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The Self-Access Centre - English - TV Documentaries - Engineering

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	Title	Author	Subcategory	Subtitles	Length	Rating
A series of documentaries examining the history of local people, places, inventions and events that changed the world. Adam Hart-Davis tells the remarkable story of Thomas Newcomen, the Devon man who invented the world's first working steam-powered engine. 1	A History of the World - The Birth of Steam	BBC 4	Engineering	English	30 mins	Like (0 likes)
Chris Tarrant discovers how one simple invention revolutionised the industrial heart of Britain. He travels by narrow boat to see how the Brindley Lock created a canal network that would transform the Midlands from rural backwater to industrial giant. 2	A History of the World - Unlocking the Midlands	BBC 1	Engineering	English	30 mins	Like (0 likes)
Coal had powered Britain's industrial rise, with her mills and furnaces, railways and steamships depending on it. In the peak years a million men laboured in the mines, many in poor and dangerous working conditions like those contributor Dick Martin found when he began as pit boy aged 14. 3	All Our Working Lives: Cutting Coal	BBC 4	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
The team showcase breakthroughs in technology and engineering that are creating a new generation of machines. 4	Brave New World With Stephen Hawking - 1- Machines	Channel 4	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
A century and a half ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain's most famous engineer, was about to launch a ship five times bigger than any that had ever been built before, the most revolutionary vessel the world had ever seen: the SS Great Eastern. 5	Brunel's Last Launch - A Time Team Special	Channel 4	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
A team of experts try to recreate astounding feats of engineering. Prof Chris Wise and Dr Caroline Baillie attempt to build a replica of the first submarine. 6	Building the Impossible: The First Submarine	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
The unexpected marriage of high-tech glamour with the gritty reality of 1970s Northern Ireland captured the public's imagination but this early optimism would end in failure. Although the cars looked great, the windows leaked and the engines seized; as his financial problems mounted the maverick DeLorean faced charges of drugs trafficking. Adrian Dunbar narrates the story. 7	CarCrash : The Delorean Story	BBC 4	Engineering		58 mins	Like (0 likes)
Engineer turned comedian Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell, rising star of mechanical engineering, climb on board Victor X-ray, a 200 ton, £200 million Boeing 747. 8	Engineering Giants - Episode 01:Jumbo Jet Strip-Down	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Engineer turned comedian Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell, rising star of mechanical engineering, tell the story as an entire North Sea Gas installation, the Lima Platform, is pulled from the sea by floating cranes, brought back to Newcastle, and then torn into tiny pieces for recycling. 9	Engineering Giants - Episode 02:Gas Rig Strip-Down	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Engineer turned comedian Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell, rising star of mechanical engineering, climb on board the Pride of Bruges, a massive, 25,000 tonne North Sea ferry as it is brought into dry dock in Newcastle. 10	Engineering Giants - Episode 03:Ferry Strip-Down	BBC 2	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Michael Palin explores China, staying in the Governor's Castle in Qingdao where Mao slept, meeting the owner of a Chinese vineyard which produces Chardonay and having a street massage. He travels to Shanghai and then by train and boat to the Yangtse Gorge, where a huge engineering project to create a dam is in progress, which will flood the towns and areas in which he is now travelling. Third in the series 11	Full Circle with Michael Palin - China	BBC	Engineering		17 mins	Like (0 likes)
Horizon reveals the untold story of the 87-day battle to kill the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout a mile beneath the waves - a crisis that became America's worst environmental disaster. 12	Horizion - Deepwater Disaster - The Untold Story	BBC	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Horizon goes behind the scenes at CERN to follow one of the most epic and expensive scientific quests of all time: the search for the Higgs particle, believed to give mass to everything in our universe. 13	Horizon - The Hunt for the Higgs: A Horizon Special	BBC	Engineering	English	80 mins	Like (0 likes)
Danny Wallace really wants a robot. He wants it to walk like him and talk like him. It's what scientists have been promising us for generations but it's a promise so far unfulfilled. Danny circumnavigates the globe searching for robot nirvana and trying to uncover how far away his dream is. 14	Horizon - Where's My Robot?	BBC	Engineering		48 mins	Like (0 likes)
As Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner makes its inaugural flight, Rolls-Royce engineers celebrate the performance of its revolutionary Trent 1000 jet engines. 15	How to Build - A Jumbo Jet Engine	BBC	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
If you need to build a 'top-secret' piece of equipment in the UK, there's one place many people choose to go: defence contractor QinetiQ. 16	How to Build Series 01: Britain's Secret Engineers	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Fourteen years to design and build and costing around a billion pounds, nuclear submarine the Astute is one of the most technologically advanced and controversial machines in the world. 17	How to Build Series 01: A Nuclear Submarine	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Some of the best and most up-to-date communication satellites in the world are designed and built in Stevenage in Britain. With exclusive access to specialist manufacturer Astrium, this programme shows step-by-step how to assemble one of the most complicated machines. 18	How to Build Series 02: A Satellite	BBC 2	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Britain is one of the world leaders in aerospace manufacturing and there's one part of a plane the UK is reputed to make better than anyone else - the wings. It's often said that no matter what else is done and what innovations are introduced, the wing defines the aircraft. 19	How to Build Series 02: A Super Jumbo Wing	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
With extraordinary access to one of the country's most secretive companies, this shows how Formula One racing team McLaren is now building a road car using some of their F1 technology. 20	How to Build Series 02: Super Car	BBC 2	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
They are constantly circling hundreds of miles above our heads, driving our daily lives - yet we barely give satellites a second thought. 21	In Orbit: How Satellites Rule Our World	BBC 2	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Following the front line of engineering and high-tech construction 22	Mega Builders - The Olympic Aquatic Centre	Channel 5	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
The inside story of the building of the clever arena, which was the centre of world attention in the 2012 Olympic games. 23	Megastructures - London's Olympic Stadium	Channel 5	Engineering		40 mins	Like (0 likes)
Building an eight lane freeway under the city of Boston. 24	Megastructures - Americas Biggest Dig		Engineering		56 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the Persian Gulf, the world's largest artificial islands are being constructed in the shape of the earth's continents. This ambitious engineering feat is part of a plan to transform Dubai into one of the world's premiere tourist destinations 25	Megastructures - Building the World	Jeremy Hall	Engineering		57 mins	Like (0 likes)
The Finnish construction of cruise liner Freedom of the Seas, which was launched in 2006 and, at 18 storeys in height and a quarter of a mile in length, is the largest in the world. As cameras show the many features such as the surf park and ice rink, experts investigate whether at 160,000 tonnes this is the maximum size ocean-going technology will reach before having too great a mass to float 26	Megastructures - The World's Biggest Cruise Liner	Jeremy Hall	Engineering		58 mins	Like (0 likes)
Documentary looking at the design, structure and features of the North Sea Wall, a massive coastal defence system built along Holland's coastline 27	Megastructures - The World's Biggest Sea Barrier	Jeremy Hall	Engineering		57 mins	Like (0 likes)
28	Nuclear Secrets - The Terror Trader	UK TV History	Engineering	English	45 mins	Like (0 likes)
At a time when most ships were built to traditional designs in wood, and powered by sail, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s colossal ship, the Great Eastern, was almost 700 feet long and built of iron. His vision was that it should carry 4,000 passengers, in magnificent style, as far as the Antipodes - without needing to refuel. 29	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 01: The Great Ship	Christopher Spencer	Engineering		8 mins	Like (0 likes)
In 1869, John Roebling won the contract to build the largest bridge in the world, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It was to stretch 1,600 feet, in one giant leap, across the wide and turbulent East River that separates New York from Brooklyn. 30	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 02: The Brooklyn Bridge	Paul Wilmshurst	Engineering		45 mins	Like (0 likes)
In 1800 Robert Stevenson set about building a lighthouse on the deadly Bell Rock reef off the east of Scotland. 31	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 03: The Bell Rock Lighthouse	Christopher Spencer	Engineering		40 mins	Like (0 likes)
