar would have to invent
something completely new.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Lebar and his team pioneer
new integrated circuitry
to help shrink the electronic.
The camera itself
is made to run
on just 7 watts of power,
the same as a single
Christmas tree light bulb.
The team add state-of-the-art
thermal shielding
to withstand extreme
temperatures
on the lunar surface,
and they invent a new mechanim
to cope with the massive change
in lighting conditions.
But at the heart of it all
is a simple glass lens.
It's fitting, really,
that this amazing material
that had extended our vision
in so many ways
would give us our first
live image
from another heavenly body.
MAN: The opening I ought
to have on the camera...
At 0239 Universal Time,
Armstrong opens the hatch
and activates the camera.
ARMSTRONG:
Roger, TV circuit breakers in...
At Mission Control,
Lebar is nervously watching
the monitor.
He later wrote about it:
"Two seconds after the turn-on
command was given,
I saw a pulse on the monitor,
and I thought,
'It looks like it's going
to work.'"
ARMSTRONG:
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
All over the planet, people
stare at their TVs
as this moment in history
plays out live
in their living rooms.
The image quality
isn't quite as good
as they had hoped,
but no one really cares.
At this defining moment,
thanks to Stan Lebar
and his team of innovators,
we watch a live transmission
from another heavenly body.
For the first time,
the whole world
simultaneously shares
a single vision.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass may have begun
as an ancient curiosity,
but through the innovation
of clear glass
and the glass lens,
it brought our lives into focus
and extended our vision.
This was the moment
humanity stopped and stared,
and it was only possible
rough a glass lens.
But the story of glass
doesn't end there.
While glass's magical properties
allowed us to bend
and focus light,
glass turned out to have another
transformative power.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Stepping back in time again
to 16th-century Italy,
a separate innovation in glass
ran parallel to the widespread
use of the lens.
Using new techniques
in metalwork,
another simple glass device
is created,
one with wide-reaching
emotional
and psychological effects.
Mirrors have been around
for thousands of years,
but they suffered from
a distorted, colored image.
But then glassmakers hit upon
a way of radically improving
their quality, and this changed
the way we see ourselves.
They work out how to coat
their crystal-clear glass
with a shiny mixture
of tin and mercury.
Today, the toxic mercury
has been replaced with silver,
but at the time, it creates
a bright, clear mirror
unlike any seen before.
Imagine being able to see
your own reflection
for the very first time.
People became obsessed
with it,
especially the artists
of the Renaissance.
The great Leonardo da Vinci
mentions mirrors
several times
in his notebooks.
Fittingly, he wrote backwards
using mirror writing:
"The mirror ought to be taken
as a guide," he writes.
"If you know how to compose
your picture,
it will also seem a natural
thing seen in a great mirror."
The bright, clear mirrors
open the artists' eyes
to new ways of understanding
their bodies
and the world around them.
Aided by the mirror,
for the first time,
artists are able to paint
incredibly detailed
paintings of themselves.
Six hundred years before the
invention of the camera phone,
Renaissance masters invent
the selfie,
and art and philosophy
during this time
takes a dramatic turn inward.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
At Cambridge University,
Professor Alan MacFarlane
has been studying
the role mirrors played
in radically changing humanit.
Well, the mirror invented
the Renaissance.
I mean, Leonardo said,
"The mirror is the master
of painters."
Leonardo himself couldn't have
painted his paintings
without the mirror,
and the invention
of modern perspective
was done on the steps
of the Duomo in Florence
by Brunelleschi using a mirror
and seeing what he had to paint
looking in the mirror,
not looking at the thing
he was painting.
Without that accuracy
and reality of seeing the world,
you then couldn't have
had modern science.
So the mirror is the basis.
It doesn't force any of these
things, but it allows them.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Outside of the painters'
studios,
ordinary people could now see
themselves for the first time,
to see what they looked like
as individuals.
The impact on society
couldn't be more profound.
When you have an artistic
transformation like that,
what are the psychological
effects?
You could see yourself
away from other people.
You began to psychologically
have yourself
as the center of the universe.
It changes politics,
for example:
a much more individualistic,
democratic idea
of us as in charge
of our destiny.
And so you thought of yourself
as the center of the universe
in relation to God,
the state, law, economics;
you were the ruler
of your own world.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass mirrors may have been
the catalyst
for our rational sense of self,
but back in the 1500s,
they were such an amazing
innovation,
some people believed
they possessed magical powers.
They even get used in
a curious religious escapade.
During a holy pilgrimage,
well-to-do pilgrims
would bring a mirror with them,
and they would try and see
a reflection of a sacred relic.
Then they would bring
the mirror back home
and boast to their friends
and relatives
that they had captured
an image of the sacred scene.
Centuries later,
the use of mirrors
to capture wondrous visions
will prove to have a much more
scientific application.
To see what it is,
I've come
to one of the most exceptional
places on our planet
Up here, the glass mirror
sits at the zenith
of human innovation
and plays a critical role
in pushing the boundaries
of science.
This is Mauna Kea
on Hawaii's Big Island.
Rising over 13,700 feet
from sea level,
it's a place of incredible
volcanic landscapes
and splendid isolation.
You really feel
as if you've left Earth.
This does not seem like
a familiar landscape at all.
It looks more like
you're on Mars.
It's incredible up here.
It really takes
your breath away.
I mean, it literally takes
your breath away.
I mean, the air is very thin,
it's very hard to breathe.
But what a vista!
I mean, I'm here because,
in a lot of ways,
this is the culmination
of the journey
that started 500 years ago.
A journey that began
when artisans first created
those clear, bright
glass mirrors.
This is really the pinnacle
of the extension
of human vision.
And I'm here to see these guys.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
These are the famous
Keck telescopes,
the largest pair of optical
telescopes on the planet.
These leviathans are helping
scientists
unravel the mysteries
of the universe.
But they're different from
those first telescopes invented
in a Dutch spectacle shop.
Telescopes had always relied on
glass lenses to do their magic,
but as the lenses got bigger,
they ran into their limitations.
Big lenses
are hard to support
and they introduce distortions
in the light,
and so to extend our vision,
we had to come up with
a new technique,
that old standby
of magicians everywhere:
the mirror.
It doesn't even look like
a telescope, right?
I mean, it looks like
a death ray or something.
It's amazing.
Most people think
about telescopes
as this tube-like thing,
you know,
that has an eye piece
on one end,
maybe a lens on the other end,
and you look through it.
In fact, virtually no research
is done in that way anymore.
If you want to learn something
about stars or galaxies
or whatever,
so many of these things
are so faint,
you need to collect
as much starlight as possible.
So this thing, as you can see,
is immense.
Each telescope has 36
giant hexagonal mirrors
that work together
as a single vast 32-foot
reflective canvas.
