Engineering and innovation changed the face of Victorian Britain and also
ushered in a new age of leisure and pleasure. As What the Victorians Did for
Us reveals, their inventions include the weekend, the seaside holiday, the
sports we play today and a revolution in entertainment.
Looks at science and medicine, including devices designed for waking the dead and the eccentric experimenter who reputedly created life.
Hart-Davis finds out how the rules for sports such as tennis and football evolved, and discovers how standardisation in manufacturing made new inventions, such as the sewing machine, affordable.
Focusing on the Victorian world of crime and retribution, he experiences life on the beat as an early policeman and looks at the forensic tests developed to catch poisoners. Plus the monotony of prison life, and early home security.
How the opportunities in employment and education created the middle classes and gave them such luxuries as their own toilets, frozen foods, and improved healthcare. The rich, meanwhile, could indulge in new gadgets such as the velocipede shower.
In this edition, he visits Kew Gardens to examine the plants which explorers brought back from abroad and experiences the science of storm prediction. Plus a demonstration of the greatest world-shrinking Victorian technology of all - submarine telegraphy.
The dramatic successes and failures of Victorian entrepreneurs, including William Armstrong, who installed a swing bridge in Newcastle, and Otis whose lift made the skyscraper possible.
Leisure, the seaside, weekends. They seem natural, but they were all Victorian inventions. The Victorians were freed from the fields and had cash in hand; they were the first mass pleasure seekers.