Lost At Sea: The Search For Longitude

In 1714 the British government put forward a Longitude Prize for anyone that could come up with a way to to determine a ships longitude. Latitude was not a problem and could be determined by the Sun but Longitude was no more than guess work which led to many ships being lost at sea. Many methods were put forward but two of the ways that showed most promise were a clock or timepiece that was capable of keeping almost perfect time at sea and the use of Astronomy, using the planets as a guide. In this film we follow those who set out to solve the problem and win the huge £20,000 prize (£2.52 million in today's money). John Harrison was one of those who thought he could create a clock that would be able to keep time at sea and he dedicated his entire life to the project but the Astronomers were totally against the idea, so much that it took the intervention of The King to settle the argument.

Watch the full documentary now on Documentary Fans Release Date: 1998 Duration: 53 Minutes.

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Clive Sinclair: The Anatomy Of An Inventor

The Anatomy Of An Inventor was a BBC Horizon documentary in 1989 focusing on the technology inventor Clive Sinclair. Sinclair had been inventing since 1961 and had many success and failures along the way. The fascinating side to the story is a man who simply loved to invent, the process of formulating an idea and seeing it coming to fruition. Also as Sinclair's field of invention was computer electronics in the film we get a look back at part of the history of modern computing. Sinclair had success with products like the first pocket calculator and the ZX Spectrum home computer and failures like his Sinclair C5 battery powered car. By the time the documentary was made he had sold the computer section Sinclair Research to Amstrad and would later focus again on transport.

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Stephen Fry: The Machine That Made Us

Serial documentary presenter and narrator Stephen Fry this time goes in search of the history behind the first printing presses and Johannes Gutenberg the man credited with revolutionising print. The documentary is called The Machine That Made Us as Fry believes that without the invention printing press all types of literature were simply not attainable by the masses. It was only once print could be quickly and cheaply copied that knowledge spread and all people could educate themselves on every subject under the sun.

In the documentary Stephen Fry with the help of Alan May sets out to make a functional classic Gutenberg style printing press, he goes on the trail of Gutenberg and other people key in the evolution of printing and makes manually makes some period parchment and other ingredients to try on his Gutenberg press.

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The Wright Brothers Flying Machines

The Wright Brothers documentary tells the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright the brothers that succeeded were so many failed. Aviation experts, Pilots, historians and modern inventors not only tell the story of the flying Wright Brothers but attempt to recreate the aircraft they built. The brothers ran a bicycle shop from 1892 which turned out to be a good workshop for their inventions and there would be many many failed experiments and tests before they tasted success. It was in the mid 1890's the brothers really took an interest in flying machines but between 1900 and 1903 they were relentless in building and testing. So what lead them from flying test kites to man controlled aircraft and can today's experts and enthusiasts recreate the machines that led the way to aviation as we know it today.

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