By the middle of the 19th century, the benefits brought by the countless advances of the Industrial Age were gradually beginning to reach America, which soon developed a spectacular achievement of its own - the Transcontinental Railway, reaching right across the continent. With two teams, one building from the east and the other from California in the west, they battled against hostile terrain, hostile inhabitants, civil war and the Wild West. Yet in 1869, the two teams' tracks were joined, shrinking the whole American continent, as the journey from New York to San Francisco was reduced from months to days 32	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 04: The Transcontinental Railway	Paul Bryers	Engineering		45 mins	Like (0 likes)
In the summer of 1858, while the Great Eastern was being fitted out for her maiden voyage, London was in the grip of a crisis known as the 'Great Stink'. The population had grown rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, yet there had been no provision for sanitation. 33	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 05: The Sewer King	Edward Bazalgette	Engineering		12 mins	Like (0 likes)
Having completed the building of the Suez Canal in 1869, Ferdinand de Lesseps dreamed of an even bolder scheme: the Panama Canal. Lesseps decided he would cut a path across the Isthmus of Panama,and thus unite the great oceans of the Atlantic and Pacific, making the long journey round South America unnecessary. 34	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 06: The Panama Canal	Philip Smith	Engineering		45 mins	Like (0 likes)
As pioneers explored and found their way across the vast continent of America, they were frequently stopped by poor or hostile environments such as the desert regions of Arizona and Nevada. 35	Seven Wonders of the Industrial World - Episode 07: The Hoover Dam	Mark Everest	Engineering		10 mins	Like (0 likes)
The 1930s was a highpoint for ocean-going liners. Crossing the Atlantic by boat was the only way to reach the US, and competition between the French and British shipyards was never less than fierce, a focus for patriotic pride. The British Queen Mary and French Normandie epitomised the golden age of the ocean liners. They were among the floating Art Deco palaces that competed intensely to win the Blue Riband - a prize for the fastest Atlantic crossing. A Holy Grail for the two countries, this prize was also a great bit of marketing. 36	Speed Machines - Episode 01: The Great Ocean Liners.	Channel Four	Engineering		48 mins	Like (0 likes)
Back in the 1930s, two giant airlines began to span the globe, flying firstly mail and then passengers around the world. Pan American flew to Latin America and eventually across the Pacific to Asia. Britain's Imperial Airways linked the empire from Europe through the the Middle East to Africa, India and beyond. But crossing the North Atlantic, although potentially one of the most lucrative routes, proved more difficult. The flying boats themselves were glorious glamour pusses, transporting a handful of lucky souls around the world in fabulous luxury, standard bearers of a now mythical golden age of flight. This episode tells the story of the rivalry between Pan Am and Imperial Airways to get the first commercial airline service flying across the Atlantic - a race won just weeks before the outbreak of World War Two. 37	Speed Machines - Episode 03: The Flying Boats	Channel Four	Engineering		49 mins	Like (0 likes)
The fourth episode in the series visits the fast, furious and all-too-often deadly powerboat races of the 1920s and 30s. In the biggest spectator sport of the time, the fastest men on water competed in gladiatorial combats in front of crowds of up to a million spectators. The Harmsworth Challenge was the America's Cup of the powerboat world, with intense rivalry between Britain, who relied on technological ingenuity, and America, who put their trust in boats powered by immensely powerful aircraft engines. It was a David and Goliath confrontation, which was only put aside when World War II loomed. But the powerboat technology survived to be adopted by the military, spawning the Royal Navy's fleet of speedy Motor Torpedo Boats and the US Navy's legendary PT patrol boat. Using previously unseen archive footage and personal testimony from those who were there, Speed Machines tells the story of this golden age of powerboat racing. 38	Speed Machines - Episode 04: The Speed Boat Kings	Channel Four	Engineering		49 mins	Like (0 likes)
George Carey's film shows how the Russian space programme was kick-started by a mystic who taught that science would make us immortal, and carried forward by a scientist who believed that we should evolve into super-humans who could leave our overcrowded planet to colonise the universe. Stranger still, Carey shows how those ideas have survived Communism and adapted themselves to the science of the modern world. 39	Storyville: Knocking On Heaven's Door	BBC 4	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