Incoming starlight is bounced
up to a second mirror,
then focused down
to be captured
in a set of instruments.
These huge, precisely
engineered mirrors
allow scientists to probe
and explore the universe
with their feet safely
on terra firma.
But despite their size,
on some nights
the performance
of the telescope
to capture pin-sharp images
can be less than optimal.
When light comes down
from distant stars,
as it passes through
the atmosphere,
distortions can appear
in the image,
making it blurrier than
it should be.
So the question is,
how can you fix that?
The solution once again
revolves around a mirror.
It's called adaptive optics.
In a scene straight out
of Star Wars,
laser beams are fired
into the sky
to measure the air turbulence
that can distort incoming
starlight.
Any distortion
is then corrected
using a computer controlled
flexible mirror.
So once you've figured
the turbulence out,
how do you actually
then correct the image?
So that's done with
a deformable mirror,
which is exactly what
it sounds like.
It's a mirror that
the surface of it changes shape.
- It's kind of a bendy glass.
- Yes, exactly.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah.
And when you get the end result,
how much clearer is it?
I mean, is it a really
distinct difference?
It's an astonishing difference,
actually.
It's sort of like
if you have --
if you're really nearsighted,
and so everything's all blurry,
and then you put on a pair
of glasses,
and then everything
becomes crisp.
It's like that.
So what you're basically
saying is
this is like putting
a pair of spectacles
on that giant telescope there.
More or less, yeah.
These giant telescopes
can now capture
the sharpest, clearest images
seen from Earth,
and it's all thanks to mirror.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Watching those shutters open,
it almost feels like
a sacred ritual, right?
The sun sets, and we open
our eyes slowly to the cosmos.
But of course, this is
a temple of science.
I mean, think of all
the technological innovations,
thousands of them,
that had to come together
to make this incredible
machine possible.
People flock here
from all over the world
to worship at these sentinels
to scientific innovation.
And like all truly
transformative inventions,
these telescopes are not built
from the ideas of one person,
but show the power
of group collaboration,
ideas built on ideas
that have gone before.
When human beings
first started exploring
the power of mirrors
to capture an image,
that power seemed
almost supernatural.
And standing here looking
at these telescopes,
it's not hard to have
the same feeling,
because the light traveling
from the stars
that these telescopes capture,
that light has traveled
for billions of years,
which means that when we gaze
through these telescopes,
we are looking into
the distant past.
We've not just extended
our vision into space,
we've also extended our vision
back through time.
From clear glass to lenses
to mirrors,
glass has completely
transformed
the way we see the world
around us,
but the story doesn't end
there.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass has such
diverse properties,
it provides a wide platform
for diverse innovations.
One extraordinary creation
that would go on to transform
the construction industry
came about through the most
unlikely set of circumstances.
In the 19th century,
scientists and engineers
are investigating new techniques
to harness
the amazing properties
of glass.
One of these pioneers
is a slightly crazy physicist
named Charles Vernon Boys.
He's interested in some of
glass's more subtle properties,
but unlike the other scientists,
in his experiments,
the primary tool he uses
is a crossbow.
Charles Vernon Boys
was apparently
a pretty lousy physics teache.
One of his pupils
was sci-fi author H.G. Wells,
who said Boys was, quote,
"one of the worst teachers
who ever turned his back
on a restive audience."
What Boys lacked
in teaching ability
he made up for in his gift
for designing scientific
instruments.
This would lead him
to harness
a peculiar attribute of glass.
In 1887, as part of his
physics experiments,
Boys wants to use
a fine shard of glass
to measure the effects
of delicate physical forces
on objects.
He has this idea that he can use
a thin glass fiber
as a balance arm,
but first he has to make one.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Boys builds a special crossbow
and creates lightweight bolts.
To one end of a bolt
he attaches a glass rod
with sealing wax.
The glass rod is then heated
until it softens...
and then he fires
the crossbow.
As the bolt flies across
the room,
it pulls out a thin strand
from the blob of molten glass.
These narrow glass fibers e
perfect for Boys' experiments,
but they would also be used
for a completely different
purpose.
Once again, the strange
physical properties of glass
would open up a whole new world
of possibilities.
The fact that glass
could be made
into these long, thin,
durable fibers
would have a dramatic impact
on our lives.
would be used to create
a revolutionary new material:
fiberglass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
By mixing the fibers of glass
with plastic resin,
fiberglass provides a bendy
yet strong material
to build with,
and this unleashes
a world of innovations.
Fiberglass revolutionizes
the boating industry.
It's used to make everything
from dinghies to surfboards
to multimillion-dollar yachts.
It's also shaped into
the blades of wind turbines,
driving the rise of wind powe,
which changes the face
of alternative energy.
And without fiberglass,
we wouldn't have computer
circuit boards,
which sit at the heart
of every computer
and mobile phone we use today.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Now, in the final chapter
of glass,
it's a different property
of those ultrathin glass fibers
that would radically transform
the 21st century
by helping to create
the global village.
The innovation
I'm talking about
lies mostly hidden from view.
To see it, I'm being taken
to a secret location
in the English Channel.
Out here at sea, deep below us
on the ocean floor,
information is flowing:
email, phone calls,
financial data
connecting continents
and countries.
And all of that information
flows through glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
In the mid-1960s,
the global telephone network
was failing under
increasing demand.
Engineers in the UK
wanted to replace
the old copper wire system
with a brand-new way to send
and receive phone calls.
Two British-based scientists,
Charles Kao and George Hockham,
come up with an idea
that data could be sent
as pulses of light,
but what they needed
was a vessel
for the light
to travel through.
And that's what
an American company
called Corning
comes up with:
a new type of freakishly
clear glass
that cou carry light
for miles.
It's a match made
in heaven.
This is what they came up with:
fiber optics.
They basically took
the ultra-clear glass
that Corning had developed,
and they spun it out
into these long fibers.
And they could take
pulses of light
and send them down the fibers,
encoding information
that would travel immense
distances at immense speeds
with almost no data loss.
To keep these systems
operational 24/7,
ships like this
are always on standby
to maintain and repair
the cables.
But it's not an easy job.
So what's the plan
for today?
Okay, so we've got
this fault on the cable
which has been caused
by something,
we're not quite sure what,
so we need to send the remote
operated vehicle, the ROV,
down onto the seabed
to try and locate that fault
so we can later pick it up.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The repair company
has detailed maps
of where the cables should be
lying on the sea floor,
but cables can move,
particularly if caught
by a trawler net
or a ship's anchor.
We've launched the ROV,
and now we're going to go
and track the cable
and check out where the fault
in the cable is.
So we need to use the ROV
to unbury the cable,
and then it has
manipulators on it
which can cut
and hold the cable
and then pass that line
back to the ship
so we can recover
the cable onboard.
