The world’s largest concrete dam–and the largest concrete structure in the world–lies on the Columbia River in the State of Washington. B uilt in 1931, it is also one of the largest hydroelectric power plants in the world.

Grand Coulee Dam

The remarkable story of how the landmark New York City skyscraper was constructed during the depths of the Depression. Requiring 10 million bricks and 60,000 tons of steel beams and using a revolutionary technique to hold the steel girders in place–hot rivets–the world’s tallest building was completed four months ahead of schedule.

The Empire State Building

Chronicles one of the most incredible engineering feats of all time: construction of the 51-mile canal that took 10 years to build and employed over 40,000 workers, 6,000 of whom died of yellow fever, malaria, and other horrors. An earlier, 9-year attempt by the French ended in failure and cost 20,000 lives.

The Panama Canal

A large machine turned water city, cruise ships are exciting and new.

Cruise Ships

Looks at how one man’s vision and the cooperation between the U.S. and England resulted in an instant, reliable transcontinental mode of communication in the mid-1800s. See how wealthy 33-year-old Cyrus West Field endured many failures and lost millions in his attempt to close the communication gap between the Old and New Worlds.

Transatlantic Cable

The incredible tale of how Gutzon Borglum created the world's largest sculpture by carving the faces of four US presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) into the Black Hills of South Dakota. The four figures carved in stone pay tribute to the first 150 years of American history. The hour chronicles the "swiveled pointer" that Borglum put in each president's "head", and how workmen hung like spiders 6,000 feet above the ground to blast away 450,000 tons of rock.

Mt. Rushmore.

Join us for a buoyant trip through the history of balloon flight and a tribute to the fearless pilots and engineers brave enough to push the limits of balloon technology into the next weather front, or the next frontier. We’ll demonstrate their diversified applications and talk to pioneers who designed and flew them.

Balloons

With California finally part of the United States, two rail companies raced to connect the monied East and the promising West. Along the way, fortunes would be made, lives lost, and adversity overcome. This is the story of the largest, most expensive challenge of the 19th century.

The Transcontinental Railroad

Rising from a stretch of desert with nothing but remoteness to recommend it, Las Vegas became a glittering wonderland for dreamers. We’ll take a look at the forces that made Las Vegas a place unlike any on earth.

Las Vegas

To the people of France, and to citizens of the world, Gustav Eiffel’s 320-meter Tower is more than an unsurpassed technological and engineering wonder, conceived and built to astound the public at the 1889 Paris Exposition…it is a symbol of triumphant spirit, demonstrating how an innovative metal matrix can form a structure whose posture reinforces an aesthetic of glory.

The Eiffel Tower

The domed structure is one of the earliest forms of shelter–from African mud huts to frozen igloos to holy shrines and cathedrals. As a design concept, the shape represents the community under the canopy of heaven; as a technological device, the dome is the most efficient way of controlling an internal environment. And today, as we see here, engineers have enlarged and transformed the ancient concept to build some of the world’s most spectacular structures–domed sports stadiums.

Domed Stadiums

Built of stone and glass, persistence and prayer, gothic cathedrals are an epiphany of imagination and an articulation of joy. Featured are such masterpieces as Chartres, Notre Dame and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.

Gothic Cathedrals

More than 50 years after its construction, the Golden Gate remains one of the world’s greatest engineering marvels. It took 25-million man-hours and 80,000 miles of cable to complete. But the cost in human life proved even greater.

The Golden Gate Bridge

With technological advances, our ancient struggle against the sea has turned into a luxurious holiday. Come aboard for a peek at the elegant life on these floating resorts.

Ocean Liners

Considered by many to be the most astounding machine ever built, this reusable spaceship is the apex of flight technology. This program recounts the challenges and the critical issues that led to NASA’s decision to create an “airplane” to navigate space.

Space Shuttle

It was an engineering feat of almost miraculous proportions and a design of spectacular elegance. Rare photographs and behind-the-scenes stories recall the politics, the struggles, and the tragedies that made possible “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.

Brooklyn Bridge

There is no more potent demonstration of man’s resolve than the design and construction of tunnels–avenues that slice through a conspiracy of elements in the single-minded determination to connect two points. Whether underwater, blasted through solid rock, or negotiating the shifting strata of earth’s unstable crust, we explore the design and engineering of famous tunnels…and the motivation behind them.