n this final episode, Dallas examines what it takes to keep seven billion humans alive with food, energy and water. 40	Supersized Earth - Part 3: Food, Fire and Water	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In this episode, Dallas explores how we can travel further and faster than ever before - and how our desire to shrink the world is inspiring some of the most extraordinary engineering projects on the planet. 41	Supersized Earth: Part 2 - The Way We Move	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Supersized Earth traces the spectacular story of how humans have transformed our world in a generation. In this awe-inspiring three-part series, Dallas Campbell travels the globe, visiting the world's largest and most ambitious engineering projects, exploring the power of human ingenuity. 42	Supersized Earth: Part 1 - A Place to Live	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Through their superlative buildings, the legacy of the Egyptian empire continues to enthrall people to this day. Yet these incredible structures were made over 4,000 years ago. 43	The Ancient World with Bethany Hughes - Engineering Ancient Egypt	More 4	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
When the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, it was the most shocking event in the history of American spaceflight. The deaths of seven astronauts, including the first teacher in space Christa McAuliffe, were watched live on television by millions of viewers. But what was more shocking was that the cause of the disaster might never be uncovered. The Challenger is the story of how Richard Feynman, one of America's most famous scientists, helped to discover the cause of a tragedy that stunned America. 44	The Challenger	William Hurt	Engineering		90 mins	Like (0 likes)
Documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first satellite, Sputnik, which launched the space age in 1957. The film explores how satellites have affected almost every aspect of our lives, from spy satellites and GPS transforming the military to the communications revolution kickstarted by Telstar. But recent events in China have revealed just how vulnerable we might be, for they suggest we might be on the verge of another new age, one of satellite terrorism. 45	The Satellite Story	BBC	Engineering		59 mins	Like (0 likes)
At the heart of Britain sits something so all pervasive we don't even notice it's there - the national electricity grid. This three-part series charts how our lives got wired and the impact electrification has had. The opening part takes us from the epic construction of the first grid in the 1920s and 30s to the challenge of making sure there is power at the flick of a switch today. Using rare archive and vivid personal accounts it reveals the heroic efforts, architectural masterpieces and engineering achievements behind the real power map of Britain. Contributors include author Will Self, urban planner Sir Peter Hall and grid veterans on how Britain first banished darkness and turned on the electric light. 46	The Secret Life of the National Grid - Episode 01: Wiring the Nation	BBC	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Miners, nuclear scientists, politicians, environmentalists and even the City have all wrestled for control of the national electricity grid and the power that it has brought. The final film in this history of the grid charts how it has been the battleground for conflicts that have changed and shaped Britain. Key players from the miners' strikes reveal why the industrial action of the 70s and 80s had such different impacts on electricity supply. The film also uncovers how Britain lost her lead in the field of nuclear power. Contributors include former conservative cabinet minister Lord Jenkin, author Will Self and veterans of all the different fuels. They examine the cost of our love affair with power and consider the perils of life without it. 47	The Secret Life of the National Grid - Episode 03: Pulling the Plug	BBC	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
In 2011, after more than 30 years of service, America's space shuttle took to the skies for the last time. Its story has been characterised by incredible triumphs, but blighted by devastating tragedies - and the BBC and Horizon have chronicled every step of its career. 48	The Space Shuttle: A Horizon Guide	BBC	Engineering	English	60 mins	Like (0 likes)
The story of The Shard - the colossal glass skyscraper that has transformed London's skyline. 49	The Tallest Tower: Building the Shard	Channel 4	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary periods in British history: the Industrial Revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever. 50	Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here.	BBC	Engineering		60 mins	Like (0 likes)

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