Strangest Things (2021–2022): Season 1, Episode 9 - The Fake, the Spy and the Steam Powered Brain - full transcript

[narrator] A freakish skull,
half human and half ape.

Could it be
Darwin's missing link?

This was a, kind of, physical,
anthropological Holy Grail.

[narrator] Did this
tiny piece of metal

change the course
of the Cold War?

The Americans had no idea
what they were looking at.

They had no idea how it worked.

[narrator] And could a steam
powered maths engine actually work?

He thinks, "Maybe I can make
steam do the job the brains do."

Nobody else had come
even close to that thought.

[narrator] These are
the most remarkable



and mysterious objects on Earth,

hidden away in museums,
laboratories and storage rooms.

Now, new research and technology

can get under their skin
like never before.

We can rebuild them,
pull them apart

and zoom in
to reveal the unbelievable,

the ancient
and the truly bizarre.

These are
the world's strangest things.

At the beginning
of the 20th century,

this strange-looking skull

is the most
sensational discovery

in the archaeological world,

but it falls victim
to a shocking controversy.

For 100 years,
it's been locked away



at the Natural History Museum
in London.

Now, using cutting edge
digital technology,

we can examine it
in forensic detail.

This is Piltdown man,

a human ancestor unlike
anything ever discovered.

With a skull like ours,

but with a huge jaw
and teeth of an ape.

When it's revealed in 1912,

it is exactly what scientists
are searching for,

solid evidence for Darwin's
controversial theory on human evolution.

This was concrete proof of a
connection between apes and humans.

A perfect missing link.

[narrator] But look much closer,

and there's something not
quite right about this find.

The molar teeth
in the ape-like jaw

have microscopic abrasion marks

not seen on any other fossil.

And hidden in the cavities
around the skull

is some kind of
artificial material.

All this evidence points
to one scandalous conclusion.

Piltdown man
was not the missing link,

it was a forgery.

[narrator] Since the fake was uncovered,
there have been many suspects,

but the true identity of the
forger has eluded experts.

Now, new research
can definitively name him.

Who is he?

What is the truth behind
this strange hybrid skull?

And how does it fool the world
for almost half a century?

This story of scientific fraud begins
in the English county of Sussex,

in a quiet village
called Piltdown.

The discoverer of Piltdown man
was Charles Dawson,

a solicitor from around
Hastings, in the south of England.

[narrator] Dawson is an amateur
archaeologist with a stellar track record

for unearthing
unusual artefacts.

It's earned him the nickname
the Wizard of Sussex.

In a gravel pit in Piltdown,
he uncovers his greatest find.

In 1912, Dawson writes
to Arthur Smith Woodward,

at the Natural
History Museum in London,

explaining that he had found
a series of interesting flints

and a fragment of a human skull.

[narrator] Smith Woodward is a big
wheel in the world of paleontology.

He knows the discovery
of a genuine human skull

in this context
would be big news.

[MacDonald] The gravel was
thought to be half a million years old.

If this was true, then
these bones, if human,

would be the oldest yet known

not only in England
but in the world.

[narrator] Smith Woodward
heads to Piltdown,

and over the following months,

he and Dawson
appear to hit the jackpot.

They find more skull
fragments, a fragment of jaw bone

and a canine.

[narrator] The dark brown
staining of all the finds

seems to confirm that
they've been buried

in the ground together
for a very long time.

Smith Woodward hurries
back to London with the finds.

[Elliot] He's got this collection
of fragments of skull and jaw.

And he embarks on putting these pieces
back together to completing this puzzle

and reconstructing what this
skull and jaw might have looked like.

[narrator] He fills in the gaps
between the fossil fragments

using imagination
and plaster molds.

What he ends up with is unlike any
ancient human remains ever discovered.

The rear of the skull looked very
much like a modern human skull,

whereas the jaw looked like
it belonged to an ape.

[narrator] This find sends
shockwaves through the scientific world.

And it's all because of
this man, Charles Darwin.

He claims humans and apes are
close relatives with a common ancestor.

But 50 years after Darwin
publishes his theory,

there's very little evidence
to back it up.