So you can bring it back up
and do a little surgery on it,
get things going --
We've got a few things
to do on that cable
before it goes back in.
The faulty cable is recovered,
and they cut through
the outer armored sheath
to get at the fiber optics
inside.
To repair a fault,
they simply splice in
a new leng of glass fiber.
CONNOR: So we're currently
preparing the fibers
by cleaning them
in an ultrasonic bath
to get r of any contaminants,
and then following that process,
it goes into a cleaver.
So the cleaver is to give
a 90-degree cut,
so a very fine cut
to the end of the fiber.
And once it's cleaved,
it's ready to go into
the fusion splicer.
So if you'd like to carry
on the splice?
I get to try
the fusion splicing?
That sounds dangerous,
doesn't it?
Okay, so hit the "set" button,
always the green button.
Okay, "set" button, yeah.
The fusion splicer
is making the alignments
on the two fibers...
- That's it.
- That's done?
I just pressed one button.
[ Johnson chuckles ]
I could do this
all day long!
All right, now we can see
there's the fiber,
and it's perfectly fused
together there.
I did an extremely good job.
Now, this thing
is incredibly thin.
How much data
could this carry?
Well, in terms of voice calls
on a system like this,
a fiber pair -- so that
and its partner --
about 15 to 20 million
voice calls.
This tiny little thread.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The old copper cables
have all but been replaced
by fiber optics, fueling
a telecommunications industry
now worth $2.1 trillion.
What began by heating sand
to create a brand-new material
now lies at the heart
of global communications.
Think about it: every time
you send an email
or do a web search,
it ultimately takes the form
of light traveling
through glass.
This may be the most
unlikely chapter
in the history of this
amazing material.
The global village is woven
together by threads of glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Before fiber optics,
the Internet couldn't handle
large amounts of data --
it was all based on text.
But once glass opened the door
to fast and fat data sharing,
it drove a cultural shift
so great
it would define
the modern world.
A key player
in that transformation
was Caterina Fake.
In 2004, Fake's pioneering
Internet company
was developing an online
multiplayer game.
Little did she know
where it would lead.
We had built a game,
it was called Game Neverending.
The development on that failed
-- we ran out of money --
and so we had this late-night,
harebrained idea
to start a photo-sharing site.
So what we did was we took
all of our knowledge
and everything
that we understood
about how people shared
and how they interact
and all of the connections
and sociality
that happened on the platform
and applied photos.
They come up with
the first interactive
online photo sharing site:
Flickr.
So we're all familia
with social networks today
with Facebook, et cetera,
but in those days,
those were not associated
with imagery.
The magic ingredient
was photographs,
because photographs are --
they're easy to take,
they're easy to share,
they cross language barriers,
they are -- they tell a story.
So when you add a social
network to photographs,
this whole other thing happens.
Fake's innovation did more
than just give us the ability
to share images.
It changed the way we now share
our lives with others.
The assumption that ideas
or images want to be shared,
that was a profound moment.
There are a lot of reasons
for sharing.
Some of them are what I call
social peacocking,
where you're like,
"Oh, check me out,
I'm living a cool life,
I'm an impressive person."
But I think that there's
much more altruistic reasons
for sharing,
and I think that
it's very much built into,
you know, who we are as people.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Flickr popularizes the idea
of instantly sharing photos
over the Internet.
And in the last decade,
a perfect storm
of glass innovations
has come together.
By placing a glass lens in our
Internet-linked smartphones,
sharing photos has now
become second nature.
I can take a picture with my
camera phone here in Venice,
[ shutter clicks ]
upload it to Twitter,
ask my friends to pass it along,
and watch what happens.
Within seconds, my photo
of Italy is seen by people
all over the world.
An image taken through
a glass lens,
transmitted by glass fibers,
viewed on glass screens.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
This ability has once again
changed the way we see
and experience the world.
Camera phones are central
to the rise of citizen
journalism,
they've been used to instigate
political uprisings,
to document life,
drive the news headlines,
or simply to say,
"I was there."
The ability to share images,
share a vision of the world,
used to belong
almost exclusively
to the big media companies
and the newspapers
and the television networks.
But now it belongs
to all of us.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass has transformed
the way we see
and understand the world.
It has broadened our experience
of humanity.
Someone invents a new way
to manipulate light using glass,
and then someone tinkers with it
to turn it into spectacles,
and someone tinkers with that
to turn it into a telescope
or a photograph,
and all of those inventions
stack up and combine
and take new forms.
We are now able to see
in focus, to see ourselves,
to see the invisible,
to see beyond our world,
and to share our vision
with others.
All these ideas build
on each other,
and along the way, we invent
a whole new way of seeing.
In the next episode,
I explore how artificial light
came from the craziest
of sources.
They put a kid inside
the whale's head?
Right.
From a social reformer
who illuminates the plight
of the poor
to a sci-fi fan's
experiment with gases...
He decides to pass a current
of electricity through them.
illuminating our world
revolutionized how we live
in ways we would never expect.
How We Got to Now
was made possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
[ ♪♪♪ ]
To learn more about
How We Got to Now,
visit us on the web
at...
How We Got to Now
is available on DVD.
A companion book
is also available.
without glass.
We'd be living in dark,
windowless homes.
Those of us who need spectacles
would spend our lives
struggling to see the world
in focus.
There's be no microscopes,
no telescopes,
no movie cameras,
and worst of all
for me right now,
no TV screens.
It's kind of crazy that
something as ordinary as glass
has been instrumental
in the greatest revolutions
in science.
It's thanks to people like
the British physics teacher
who liked to fire crossbows...
The strange physical properties
of glass
would open up a whole new world
of possibilities.
and the electrician
who used glass
to bring a vision
to the whole of humanity.
The existing technologies
were useless
on the surface of the moon.
Neil Armstrong:
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
These are classic examples
of the kind of people
who actually made
the modern world.
People you've probably
never heard of.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
These were hobbyists,
garage inventors,
and obsessive tinkerers.
Ordinary people
doing extraordinary things.
The discovery of the
amazing properties of glass
set in motion a surprising
chain reaction of ideas.
From art and our understanding
of the universe,
to food production,
combating disease,
and global communication,
I'm going to show
how all these apparently
unconnected worlds are linked
through the inventions of
the unsung heroes of glass.
I'm Steven Johnson.
I write about ideas
and innovation,
and this is the untold story
of How We Got to Now.
How We Got to Now
was made possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass is so familiar
to us today
we might not realize
it performs
a million different roles.
It's on our laptops,
inside our phones,
on our faces, and we drive
around in it.
We have such a love affair
with glass,
we encase ourselves in it.