Tunnels

During the depths of the Great Depression, it was FDR’s greatest triumph: A massive public works project that took a 40,000 square mile, disaster-prone river basin, and turned it into a model of industrial progress.

Tennessee Valley Authority

From the first well in Pennsylvania to the gushing Spindletop and modern supertankers, the story of oil is the story of civilization as we know it. We’ll take a look at the ingenious and outrageous men who risked everything for “black gold” and unimaginable wealth.

It was called the "mother lode", a deposit of silver so massive that it would produce $300-million in its first 25 years of operation, establish Nevada as a state, and bankroll the Union Army in the Civil War. Named after an early investor, we'll see how the Comstock Lode, discovered near Virginia City, proved to be a scientific laboratory from which vast improvements in mining technology and safety were pioneered, including innovations in drilling, ventilation, drainage, and ore processing.

Silver Mines

A trip through time on the New York Subway beginning at the beginning– October 1904. We look at New York before the subway–a world of horse carts and elevated trains. We see early impractical experiments in transportation like the pneumatic subway or the elevated cable car. The program will deal with the technology of the subway, the construction, and financing. We look at subway stations and equipment.

The NYC Subway

The year was 1869 and America had just completed the greatest building achievement in its history–the Transcontinental Railroad. A thin ribbon of steel and wood now connected East and West. But the fledgling country now faced an even greater challenge–how to harness the awesome potential of the railroad to tame the still wide-open and wild West.

The Railroads That Tamed the West

The story of the construction of our grand national highway system, from its beginnings in 1912 (it was conceived by auto and headlight tycoons) to its completion in 1984 (when the last stoplight was removed–and buried).

Paving America

Being starved by an OPEC embargo, America is desperate for oil, and in 1973 construction begins on a 800 mile pipeline, tapping into Alaskan oil to quench their insatiable oil hunger.

The Alaskan Oil Pipeline

In 1912, a headlight-maker and an auto magnate built the first cross-country road to spur the demand for new cars; 70 years and $125 billion later, the highway system had grown to 42,000 miles. Rare photographs and interviews tell the incredible story of the “paving of America”.

America's Highways

From Alexander Graham Bell’s crude creation, to today’s high-speed wireless networks, we’ll look into the past, present and future of the telephone. We’ll visit the AT&T archives to see how the very first telephone boxes wired together with telegraph cables have evolved into vast wireless networks. Enter into the inner workings of Los Angeles County’s 911 emergency dispatch center, as well as explore advancements made by Lucent/Bell Labs in phone-embedded GPS technology. With telephone privacy issues making headlines, witness a demonstration of how easy it can be for someone to illegally tap your phone. We’ll also look at a technology developed by NASA-Ames that might one day allow people to converse by merely thinking what they want to say.

The Telephone

Many rivers quenched the thirst of millions in the American west and around the world. Without these aqueducts, some of the earth’s largest cities would turn into gigantic ghost towns. Their technology has been in use for over two thousand years. But today these engineering marvels cost billions of dollars to build, requiring thousands of men to toil for years on end. Aqueducts have made some men famous and others fabulously wealthy. In Los Angeles one man’s vision took one hundred thousand men to complete and a great city was truly born. In Northern California the most famous conservationist of our time waged the political fight of his life in an attempt to save one of nature’s most spectacular valleys from San Francisco’s demand for more water.

Aqueducts

An exploration of the world’s most popular entertainment, from the boy genius who invented it to the RCA “General” who made it a reality.

Television

A look at the inventions that have revolutionized society as we know it. They began as behemoths which weighed over 2 tons!

The Computer

A look at the history of photography beginning as early as the eleventh century. Includes the advancements by Niepce and Daguerre in the 19th century and William Henry Fox and George Eastman in the 20th century.

Captured Light

A look at the F117 Stealth Fighter that led the pack for the Allies in Gulf Wars One and Two and virtually decimated Iraqi Air Defense. Find out how the technology allows it to approach its target without being detected by radar. Also, a look at the B2 Stealth Bomber.

Stealth Technology

Standing majestically for centuries, the world’s great pyramids have long inspired and mystified scholars. Leading experts and historians explore the engineering genius that created some of the largest structures on the planet. From ancient Egypt to Central America, we visit these technological masterpieces.