That's when Charles Dawson
and Piltdown man

ride to the rescue of science.

Half man, half ape was exactly
what scholars were looking for

to substantiate Darwin's theory.

[narrator] Piltdown man is the
smoking gun that proves Darwin right.

Unfortunately, there's one
very big problem with this.

The Piltdown man
could not be the missing link.

It was a forgery.

[narrator] What gives this
audaciously fake skull away?

While Piltdown man
is locked away

in the Natural History Museum,

archeologists begin turning up ancient
humans that looked nothing like it.

It was becoming apparent
that the ancestors of humanity

had started out
small brained and upright

rather than large brained.

This is the complete opposite
of Piltdown man.

[narrator] So, behind the scenes
at the Natural History Museum,

alarm bells are ringing.

In 1949, they date Piltdown man

using the best
available techniques.

The first results are alarming.

This seemed to show
that these remains

were certainly no older
than 50,000 years.

[narrator]
Fifty thousand years ago,

modern humans have already
been around for a very long time.

Piltdown man
cannot be the missing link.

Maybe it was all
just a simple mistake.

In 1953, the skull is retested
using a new technology.

Further dating, as radiocarbon
dating became possible,

showed that we were looking
at a medieval human skull

coupled with a 500-year-old
orangutan jaw fragment.

[narrator]
There is no time in history

when orangutans
have been native to Britain.

This isn't simply an error,
it's a deliberate fake.

How has the forger got
away with it for four decades?

How is this skull of an
ancient human faked so well

that it fools the expert world?

This was a carefully planned,
if somewhat clumsy, forgery.

[narrator] One thing
that convinces experts

is the brown coloring
of the buried finds.

In real fossils, color this dark

results from
very long term exposure

to minerals in the ground water.

But under chemical analysis,
Piltdown man's coloring falls apart.

The forger had stained
all of the bone remains

as well
as associated stone tools

and bone implements
with sodium dichromate,

a solution
which produced a brown stain,

making them look associated
with one another.

[narrator] And there are
other devious tricks.

When bones fossilize,

they mineralize and they
become heavier, stone like.

This was a problem
which confronted the forger,

how to make the bones heavier?

[narrator] The Piltdown bones

are too young to be
fossilized, yet they are heavy.

Detailed examination reveals
something extraordinary.

[MacDonald] The forger used
natural crevices in the bones

to hide away bits of stone,
to give them greater weight.

[narrator] The deeper
they dig, the worse it gets.

The canine tooth is definitely
from an orangutan,

yet the molars appear
remarkably human.

But extreme magnification

reveals rows
of tiny linear abrasions.

Under microscopic examination, it was
clear that the molars had been filed down

in order to make them look
more human.

[narrator] And there are
some glaring mistakes.

[Elliot] When the
forger makes the fake,

he uses putty to seal in stones

into the jaw in teeth cavities
to give it this weight.

But it would have been quite
obvious to people looking at those...

Those cavities
had been sealed in that way.

[narrator] Why isn't this obvious
evidence of fraud spotted by experts?

It's all because Piltdown man is
considered too important to be handled.

What happens is a series
of casts are produced.

And this is really crucial
because the casting process

masks all the differences
in materials,

but also many of the
differences in textures

that would have given
some of those signs of forgery

away to researchers
looking at them.

[narrator] And the forger has
one more vital tool in his arsenal...

national pride.

[MacDonald]
If we go back to 1912,

there had not yet been any human
fossil finds of importance in Britain.

[narrator] Meanwhile, the French
have found Cro-Magnon man,

and the Germans have Neanderthals
and Homo heidelbergensis.

One French archaeologist

apparently describes
the British as pebble hunters.

Piltdown man puts those
continentals right in their place.

This is exactly what people want
to find, in exactly the right place,

being made by exactly
the right kinds of people

for the British
academic establishment.

I think that plays a big role
into how readily

the fake is accepted
by British academics.

[narrator] Which leaves just
one question, "Who did it?"

Now, after 100 years,

new research can finally
uncover the forger's identity.

Suspicion has fallen
on several individuals,

the celebrated academic, the
charismatic lawyer and the famous author.