Over 50 million tons a year
are produced
of this kind of flat glass,
most of it for construction.
And a building like this is
basically 40 stories of glass.
It's a nightmare
to keep clean.
Oh, did you guys think
I was actually outside?
No, I've got this harness on
in case I trip and accidentally
spill my drink.
Glass is resistant to heat,
cold, water, and high winds
and can withstand
extreme pressure,
as much as that created
by 100,000 elephants.
[ elephant trumpets ]
Glass is a beautiful
and robust material.
It's the ultimate
architectural decoration.
And because of its
extraordinary properties,
we now live in these
cathedrals of glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Our lives are completely
dependent
on this wonder material,
yet it's made from one
of the most simple
and common resources
on our planet: sand.
Thousands of years ago,
our ancestors figured out
that if you heated sand
at extremely high temperatures,
it would cause
the individual grains
to fuse together,
creating glass.
Many people at the time
thought that glass
had magical properties.
Many ancient civilizations
had the ability
to make ornate glass items,
but it came out opaque,
often colored, and you could
barely see through it.
But figuring out how to make
truly clear transparent glass
would change the course
of history.
It's a story whose roots lie
in a time of extreme violence.
And it played out here:
Venice, Italy.
From the early 13th century,
a whole generation
of glassmakers arrive here,
fleeing from the battles
being fought in Turkey
during the time
of the Crusades.
While the Venetians
like the promise
of exquisite glassware,
there's a problem.
The city is overpopulated,
and its buildings
are almost entirely
made out of wood,
which turns out to be
a little bit of an issue
when your business revolves
around blazing furnaces.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
So in 1291,
the local authorities force
all the glassmakers onto
the nearby island of Murano.
While the Venetians
want the furnaces
away from their wooden homes,
the glass brings money
into the city.
[ cash register chimes ]
They're keen to keep any
trade secrets from escaping,
so the government passes
a second, more shocking law.
In a pretty Draconian turn,
the new law forbids
the glassmakers
from ever leaving Venice,
threatening them with
the death penalty if they do.
All the master glassmakers
are forced to live
and work together on Murano,
unable to leave
for fear of their lives.
This inadvertently creates
a cluster of expertise,
turning Murano into a center
of innovation.
When we think about invention,
we tend to talk about it
in terms of the single
heroic inventor --
Graham Bell with his telephone,
Edison with the phonograph
or the light bulb --
but the truth is
the most important innovations
are collaborative in nature.
Ideas are shared and discussed
and built upon.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Economists call this
information spillover.
Pack people together,
and ideas have
a natural tendency
to flow from mind to mind.
It's in this innovation
hothouse
that a maverick glassmaker
called Angelo Barovier
enters the story.
He would create
a brand-new type of glass,
and, in doing so,
change the world forever.
I've managed to track down
one of his descendants,
Rosa Barovier.
Your family has been here
an incredibly long
amount of time.
Certainly, the Baroviers were
living and working in Murano
in the beginning
of the 14th century.
Do you think there was
an advantage in clustering
all of the glassmakers
together in this small space?
Yes, every new idea
very quickly spread
all over the town.
You have this mix of competition
between the individuals;
there's a lot of sharing and
collaboration at the same time.
They all are relatives,
so they exchange
knowledge, ideas,
but in the same time,
they want to be the best.
[ tower bells chiming ]
Barovier is a tinkerer
and a perfectionist,
and like many of us, he likes
experimenting with stuff.
He doesn't want to make
the usual cloudy glass.
He wants to make
the clearest glass possible.
And so he devotes his life
to doing just that.
Before, there was
the so-called "white glass,"
but it was not pure,
so Angelo attended some lessons
of a famous philosopher.
He meant more like as
a scientist at that point.
If you're trying to be
an innovator,
you don't go to
philosophy classes.
An alchemist, eh?
So he learned the methods
of alchemists
to prepare raw materials.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Inspired by the alchemist,
Barovier starts to experiment.
Now, it might sound strange,
but glassmakers
would often add burnt plants
to the molten sand mix
to try to remove impurities.
Barovier tries out a plant
called saltwort
that he imports from Syria,
hundreds of miles away.
Barovier takes the plant,
burns it,
and purifies the ashes
to extract minerals fromt,
and when he mixethis into
the molten mix of the glass,
it creates this:
the clearest glass
the world has ever seen.
He calls it "cristallo"
because it resembles
the clearest of quartz crystals.
It's the birth
of modern glass.
It might seem like
a small improvement,
but Barovier's transparent,
colorless glass
triggers a revolution
that spreads around the world.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
[ exhaling ]
It makes greenhouses
possible.
Transparent glass houses
allowed fruit and vegetables
from the Mediterranean
to be grown in colder climates.
That revolutionizes our diet,
saving many from
malnourishment.
But there's more.
With the creation of glass
flasks and test tubes,
our understanding of chemistry
explodes,
and that drives
a revolution in science.
And then there's the production
of giant windows.
The immense glass skyscrapers
of the modern city
owe a debt of gratitude
to Barovier
and the glassmakers
of Murano.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
With ideas and techniques
passed down
through the generations,
today, Murano is still
an innovation powerhouse.
Davide Salvadore
is a 12th-generation
master glassmaker.
So how long have you
been doing this?
[ speaking in Italian ]
TRANSLATOR: I started working
in a furnace
when I was 10 years old,
so I think I've got
quite used to glass.
We love each other.
How much do you --
do you learn
from other people on Murano
who are your competitors?
Do you share techniques,
or are you pretty much
competitive with them?
I have probably learned more
in the evenings
drinking a glass of wine
with the old masters
and chatting to them
than actually working.
I love thinking about
that there's 1,000 years
of expertise
that's been built up.
The kind of craftsmanship
that's been stored here
in this space on Murano,
we get to see it at work.
How long does it take
to become a master glassmaker?
A lifetime.
And maybe it is not enough.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The creation of crystal-clear
glass
wasn't just to make fancy
chandeliers or vases.
By looking through
this magical material,
innovators would revolutionize
the way we see the world
and our understanding
of our place in the universe.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
It all starts with a cry
for help.
In the churches and monasteries
of medieval Europe,
aging clergymen
are finding it hard to read
their sacred scriptures.
It's glass that comes
to their aid.
Now, at the time,
curved chunks of glass
were known for their magical
ability to magnify the world.
People would take
these glass orbs
and run them along the page
to enlarge the words.
And it actually does work!
That's amazing.
Unfortunately,
I can't read Latin.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Depending on its shape
and thickness,
glass has a natural ability
to bend light
and magnify the world.
While these glass orbs
helped the poor-sighted clerics
with their reading,
they aren't that practical
when walking around.
What was needed
was a new innovation.