Pyramids: Majesty And Mystery

Since the turn of the 20th century, designers have competed to build them faster, taller, and steeper. But as technology pushes the envelope with flips, weightlessness, and more g-force than a jet, how many thrills can the human body take?

Roller Coasters

From Stonehenge to the Hubble Telescope, man has always been a species of stargazers. Unforgettable film footage and expert accounts reveal the facts of astronomy’s most mind-boggling discoveries.

Observatories: Stonehenge to Space Telescopes

Winding 6,000 kilometers through undulating mountains, it is said to be visible with the naked eye from the moon. But who called for the Great Wall's construction and how was it accomplished? Historians, engineers, and scientists explore one of the wonders of the ancient world.

The Great Wall of China.

When “poliomyelitis” swept the nation, thousands died or were disabled before American ingenuity, trial and error, and blatant acts of desperation led to one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history. We’ll see how polio shaped the vision of FDR, and catapulted the young unknown doctor Jonas Salk to international celebrity.

Polio Vaccine

The complete story of the feuds, the mistakes, ingenuity, and successes that made movies possible–and kept Edison at the front of the inventor pack. Includes rare early films from the Edison Studios.

The Motion Picture

Strong enough to survive their fiery launch into orbit, sophisticated enough to provide life-saving images or relay tens of thousands of phone calls at the same time. By monitoring weapons systems and troop movements, these "eyes in the sky" may be the difference between security and annihilation. From the futuristic visions of a British sci-fi writer to creations of a German rocket designer for the Nazi war machine to the Cold War technological race, we review the satellites that link our world.

Satellites.

To some it was a miracle. Others call it the triumph of illiteracy. Somewhere between adoration and scorn. Somewhere between the carrier pigeon and television. There was and is radio. We take radio for granted. Perhaps think of it as a second rate medium. A poor relation to our pride and joy, television. But fewer than a hundred years ago, the discovery that people could communicate over great distances without wires, galvanized the world to a degree that has been equalled.

Radio: Out Of Thin Air

Probably Thomas Edison’s best-known invention is the electric light. But the familiar light bulb is only the most obvious element of Edison’s accomplishment. He also created from scratch a delivery system for his light. His invention literally changed the world, putting the power of electricity at our fingertips. In 1878, Edison said: “The electric light is the light of the future. And it will be my light.” This is the story of how he and his team raced against competitors to make good his word.

The Electric Light

Thomas Edison registered over 1,000 patents, but his favorite invention was one of his first. Rare photographs and early recordings show how the young inventor and his team outfoxed Alexander Graham Bell.

The Phonograph

Viewer discretion is advised for those with vertigo! Featuring rare construction footage and interviews with steely-nerved iron workers who risked death to build them, we climb to the top of the world's tallest, most innovative, and most thrilling structures, including Seattle's Space Needle, Toronto's CN Tower, and Las Vegas's Stratosphere. The architects who designed these astounding buildings explain how each broke the boundaries of architecture at the time it was built.

Great Towers in the Sky

Reviews the revolution in home improvement and glimpses the kitchen of tomorrow. Included: the development of the stove, sewing machine, refrigerated air, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, toaster, and mixer.

Household Wonders.

Examines the history of radar, focusing on its role in the Allies’ victory in WWII–from the Chain Home Network, rudimentary radar towers that ringed England’s eastern coast, to the role of Boston’s MIT in developing a smuggled English secret, the cavity of magnetron.

Radar

From Sherlock Holmes' examination of the physical evidence at a crime scene to today's DNA technology, we review the history of crime detection through the use of forensic science.

Forensic Science: The Crime Fighter's Weapon.

Welcome to the center of the American economy, where nearly $90-million changes hands each minute. Journey back to the wooden wall, built to hold back Indians, where early traders signed a pact creating the New York Stock Exchange; watch worldwide markets quake with the crash of 1929; and visit today’s computer-driven wonder.

The Stock Exchange

Journey inside the top-secret headquarters of NORAD–the North American Aerospace Defense Command–a binational military command composed of the United States and Canada. Established in 1958 during the height of the Cold War, NORAD’S initial mission was air defense against a bomber attack by the Soviet Union. We see how its primary mission has changed through the years, and go inside the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, one of history’s most ambitious underground building projects.