It's straight out of the pages of
an Agatha Christie whodunnit,

or perhaps
a Sherlock Holmes novel,

which leads rather neatly
to the first possibility.

One of the suspects for the
forger was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

the author of
the Sherlock Holmes stories.

He was a man who had
an interest in science,

and, in fact, he belonged to the same
archaeological society as Dawson himself.

And he sometimes
played golf in Piltdown.

[narrator]
But what is his motive?

He had become increasingly
involved in spiritualism,

and was an object of mockery
by the scientific community.

[narrator] Spiritualists claim they
can communicate with the dead.

But by 1912,

spiritualism has been
widely debunked

and ridiculed by scientists.

[Ball] So he developed something

of a, kind of, defensive
attitude against science.

And the theory was

that this might have been his
way of getting his own back.

[narrator] But there's
one big hole in the theory.

He never tells anyone.

If Conan Doyle had done this

to embarrass the paleo
anthropological community,

he would have sprung the
trap in his lifetime, and he didn't.

So I think this alone allows us to
eliminate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[narrator] Another obvious
suspect is Arthur Smith Woodward,

the paleontologist
who pieces the skull together.

He had the expertise
to create a hoax of this sort,

he had access to the materials.

[MacDonald] Someone who
stood to gain a great deal,

in terms of their own career,
from such a famous discovery.

[narrator] But if the
forgery is discovered,

it would destroy his hard won
international reputation.

He had everything to lose.

I, personally,
I just can't see it.

[narrator] Last but most definitely
not least, Charles Dawson.

He was the only one who ever
claimed to make these particular finds.

Um, he clearly had ambitions.

And after he died,
these finds just stopped.

[narrator] For a century, suspicion
has shifted from one suspect to another.

Now, the latest research
has finally cracked the case.

The key is another artefact hidden away in
a back room at the Natural History Museum.

Piltdown man two.

Dawson has this other site,
Piltdown two,

which is about a mile away
from the original Piltdown site.

And at that site,
he makes a discovery,

another Homininae cranium

with exactly
the same kinds of staining

observed at Piltdown one.

[narrator] In 2016,
a new study throws

every modern
scientific technique available

at both Piltdown specimens.

The results are conclusive.

The teeth from Piltdown two
had come from exactly

the same orangutan
as Piltdown one.

Also, there's a similar technique
in terms of sealing stones

into the jaw using putty,
and that is, chemically,

the same kind of putty
that was used at Piltdown one.

[narrator] So whoever
created Piltdown man

must have created
Piltdown man two as well.

Of all the suspects, only one of
them knew about Piltdown two,

and that's Charles Dawson.

[narrator] Charles Dawson
faked Piltdown man.

And a new examination of his
other astonishing finds,

the ones that earned him
the title Wizard of Sussex,

is the final nail in his coffin.

Almost every single one
is a fake.

It turns out Dawson is already
an old hand at forgery

long before
Piltdown man turns up.

After more than a century,

the case of the Piltdown man
finally closed.

The United Nations
Security Council, May 1960.

The world gets its first sight

of an object that has sent
shockwaves

through the shady world
of American espionage.

A Soviet bug unlike
anything ever seen before.

It's been listening in to the US
Ambassador's office in Moscow.

Imagine if during the most
dangerous period

of your country's history,

your most dangerous enemy

was listening
to your every word.

[narrator] What terrifies American
spies is that it's evaded detection

for seven years.

[Auerbach] The Americans knew
what to expect from the Soviets.

The issue was they
were dealing with a device

that they never expected
and had no means of detecting.

[narrator] And they just
can't figure it out.

The Americans had no idea
what they were looking at,

they had no idea how it worked.

It was so bizarre to them that
they simply called it The Thing.

[narrator] If they can't make
sense of it, the Russians can just do

do the same thing
over and over again.

Now, to unlock its secrets,
we've brought it back.

A carved wooden plaque
of the Great American Seal.

Inside, nothing but a
few pieces of metal work.

It was just a metal cylinder with
a little bit of metal attached to it.

It looks completely innocuous.

That was all there was to it.