We don't know exactly
when or where it happened,
but at some point, glassmakers
started experimenting
with shaping the glass
into these small discs,
and they called them,
in Italian,
"discs for the eyes."
And they would put them
in these two frames,
and they would join
the frames together at the top,
and the result would be
the world's first spectacles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Now, while you might imagine
people would be crying out
for these new eyesight
accessories, for some time,
spectacles remain
a bit of a secret.
By the turn of the 14th century,
talk of spectacles
is all the rage in the corridors
of cathedrals and monasteries
throughout Europe,
but your average
medieval villager
hasn't even heard of this
newfangled device,
much less tried on a pair.
Life for them is still
mostly a blur,
particularly in old age.
It's one of those cases where
a technology exists,
it just isn't widely
distributed yet.
For spectacles to explode
onto the global mass market,
it would take an innovation
in a completely unrelated
field.
It may sound odd --
and bear with me here --
but the story of how spectacles
go mainstream
actually kicks off
in the vineyards and wineries
of medieval Europe.
In the mid-1400s, there's a guy
in Germany
who has what he thinks
is a really great idea.
He wants to explore
a completely new use
for an ancient piece
of technology, the grape press,
used by winemakers
for thousands of years.
Only he's got a problem:
he's a bit strapped for cash,
but he manages to persuade
some investors
to back his project,
kind of like the start-up
funding we have today.
But the idea still sounds
strange.
He wants to take a machine
designed to press grapes,
modify it a little,
and start printing bibles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
That man is
Johannes Gutenberg.
This is a great example
of someone
adapting an existing technology
to create a new innovation
in a totally different field.
Gutenberg takes
the basic architecture
of the grape press,
breaks it down,
adds in moveable typefaces,
and creates a printing machine,
one of the greatest inventions
in the history of humanity.
Suddenly we are able
to mass-produce books,
and that opens doors
to the spread of knowledge
across a wide audience,
not just of religion,
but of brand-new ideas,
from political manifestos
and scientific theories
to fiction, poetry,
and even pornography.
But Gutenberg's printing press
has an additional unexpected
consequence
that's crucial to the story
of how glass changed our lives.
As reading
becomes widespread,
people suddenly start realizing
that their vision
isn't all that good.
I mean, up until that point,
you didn't have that many times
in your life when you had
to stare at something
that close to your eyes.
But with the appearance
of books and pamphlets,
all of a sudden,
all over Europe,
people are staring
at tiny letters on a page.
The invention
of the printed book
creates a surge in demand
for spectacles.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glasses immediately improve
the lives of millions.
Literacy levels go up,
empowering people
to think for themselves.
And failing eyesight
could now be remedied,
allowing people to work
well into old age.
With the addition of bars
that hooked your spectacles
over your ears,
today glasses have become
a way of expressing
your identity.
[ laughs ]
Gai Gherardi is one
of Hollywood's most celebrated
eyewear designers.
Was there a point
in more recent times
when glasses really became
part of fashion?
The classic story is that
men don't make passes
at girls who wear glasses,
so something happened there
to bring glasses
into a comfort level
that they could somehow be
an accessory to your beauty
rather than this sort of
deterrent.
Not only they take away
all of your sex appeal,
but they would give you some!
Now it's become this space --
a sense of kind of playfulness,
of creativity where you're
expressing yourself
by the design of these glasses.
It has the ability to transform
a face more than anything.
You can have, instantly,
a little facelift,
you can be given a hairline
if you don't have hair,
you can elongate your nose
you can give yourself full lips
by putting on a pair of glasses.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Ironically, glasses today
are actually more likely
to be made of plastic,
but the iginal
glass spectacle lenses
play another significant role
in our lives
and sit at the heart
of a completely different set
of innovations.
Back in the 16th century,
something profound is about
to happen.
The convergence
of quality glass,
the printing press, books,
and a growing expertise
in making lenses
will unlock a new door
in the history of ideas.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Spectacle makers across Europe
start experimenting
with their lenses.
They stumble upon
brand-new uses
that would extend our vision
to see previously invisible
worlds.
In the 1590s, in a small town
called Middelburg
in the Netherlands,
a father and son team
of lens makers
called Hans and Zacharias
Janssen
start playing around
with their lenses.
Only instead of putting them
side by side
the way you would with
a pair of glasses,
they line them up like this.
And when you do that,
they discover
that they can see tiny objects
much larger than you would
with an unaided eye.
They invent the microscope.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Thanks to the Janssens
and the magnifying properties
of glass lenses,
we could now see down into
the world of the very small:
the discovery
of microscopic animals,
individual cells,
single-celled organisms,
and the smallest life on earth,
bacteria.
According to microbiologist
Professor Steven Ruzin,
the microscope played
a significant role
in our understanding
of disease.
Science is really driven
by our instruments,
and prior to this,
the scientists at the time
were limited
by what they can see.
Microscopes for about 100 years
were really difficult to use.
They saw the bacteria,
but they were blurry,
and they didn't know
what they were.
At this point here,
from, say, 1820s or so on,
scientists could see bacteria
really well,
and then that's when
the great study
of the cell theory, the
bacterial cause of diseases --
So effectively the ability
to see these invisible creatures
with real clarity then sets up
whole new ways
- of understanding the world.
- Exactly.
Microscopes like this
allowed the scientists
to look at bacteria
and to now start
really moving forward
in the actual science
of studying bacteria
and, of course, the bacterial
cause of diseases
and so on and so forth.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The invention of the microscope
opens the door
to the creation of antiseptics,
antibiotics, and vaccines,
completely transforming
our ability to combat disease.
But simple glass lenses
had more to offer
those curious enough
to tinker with them.
They would help extend
our vision
to see further
than ever before.
About 20 years after
the invention of the microscope,
just down the road,
in the same small Dutch town,
another spectacle maker
called Hans Lippershey
is watching kids play
with his lenses.
They claim to see
something magical in them,
and when he looks through
the lenses,
he sees faraway objects appear
to be so close
you can almost touch them.
The telescope is born.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
[ squeaking ]
So both the microscope
and telescope are invented
by two different lens makers
from the same town.
Glass now opens our eyes
to worlds beyond our world.
As inventions go,
glass is one of the most
transformative materials
ever created,
and it helps us understand
the unpredictable
yet wonderful way
that innovation works.
Someone uses a grape press
to publish bibles,
which makes people realize
that they have poor eyesight.
That in turn opens the door
for a market for lenses,
which opens the door
to a scientific revolution
that not only saves lives,
it transforms our understanding
of the universe.
In the 19th and 20th centuries,
the lens would once again
take a giant leap
in changing society.
And as with
so many innovations,
it revolved around
a simple idea:
you take a lens, you bolt it
onto a box,
and you use the lens
to focus an image
on light-sensitive material.
It's the invention
of the camera.