NORAD: The War Game Fortress

Feel the earth move under your feet and dig into the fascinating history of earthmoving equipment–from invention of the simple spade to today’s powerful steam shovels. Meet the legendary giants like John Deere, Jerome Case, and the founders of Caterpillar, who helped forge America’s monolithic construction industry.

Earthmovers: The Power to Move Mountains

Everyday 3-million passengers board the 10,000 aircraft flying at any given moment. Go behind the scenes at international airports to see the inner workings that make commercial air travel possible–from ground control in air traffic towers, the plane's cargo holds and high-tech security, and back to earth at customs.

International Airports

From hollow-reed snorkels to mini-submarines equipped with video cameras, curiosity compelled inventors to conceive of innovative devices to dive ever deeper into earth’s last frontier. Explore the ocean floor using the latest in technology, and examine biological and geological discoveries culled from the sea’s depths.

Deep Sea Exploration: Challenging The Abyss

In 1973, a desperate America, starved by an OPEC embargo, began construction on an 800-mile lifeline for its insatiable oil hunger. We’ll examine this technological triumph, built over impenetrable mountains and tundra, where temperatures drop to 75 below zero. We also study its impact on a fragile ecological system.

For over a century, the US steel industry was a powerful symbol of the nation's industrial might. Steel helped explode the stock market into an overnight powerhouse, and transformed a country of farmers and merchants into a nation of visionary builders. But America's domination of the market would meet new challenges in the 1970s.

American Steel: Built to Last.

Meet some of the most important, yet least-recognized, warriors–the battlefield engineers who lay the groundwork for oncoming conflicts. We'll cover combat engineering from ancient Rome to modern-day Iraq, and take a look at the "Next Big Thing".

Battlefield Engineering.

It started as an idea at a French dinner party and became the symbol of the free world. The story of France's gift to the US reveals a 20-year struggle to design and build the world's largest monument–using paper-thin copper sheets.

Statue of Liberty.

While a civilization’s greatness is reflected in the achievements of architects and engineers, equally impressive are spectacular acts of destruction throughout history. The cycle of construction and destruction reflects the shifting values of any given era. We’ll trace the evolution of planned destruction from ancient to modern-day.

Demolition

The Atlantic Wall explores the construction of the shore fortifications built by the Nazis during World War II. We highlight the logistics of construction, types of fortifications, weapons, and obstacles used in the wall. The Nazis attempted to fortify 3,000 miles of occupied European coastline before the Allies launched thier attack on occupied Europe. Finally the Allied D-Day invasion planning and execution, with its associated propaganda and deception, are detailed.

The Atlantic Wall

A look up at the symbol of the American Century–the skyscraper, the construction of which is a triumph of engineering and capitalism. Climb to the top of the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Sears Tower, and World Trade Center to see how ego, money, and technology joined to build the tallest of man-made structures.

History of Tall Buildings

Public aquariums have undergone dramatic changes since inception in mid-19th century. A series of technological innovations has transformed them into virtual oceans with spectacular multi-million gallon displays. Examine the latest high-tech aquatic wonders and take a peek into their future.

Aquariums

Out of the bleakness of a vast desert arose a city built on wish fulfillment and indulgence. Unencumbered by tradition or notions of good taste, for 50 years Las Vegas has taken tourists to the height of their imaginations while reaching into their pockets. Visit 11 of the world's largest hotels in the country's biggest playground.

Las Vegas Hotels.

San Francisco's Oakland Bay Bridge stands as an incredible feat of engineering against the nearly impossible. Once chosen as one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world, it features an unique double suspension structure in its west end. Join us as we cross this triumph of construction, while we visit its past and look to its future.

The Oakland Bay Bridge.

What inspires societies to create sculptures on a superhuman scale? We’ll examine gigantic statues and the monumental commitment of time, money, and talent needed to complete them. We’ll study the Sphinx, Colossus of Rhodes, Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer, Russia’s Motherland and the Crazy Horse Memorial.

Monumental Statues

In 1941, penicillin was first used to save human life. But now, bacteria has emerged resistant to every known antibiotic, and scientists have begun to fear that the era of the wonder drugs is near to its end.