[narrator] An electronic
listening bug with no electronics.

It hasn't got batteries,
it hasn't got wires,

it doesn't have a huge radio
antenna dangling at the back.

It's, basically,
completely undetectable.

[narrator] How does it work?

Who is the Soviet genius
who dreams it up?

Why did it baffle American
experts for so long?

The Thing,

a Soviet listening device made
from a few pieces of bent metal.

It eavesdrops
on top secret conversations

of the US Ambassador
to Moscow for seven years.

How does it escape detection
for so long?

After the end of World War II,

spying becomes an essential tool

in the new Cold War battle

between Russia
and its former ally, America.

Spaso House, the US
Ambassador's residence in Moscow,

is an obvious Soviet target.

So 1945, the US Ambassador

is given
a ceremonial presentation

of a wooden version of the
Great Seal of the United States,

and it's delivered to him
by the Young Pioneers,

this is the Soviet equivalent
of the Boy Scouts.

What the ambassador
didn't realize

is that the bug
was already in it.

[narrator] It's hung
proudly on the wall

in the ambassador's
private office.

The US has been duped,
and it doesn't even know it.

[Auerbach]
This is not cloak and dagger.

This is not a man in a fedora
and a trench coat.

The most powerful country
in the world

was hoodwinked by the
equivalent of a bunch of Boy Scouts.

[narrator] How did
the Americans miss it?

Everything entering the residence
gets a detailed security check,

but The Thing is not spotted.

It passed all the security
screening in the American Embassy

because they X-rayed it, and
there was just nothing there.

It really is
beautifully innocuous.

[narrator] After years
eavesdropping US secrets,

radio transmissions from The
Thing are detected purely by chance.

The way that
this was discovered...

Some of that information
is still classified.

It was either an American
or a British radio operator

heard something
that was coming out

of the ambassador's office
in Spaso House.

[narrator] These radio transmissions
can only mean one thing,

a bug.

Once they know it's there,
it doesn't take long to find.

But at this point, it's already
been in there for seven years.

[narrator] How has
The Thing evaded

the most technologically
sophisticated country on Earth?

When this carved Seal
was inspected,

within it was found a
very innocuous little object.

So it was basically
just a metal cylinder

with a little bit of metal
attached to it.

There was almost literally...
There was nothing to it.

[narrator] No one
can make sense of it.

For the life of them, they
can't figure out how it works.

It doesn't conform to any conventional
specifications for a listening device.

[narrator] The inexplicable
bug finally ends up

on the desk of a technical
expert at British Intelligence.

[Auerbach] So they send it
to Peter Wright at MI5,

and his job is to figure out
how this bug actually works.

[narrator] It takes Wright ten
weeks to crack The Thing's secret.

What he finds
is a work of genius.

The principle behind The Thing

is a phenomenon
called resonance.

[narrator] One of the best
known examples of resonance

is a wine glass
partially filled with water.

[Steele] If you wet your finger,

then move it slowly around
the rim of a wine glass,

you're causing it
to vibrate very slightly,

and you can play a musical note.

[narrator]
This resonance effect happens

because the length
of that particular sound wave

fits into the space
above the liquid.

A metal container has exactly
the same effect on radio waves

that a wine glass does
on sound waves,

and that is the secret
of The Thing.

[Steele] The Thing
is a tiny cylinder of metal,

and that cylinder
has a particular

resonant frequency
for radio waves.

So, if you shine waves at it

at exactly that frequency,

it will send that same
frequency back at you.

[narrator] Turning the bug on
is child's play for the Soviets.

[Ball] Outside
the ambassador's residence,

there was a van
that was broadcasting

an intense radio
frequency beam into the room,

and that radio frequency signal

would set the cavity vibrating.

[Steele] The genius was then to
put a tiny, thin layer of silver foil

on one end of the cylinder.

[narrator] Sound from
speech in the room

makes the foil move in and out,

very slightly changing the size
of the space inside the cylinder,

and that changes the radio
waves re-transmitted by it.

[Ball] So, really,
the people in the van

just had to put on
a pair of headphones

and listen
with a radio receiver,

and they could hear what
was going on inside the room.