[ clicks ]
[ ♪♪♪ ]
With cameras, we could now
capture a moment in time.
By capturing a series
of images, we create a movie.
And with innovations
in electronics,
we could now transmit
a live image,
giving birth to television.
In the late 1960s,
one man would create
a new kind of camera
to share the most astonishing
vision
with the whole of humanity,
and it all hinged
on the humble glass lens.
MAN OVER RADIO:
Okay, all flight controllers,
going to go for landing.
- Retro?
- Go.
- Guidance?
- Go.
NEIL ARMSTRONG:
Tranquility Base here.
- The Eagle has landed.
- MAN: Roger, Tranquility.
Landing Neil and Buzz
on the surface of the moon
was an amazing technological
achievement, obviously.
But I'm interested
in something else.
How in the world did NASA share
that moment live
with 600 million people,
a fifth of the population
of the planet at that point?
The answer to that question
involves a network
of innovators
and one of history's great
unsung heroes.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
For the first time,
man is about to set foot
on the moon's surface.
Electrical engineer Stan Lebar
leads the Apollo TV Lunar
Camera Project.
He's asked to create
a TV camera
that would broadcast
live pictures from the moon,
but he faces many challenges.
In the late '60s
there were small cameras,
but they all used film,
which had to be developed.
You couldn't shoot
a live image with it.
And the video cameras that were
used for live television
were huge -- they were the size
of a fridge.
So the existing technologies
were useless
on the surface of the moon.
Lebar would have to invent
something completely new.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Lebar and his team pioneer
new integrated circuitry
to help shrink the electronic.
The camera itself
is made to run
on just 7 watts of power,
the same as a single
Christmas tree light bulb.
The team add state-of-the-art
thermal shielding
to withstand extreme
temperatures
on the lunar surface,
and they invent a new mechanim
to cope with the massive change
in lighting conditions.
But at the heart of it all
is a simple glass lens.
It's fitting, really,
that this amazing material
that had extended our vision
in so many ways
would give us our first
live image
from another heavenly body.
MAN: The opening I ought
to have on the camera...
At 0239 Universal Time,
Armstrong opens the hatch
and activates the camera.
ARMSTRONG:
Roger, TV circuit breakers in...
At Mission Control,
Lebar is nervously watching
the monitor.
He later wrote about it:
"Two seconds after the turn-on
command was given,
I saw a pulse on the monitor,
and I thought,
'It looks like it's going
to work.'"
ARMSTRONG:
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
All over the planet, people
stare at their TVs
as this moment in history
plays out live
in their living rooms.
The image quality
isn't quite as good
as they had hoped,
but no one really cares.
At this defining moment,
thanks to Stan Lebar
and his team of innovators,
we watch a live transmission
from another heavenly body.
For the first time,
the whole world
simultaneously shares
a single vision.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass may have begun
as an ancient curiosity,
but through the innovation
of clear glass
and the glass lens,
it brought our lives into focus
and extended our vision.
This was the moment
humanity stopped and stared,
and it was only possible
rough a glass lens.
But the story of glass
doesn't end there.
While glass's magical properties
allowed us to bend
and focus light,
glass turned out to have another
transformative power.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Stepping back in time again
to 16th-century Italy,
a separate innovation in glass
ran parallel to the widespread
use of the lens.
Using new techniques
in metalwork,
another simple glass device
is created,
one with wide-reaching
emotional
and psychological effects.
Mirrors have been around
for thousands of years,
but they suffered from
a distorted, colored image.
But then glassmakers hit upon
a way of radically improving
their quality, and this changed
the way we see ourselves.
They work out how to coat
their crystal-clear glass
with a shiny mixture
of tin and mercury.
Today, the toxic mercury
has been replaced with silver,
but at the time, it creates
a bright, clear mirror
unlike any seen before.
Imagine being able to see
your own reflection
for the very first time.
People became obsessed
with it,
especially the artists
of the Renaissance.
The great Leonardo da Vinci
mentions mirrors
several times
in his notebooks.
Fittingly, he wrote backwards
using mirror writing:
"The mirror ought to be taken
as a guide," he writes.
"If you know how to compose
your picture,
it will also seem a natural
thing seen in a great mirror."
The bright, clear mirrors
open the artists' eyes
to new ways of understanding
their bodies
and the world around them.
Aided by the mirror,
for the first time,
artists are able to paint
incredibly detailed
paintings of themselves.
Six hundred years before the
invention of the camera phone,
Renaissance masters invent
the selfie,
and art and philosophy
during this time
takes a dramatic turn inward.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
At Cambridge University,
Professor Alan MacFarlane
has been studying
the role mirrors played
in radically changing humanit.
Well, the mirror invented
the Renaissance.
I mean, Leonardo said,
"The mirror is the master
of painters."
Leonardo himself couldn't have
painted his paintings
without the mirror,
and the invention
of modern perspective
was done on the steps
of the Duomo in Florence
by Brunelleschi using a mirror
and seeing what he had to paint
looking in the mirror,
not looking at the thing
he was painting.
Without that accuracy
and reality of seeing the world,
you then couldn't have
had modern science.
So the mirror is the basis.
It doesn't force any of these
things, but it allows them.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Outside of the painters'
studios,
ordinary people could now see
themselves for the first time,
to see what they looked like
as individuals.
The impact on society
couldn't be more profound.
When you have an artistic
transformation like that,
what are the psychological
effects?
You could see yourself
away from other people.
You began to psychologically
have yourself
as the center of the universe.
It changes politics,
for example:
a much more individualistic,
democratic idea
of us as in charge
of our destiny.
And so you thought of yourself
as the center of the universe
in relation to God,
the state, law, economics;
you were the ruler
of your own world.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass mirrors may have been
the catalyst
for our rational sense of self,
but back in the 1500s,
they were such an amazing
innovation,
some people believed
they possessed magical powers.
They even get used in
a curious religious escapade.
During a holy pilgrimage,
well-to-do pilgrims
would bring a mirror with them,
and they would try and see
a reflection of a sacred relic.
Then they would bring
the mirror back home
and boast to their friends
and relatives
that they had captured
an image of the sacred scene.
Centuries later,
the use of mirrors
to capture wondrous visions
will prove to have a much more
scientific application.
To see what it is,
I've come
to one of the most exceptional
places on our planet
Up here, the glass mirror
sits at the zenith
of human innovation
and plays a critical role
in pushing the boundaries
of science.
This is Mauna Kea
on Hawaii's Big Island.
Rising over 13,700 feet
from sea level,
it's a place of incredible
volcanic landscapes
and splendid isolation.
You really feel
as if you've left Earth.
This does not seem like
a familiar landscape at all.
It looks more like
you're on Mars.
It's incredible up here.
It really takes
your breath away.
I mean, it literally takes
your breath away.
I mean, the air is very thin,
it's very hard to breathe.
But what a vista!
I mean, I'm here because,
in a lot of ways,
this is the culmination
of the journey
that started 500 years ago.
A journey that began
when artisans first created
those clear, bright
glass mirrors.
This is really the pinnacle
of the extension
of human vision.
And I'm here to see these guys.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
These are the famous
Keck telescopes,
the largest pair of optical
telescopes on the planet.
These leviathans are helping
scientists
unravel the mysteries
of the universe.
But they're different from
those first telescopes invented
in a Dutch spectacle shop.
Telescopes had always relied on
glass lenses to do their magic,
but as the lenses got bigger,
they ran into their limitations.
Big lenses
are hard to support
and they introduce distortions
in the light,
and so to extend our vision,
we had to come up with
a new technique,
that old standby
of magicians everywhere:
the mirror.
It doesn't even look like
a telescope, right?
I mean, it looks like
a death ray or something.
It's amazing.
Most people think
about telescopes
as this tube-like thing,
you know,
that has an eye piece
on one end,
maybe a lens on the other end,
and you look through it.
In fact, virtually no research
is done in that way anymore.
If you want to learn something
about stars or galaxies
or whatever,
so many of these things
are so faint,
you need to collect
as much starlight as possible.
So this thing, as you can see,
is immense.
Each telescope has 36
giant hexagonal mirrors
that work together
as a single vast 32-foot
reflective canvas.
Incoming starlight is bounced
up to a second mirror,
then focused down
to be captured
in a set of instruments.
These huge, precisely
engineered mirrors
allow scientists to probe
and explore the universe
with their feet safely
on terra firma.
But despite their size,
on some nights
the performance
of the telescope
to capture pin-sharp images
can be less than optimal.
When light comes down
from distant stars,
as it passes through
the atmosphere,
distortions can appear
in the image,
making it blurrier than
it should be.
So the question is,
how can you fix that?
The solution once again
revolves around a mirror.
It's called adaptive optics.
In a scene straight out
of Star Wars,
laser beams are fired
into the sky
to measure the air turbulence
that can distort incoming
starlight.
Any distortion
is then corrected
using a computer controlled
flexible mirror.
So once you've figured
the turbulence out,
how do you actually
then correct the image?
So that's done with
a deformable mirror,
which is exactly what
it sounds like.
It's a mirror that
the surface of it changes shape.
- It's kind of a bendy glass.
- Yes, exactly.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah.
And when you get the end result,
how much clearer is it?
I mean, is it a really
distinct difference?
It's an astonishing difference,
actually.
It's sort of like
if you have --
if you're really nearsighted,
and so everything's all blurry,
and then you put on a pair
of glasses,
and then everything
becomes crisp.
It's like that.
So what you're basically
saying is
this is like putting
a pair of spectacles
on that giant telescope there.
More or less, yeah.
These giant telescopes
can now capture
the sharpest, clearest images
seen from Earth,
and it's all thanks to mirror.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Watching those shutters open,
it almost feels like
a sacred ritual, right?
The sun sets, and we open
our eyes slowly to the cosmos.
But of course, this is
a temple of science.
I mean, think of all
the technological innovations,
thousands of them,
that had to come together
to make this incredible
machine possible.
People flock here
from all over the world
to worship at these sentinels
to scientific innovation.
And like all truly
transformative inventions,
these telescopes are not built
from the ideas of one person,
but show the power
of group collaboration,
ideas built on ideas
that have gone before.
When human beings
first started exploring
the power of mirrors
to capture an image,
that power seemed
almost supernatural.
And standing here looking
at these telescopes,
it's not hard to have
the same feeling,
because the light traveling
from the stars
that these telescopes capture,
that light has traveled
for billions of years,
which means that when we gaze
through these telescopes,
we are looking into
the distant past.
We've not just extended
our vision into space,
we've also extended our vision
back through time.
From clear glass to lenses
to mirrors,
glass has completely
transformed
the way we see the world
around us,
but the story doesn't end
there.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass has such
diverse properties,
it provides a wide platform
for diverse innovations.
One extraordinary creation
that would go on to transform
the construction industry
came about through the most
unlikely set of circumstances.
In the 19th century,
scientists and engineers
are investigating new techniques
to harness
the amazing properties
of glass.
One of these pioneers
is a slightly crazy physicist
named Charles Vernon Boys.
He's interested in some of
glass's more subtle properties,
but unlike the other scientists,
in his experiments,
the primary tool he uses
is a crossbow.
Charles Vernon Boys
was apparently
a pretty lousy physics teache.
One of his pupils
was sci-fi author H.G. Wells,
who said Boys was, quote,
"one of the worst teachers
who ever turned his back
on a restive audience."
What Boys lacked
in teaching ability
he made up for in his gift
for designing scientific
instruments.
This would lead him
to harness
a peculiar attribute of glass.
In 1887, as part of his
physics experiments,
Boys wants to use
a fine shard of glass
to measure the effects
of delicate physical forces
on objects.
He has this idea that he can use
a thin glass fiber
as a balance arm,
but first he has to make one.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Boys builds a special crossbow
and creates lightweight bolts.
To one end of a bolt
he attaches a glass rod
with sealing wax.
The glass rod is then heated
until it softens...
and then he fires
the crossbow.
As the bolt flies across
the room,
it pulls out a thin strand
from the blob of molten glass.
These narrow glass fibers e
perfect for Boys' experiments,
but they would also be used
for a completely different
purpose.
Once again, the strange
physical properties of glass
would open up a whole new world
of possibilities.
The fact that glass
could be made
into these long, thin,
durable fibers
would have a dramatic impact
on our lives.
would be used to create
a revolutionary new material:
fiberglass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
By mixing the fibers of glass
with plastic resin,
fiberglass provides a bendy
yet strong material
to build with,
and this unleashes
a world of innovations.
Fiberglass revolutionizes
the boating industry.
It's used to make everything
from dinghies to surfboards
to multimillion-dollar yachts.
It's also shaped into
the blades of wind turbines,
driving the rise of wind powe,
which changes the face
of alternative energy.
And without fiberglass,
we wouldn't have computer
circuit boards,
which sit at the heart
of every computer
and mobile phone we use today.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Now, in the final chapter
of glass,
it's a different property
of those ultrathin glass fibers
that would radically transform
the 21st century
by helping to create
the global village.
The innovation
I'm talking about
lies mostly hidden from view.
To see it, I'm being taken
to a secret location
in the English Channel.
Out here at sea, deep below us
on the ocean floor,
information is flowing:
email, phone calls,
financial data
connecting continents
and countries.