[narrator] No wonder it takes
so many years to spot the bug.

If you're not transmitting
radio waves to it,

it does absolutely nothing.
It is completely undetectable.

Unless you happen
to catch them in the act,

when they're outside in their
van, transmitting radio waves.

Then you're just not
going to find anything.

[narrator] The Thing
is a work of genius.

But the mastermind behind it
is not some shadowy spy.

In fact, he's world famous.

Not for espionage,
but, incredibly,

for pop music and horror movies.

Who on earth is he?

The Thing is the ultimate
undetectable bug.

Who had the genius to come up
with such a perfect device?

[Auerbach] He was a
kind of scientific superstar.

Hey was a physicist by training,

he was from
a family of musicians,

but his real genius
was electronics.

[narrator] His name is
Lev Sergeyevich Termen,

better known in the West
as Leon Theremin.

And his claim to fame
up to that point

was he'd invented something
called the ether phone.

[narrator] The ether phone is the world's
first electronic musical instrument.

It's now better known
simply as the Theremin.

And it's an incredibly
beautiful thing.

A sort of wailing,
plaintive, wonderful sound.

[narrator] It's played by two
hands waved in the air above it.

This was such a marvelous
device that the Soviet government

actually had him going on tour
to show off Soviet technology.

Theremin goes to Paris,
London, New York

to show off
this marvelous new object.

[narrator] By the time Theremin
returns to Russia in 1938,

it's a very different place.

[Auerbach] Stalin is the dictator
in charge of the Soviet Union.

His secret police
are everywhere.

[narrator] Because of his time
in the West,

Theremin is falsely accused
of being a counter revolutionary

and sentenced to eight years
hard labor in a gulag.

But he catches a lucky break.

Oddly enough, the man who saves
Theremin from his fate in the gulag

is absolutely
one of the most dangerous,

frightening people in the
Soviet government, Beria.

[narrator]
Lavrentiy Beria is head

of the Soviet secret police,
the KGB.

He offers Theremin a deal,
freedom from the gulag

in exchange
for an undetectable bug.

Theremin delivers in spades.

His genius invention, The Thing,

eavesdrops on seven years
of US intelligence.

The Soviets knew
they were going to get

amazing information
out of this bug,

but how could they have predicted
how much would be going on

in that seven years,
from '45 to '52?

[narrator] In those seven years,

America drops
two atom bombs on Japan.

Post-war Europe is carved up
between Russia and the West.

NATO is formed.

The Berlin Airlift happens.

The US goes to war in Korea.

And The Thing listens to it all.

A lot of the information that was
gained from Theremin's Thing,

it's been worked into
Soviet policies and decisions,

but we'll never be able to trace it
back to exactly where it came from.

[narrator] But the story of The
Thing does not end with its discovery.

Russia may be spying on America,

but America has been busy
returning the favor.

They create the U-2 spy plane,

the most technologically
sophisticated aircraft in the world.

It photographs Russia
whilst flying so high,

Russia can't hit it
with their missiles.

But in 1960, it all goes wrong.

It turns out that the Soviets
do have a weapon

that can reach
the U-2 spy plane,

and they probably
shoot one down.

[narrator] Russia accuses
the US of illegal spying.

US Ambassador to the UN,
Henry Cabot Lodge,

faces humiliation.

He falls back on a classic
political defense,

"They started it."

"Okay, yes,
we were spying on them.

But you know what?
They were spying on us."

And that's when
he brings out The Thing.

[Auerbach] I can only imagine that
Theremin was incredibly flattered

because on the one hand you
have the most sophisticated piece

of aerospace engineering
ever developed until this time.

And then, on the other hand,
you have a bit of metal.

I mean, that's a great
little comparison to have

if you're the guy
that invented the second one.

[narrator]
Despite The Thing's fame,

its connection to Theremin
is obscured by the Soviets.

It is decades before his name
is finally connected

to one of the most bizarre
spy gadgets in history,

The Thing.

[narrator] Locked away in a store
room at London Science Museum

is a genuine 19th century
miracle machine,

a 180-year-old mechanical engine

that solves complex
mathematical equations.

Built more than 100 years
before the first electronic computer,

it was the only one
of its kind in the world.

It's hard now with all
our modern computers

to think about
just how ridiculous an idea

this must have seemed
at the time.

[narrator] Now, brought out
of the shadows

and painstakingly reconstructed,

this is Difference Engine No. 1.

It's a problem solving machine.

[narrator] Standing 28 inches
high and 24 inches wide,

two thousand precision parts
of bronze, steel and iron.

Its cogs and levers are
designed to solve equations

previously only managed
by thinking human minds.

It's meant to transform
science and engineering

by eliminating
lethal calculation errors.

Nothing like it
has ever been seen before.

It was utterly out of the blue

and seemingly impossible.

[narrator] It is designed
to change the world.

Who invents it?
How does it work?

And how exactly is this machine
going to start a revolution?

Built in 1832,

this bizarre contraption
is a calculation engine,

and it's the only one
of its kind in the world.

But why is it created?

[Ruth Goodman] The early
19th century is an exceedingly

exciting time within Britain.

Steam power is on the rise.

People are beginning to see
how it can be exploited.

Now, instead of human labor, you
would use some kind of mechanized labor

to do weaving, to do
construction, to do mining.

So that was really the notion,

that you were replacing
a human with the machine.

[narrator] But this revolution
depends increasingly on mathematics.

And in an age before
electronic calculators,

these sums rely on printed
mathematical tables to assist them.

All of the calculations that
went into mathematical tables

in the 19th century
were done by computers,

but not computers
as we understand them today.

By human computers,
people who'd sit down

and do all the mathematics
longhand.

[narrator] In 1820,

The Royal Astronomical Society
appoints mathematician Charles Babbage

to investigate concerns about
errors creeping into these tables.

The consequences
could be enormous.

You could have
bridges collapsing,

you could have railways
that stop short.

All of this engineering, all of
this expansion, all of this finance

is reliant
upon truly accurate maths.

Small mistake, big consequences.

[narrator] Babbage is
horrified by what he finds.

There was huge scope for error.

There'd be the person
doing the calculations,

then someone would have
to copy it out into a table,

then someone would have to try
and typeset it for printing.

So every stage of this process

has scope to introduce mistakes.

Babbage looked at this and,
out of frustration, actually stated,

"I wish I could construct
these tables out of steam."

And he thinks, "Maybe I
can make steam do the job

the brains do."

[narrator] This idea is so far
ahead of its time, it seems crazy.

Nobody else had come
even close to that thought.

[narrator] But if anyone
can pull it off, it's Babbage.

He has a long track record
in unorthodox ideas.

[Steele] Babbage was already showing
signs of brilliance and a love of invention

even as a child.

He developed a device which
he hoped would cause him

to walk on water, and nearly
drowned in the process.

So perhaps
it's not so surprising

that somebody
with this adventurous mind

would be the sort of person
to think adventurous thoughts.

[narrator] Babbage imagines a
machine unlike any built before.

Eight feet high,
weighing four tons

and made of more than
twenty-five thousand parts.

This was going to be
a true computational machine,

not just an addition,
subtraction device.

[narrator] It will solve an
equation called a polynomial,

from which key tables, such
as logarithms, are calculated.

And it will do this
using a mathematical approach

called
the method of differences,

so he calls it
the difference engine.

In 1823, Babbage persuades
the British government

that he can solve all their
human computer problems,

and they believe him.

It's important to remember
that this experimentation

wasn't just
a bit of random tinkering.

This is a bloke who became perhaps the
most eminent maths professor of his age.

[narrator] The government
advance him £1,500,

the equivalent
of $250,000 today.

And in 1832,
Babbage produces this,

Difference Engine No. 1,

a prototype
for Babbage's ultimate dream.

Babbage's prototype was only
about a third of the width and height

of the machine that
he eventually had planned.

This was already
an impressive machine,

two thousand different
brass and steel parts.

[Ball] And it works.

It can reliably calculate the squares
of numbers, or the cubes of numbers,

or solve simple
quadratic equations.