And all of that information
flows through glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
In the mid-1960s,
the global telephone network
was failing under
increasing demand.
Engineers in the UK
wanted to replace
the old copper wire system
with a brand-new way to send
and receive phone calls.
Two British-based scientists,
Charles Kao and George Hockham,
come up with an idea
that data could be sent
as pulses of light,
but what they needed
was a vessel
for the light
to travel through.
And that's what
an American company
called Corning
comes up with:
a new type of freakishly
clear glass
that cou carry light
for miles.
It's a match made
in heaven.
This is what they came up with:
fiber optics.
They basically took
the ultra-clear glass
that Corning had developed,
and they spun it out
into these long fibers.
And they could take
pulses of light
and send them down the fibers,
encoding information
that would travel immense
distances at immense speeds
with almost no data loss.
To keep these systems
operational 24/7,
ships like this
are always on standby
to maintain and repair
the cables.
But it's not an easy job.
So what's the plan
for today?
Okay, so we've got
this fault on the cable
which has been caused
by something,
we're not quite sure what,
so we need to send the remote
operated vehicle, the ROV,
down onto the seabed
to try and locate that fault
so we can later pick it up.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The repair company
has detailed maps
of where the cables should be
lying on the sea floor,
but cables can move,
particularly if caught
by a trawler net
or a ship's anchor.
We've launched the ROV,
and now we're going to go
and track the cable
and check out where the fault
in the cable is.
So we need to use the ROV
to unbury the cable,
and then it has
manipulators on it
which can cut
and hold the cable
and then pass that line
back to the ship
so we can recover
the cable onboard.
So you can bring it back up
and do a little surgery on it,
get things going --
We've got a few things
to do on that cable
before it goes back in.
The faulty cable is recovered,
and they cut through
the outer armored sheath
to get at the fiber optics
inside.
To repair a fault,
they simply splice in
a new leng of glass fiber.
CONNOR: So we're currently
preparing the fibers
by cleaning them
in an ultrasonic bath
to get r of any contaminants,
and then following that process,
it goes into a cleaver.
So the cleaver is to give
a 90-degree cut,
so a very fine cut
to the end of the fiber.
And once it's cleaved,
it's ready to go into
the fusion splicer.
So if you'd like to carry
on the splice?
I get to try
the fusion splicing?
That sounds dangerous,
doesn't it?
Okay, so hit the "set" button,
always the green button.
Okay, "set" button, yeah.
The fusion splicer
is making the alignments
on the two fibers...
- That's it.
- That's done?
I just pressed one button.
[ Johnson chuckles ]
I could do this
all day long!
All right, now we can see
there's the fiber,
and it's perfectly fused
together there.
I did an extremely good job.
Now, this thing
is incredibly thin.
How much data
could this carry?
Well, in terms of voice calls
on a system like this,
a fiber pair -- so that
and its partner --
about 15 to 20 million
voice calls.
This tiny little thread.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
The old copper cables
have all but been replaced
by fiber optics, fueling
a telecommunications industry
now worth $2.1 trillion.
What began by heating sand
to create a brand-new material
now lies at the heart
of global communications.
Think about it: every time
you send an email
or do a web search,
it ultimately takes the form
of light traveling
through glass.
This may be the most
unlikely chapter
in the history of this
amazing material.
The global village is woven
together by threads of glass.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Before fiber optics,
the Internet couldn't handle
large amounts of data --
it was all based on text.
But once glass opened the door
to fast and fat data sharing,
it drove a cultural shift
so great
it would define
the modern world.
A key player
in that transformation
was Caterina Fake.
In 2004, Fake's pioneering
Internet company
was developing an online
multiplayer game.
Little did she know
where it would lead.
We had built a game,
it was called Game Neverending.
The development on that failed
-- we ran out of money --
and so we had this late-night,
harebrained idea
to start a photo-sharing site.
So what we did was we took
all of our knowledge
and everything
that we understood
about how people shared
and how they interact
and all of the connections
and sociality
that happened on the platform
and applied photos.
They come up with
the first interactive
online photo sharing site:
Flickr.
So we're all familia
with social networks today
with Facebook, et cetera,
but in those days,
those were not associated
with imagery.
The magic ingredient
was photographs,
because photographs are --
they're easy to take,
they're easy to share,
they cross language barriers,
they are -- they tell a story.
So when you add a social
network to photographs,
this whole other thing happens.
Fake's innovation did more
than just give us the ability
to share images.
It changed the way we now share
our lives with others.
The assumption that ideas
or images want to be shared,
that was a profound moment.
There are a lot of reasons
for sharing.
Some of them are what I call
social peacocking,
where you're like,
"Oh, check me out,
I'm living a cool life,
I'm an impressive person."
But I think that there's
much more altruistic reasons
for sharing,
and I think that
it's very much built into,
you know, who we are as people.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Flickr popularizes the idea
of instantly sharing photos
over the Internet.
And in the last decade,
a perfect storm
of glass innovations
has come together.
By placing a glass lens in our
Internet-linked smartphones,
sharing photos has now
become second nature.
I can take a picture with my
camera phone here in Venice,
[ shutter clicks ]
upload it to Twitter,
ask my friends to pass it along,
and watch what happens.
Within seconds, my photo
of Italy is seen by people
all over the world.
An image taken through
a glass lens,
transmitted by glass fibers,
viewed on glass screens.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
This ability has once again
changed the way we see
and experience the world.
Camera phones are central
to the rise of citizen
journalism,
they've been used to instigate
political uprisings,
to document life,
drive the news headlines,
or simply to say,
"I was there."
The ability to share images,
share a vision of the world,
used to belong
almost exclusively
to the big media companies
and the newspapers
and the television networks.
But now it belongs
to all of us.
[ ♪♪♪ ]
Glass has transformed
the way we see
and understand the world.
It has broadened our experience
of humanity.
Someone invents a new way
to manipulate light using glass,
and then someone tinkers with it
to turn it into spectacles,
and someone tinkers with that
to turn it into a telescope
or a photograph,
and all of those inventions
stack up and combine
and take new forms.
We are now able to see
in focus, to see ourselves,
to see the invisible,
to see beyond our world,
and to share our vision
with others.
All these ideas build
on each other,
and along the way, we invent
a whole new way of seeing.
In the next episode,
I explore how artificial light
came from the craziest
of sources.
They put a kid inside
the whale's head?
Right.
From a social reformer
who illuminates the plight
of the poor
to a sci-fi fan's
experiment with gases...
He decides to pass a current
of electricity through them.
illuminating our world
revolutionized how we live
in ways we would never expect.
How We Got to Now
was made possible in part by
the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
[ ♪♪♪ ]
To learn more about
How We Got to Now,
visit us on the web
at...
How We Got to Now
is available on DVD.
A companion book
is also available.