Babbage's idea not only works,

but can be made
to work in reality.

[narrator] It seems Babbage's
self-belief is actually justified.

But how does this astonishing
machine actually work?

Difference Engine No. 1,

an incredible
mechanical contraption

designed to replace
the human mind

in solving
complex mathematical problems.

[Ball] He'd set it up to carry out
what we now call an algorithm.

So a set of steps, um, that will
automatically then give you your result.

[narrator] But in an era
long before electronics,

all he has to do it with
are metal cogs and levers.

Difference Engine No.1
uses a series

of numbered toothed drums
arranged one above the other.

The actual arrangement
of the numbers

are going up in columns.

[narrator] So each
number drum up a column

represents units, then tens,
hundreds, thousands and so on.

If a drum moves beyond nine
and back to zero,

a carry mechanism
adds one to the drum above.

At the start, all the drums
are set to particular numbers,

depending on
the planned calculation.

[Denison] You can think about
this as an arrangement of columns

all turning in synchrony
to do the computation itself.

[narrator]
First, the middle column

adds its values
to the right column,

then the left column
adds to the middle column.

And the final answer is
revealed on the rightmost column,

and it really works.

Difference Engine No. 1
is a work of genius.

The perfect solution to one
of the most pressing problems

of the new industrial age.

Truly accurate mathematics.

But this prototype
difference engine

is as far as Babbage's
grand design ever gets.

The full machine is never built.

What goes wrong?

The full size difference
engine requires 25,000 parts,

and these must all mesh
perfectly with each other.

So every single one must be made

to an astonishing
level of precision

or the machine will not work.

So one of the things that Babbage
had to deal with was tolerance.

You know, any machine system
is not perfect,

so you have to decide
how much inaccuracy

is going to be acceptable
in the design.

Because if your tolerance
was too large,

with 25,000 mechanisms
going, the machine could jam.

[narrator]
In the early 19th century,

this level of precision is the
equivalent of a moon shot.

Babbage promises the government

a finished machine
in three years,

but Difference Engine No. 1, which
is just the prototype, takes nine.

As well as the challenge
of precision engineering,

Babbage faces
more personal hurdles

because diplomacy
is not his greatest strength.

[Goodman] He could be
a bit abrasive at times.

He would complain
about the noise of children

playing in the street,
the noise of a barrel organ,

and be really
quite forceful about it,

which didn't always
play very well.

[narrator] By 1832,
Babbage's forceful style

becomes too much for his
engineer, Joseph Clement.

[Goodman] He and Clement
fall out big time.

And after that, of course, the
whole project begins to grind to a halt.

Without an engineer on board,

it's not really going anywhere.

[narrator] By 1833, the
government has paid Babbage

the equivalent of $2.6 million
and got almost nothing.

They pull the plug.

[Ball]
Babbage's difference engine

was never actually made
during his lifetime.

It never got beyond
that small prototype.

[narrator] But Babbage
is already thinking bigger.

He conjures up a version of
the difference engine's calculator

bent around into a circle,

so that it can feed itself
with its own numbers.

He calls it
the analytical engine.

[Denison] The analytic engine
had a property

that Babbage called
eating its own tail.

It would cycle through
its calculations,

and then it would
make a decision

based on those calculations
on what it was going to do next.

[Steele] It was basically
a programmable computer.

You could tell it
what you wanted to do.

You could change the task.

It could alter its own memory

during the process
of the calculations.

It was everything that we
imagine a modern computer can do.

[narrator] But no one
will stump up the cash

for another
grand Babbage project.

Difference Engine No. 1
is as far as he ever gets.

But in 1991, 100 years
after Babbage's death,

Difference Engine No. 2, based on
an improved design he drew up, is born.

[Ball] So these many thousands
of metal components

were put together, assembled
into this gigantic block of metal,

and it worked.

It worked perfectly
since they switched it on.

[narrator] Babbage's ideas
are centuries ahead of their time.

Difference Engine No. 1
helps him conceive

of a thinking machine
for the very first time.

So although Babbage doesn't
end up inventing the modern world,

he's the first person
to imagine it.