Antibiotics: The Wonder Drugs

More than the gun, more than the billy club, it is the critical weapon in law enforcement’s arsenal. But for decades, police have struggled to stay ahead of well-equipped bad guys. Rare photos and interviews tell the story of their battle for high-tech horsepower.

The Police Car

Plastics are everywhere–the home, the workplace, the car, the human body, outer space, and most conspicuously, the garbage heap and landfill. Artificially created test-tube material, plastic can’t be returned to nature. Will we drown in a sea of plastic? Join us as we review this protean substance’s past and future.

Plastics

The story of medical imaging, the technology that allows us to see inside the human body, is full of amazing stories. Learn how X-rays were discovered in 1895, completely by accident; how ultrasound was developed to locate enemy submarines, and how the CAT Scan might never have been built if it weren’t for The Beatles!

Medical Imaging

To run faster, jump higher, and play longer–the ultimate goal of all athletes. But when training runs its course, science and technology jump in. Explore the history and technological advances in everything from athletic shoes to football gear. And leap into a future filled with radar-enhanced baseballs and virtual-reality stadiums.

Extreme Sports Gadgets

Bombs…the most feared and powerful weapon in any nation’s arsenal. What began as incendiary devices in the 7th century has evolved into weapons that can literally blow the human race off the face of the earth! From the use of diseased carcasses flung over castle walls to Greek Fire to today’s smart bombs, we review the evolution of bombs.

Bombs

From the earliest recorded account of an amputation and subsequent prosthesis in ancient Hindu writings, to a 16th-century fully articulated artificial hand controlled by an intricate geared mechanism, to today’s use of plastics and space-age materials, we chronicle the long history of prosthetic devices.

Prosthetics

A study of the discoveries, inventions, and technological advances that have helped us understand and predict weather accurately. From simple observations made by early humans, to early instruments such as thermometers and barometers, to Doppler radar and satellite imaging, we’ll see how man has tried to harness weather.

Weather Prediction

The ability to transmit sound in stereo transformed the music of life into a rich symphony of sound. For over 100 years, enthusiasts and scientists have worked to create the ideal listening experience. From Thomas Edison’s early phonograph to today’s digital revolution, we examine this multi-billion dollar business.

Stereos

Through rain, snow, heat, or gloom of night, we expect postmen to deliver the mail. The U.S. Post Office handles over 603-million pieces of mail daily. Yet it represents only 43% of the world’s total mail volume. From ancient Sumerians to Pony Express, from airmail to E-mail, we follow the long journey of mail.

Mail Delivery

Does anybody really know what time it is? Set your clocks as we explore the relativity of time from antiquity–when man attempted to chart time with methods ranging from shadows, candles, and water–to today’s atomic clock system–accurate to within one second every two-million years.

Clocks

First there were balloons and blimps. Then, visionaries enlarged, reinforced, and motorized them and the airship was born. The biggest aircraft ever flown, they remain one of the most romantic aerial creations. In all, 161 rigid airships were built before spectacular crashes, including the EM Hindenburg /EM , put an end to the era.

Airships.

Meet the Strong Men and Women who go beyond mere fitness to pursue major muscle mass–from ancient Greeks, to performers in the 1800s astounding audiences with feats of strength, to the body builders of California’s Muscle Beach! Lou Ferrigno and other stars share stories of the pursuit of muscle. Also looks at the effect of steroids.

Physical Fitness

Throughout history, the builders and engineers who paved our way out of the caves and into the modern world have also caused some of our worst disasters. What happens when their calculations prove wrong and it all comes tumbling down? From Hammurabi’s days, when the first building laws were instituted, to today’s potential nuclear or chemical disasters that can spell death for thousands, we’ll take a harrowing 2-hour tour through some of history’s greatest engineering mistakes.

Engineering Disasters

Even in ancient times, city dwellers needed a scenic break from the urban landscape. But parks play a more important role than mere relief from tension–they also keep temperatures down and supply much-needed oxygen in congested cities. Come along for a stroll through New York City’s Central Park and L.A.’s Griffith Park.

City Parks

Espionage has been used for at least the last 4,000 years. And where there are spies, you find gadgets! We focus on the last 100 years of cloak and dagger technology–from early code-breaking computers to satellite reconnaissance–and take a look at the James Bond-type gadgets of the Cold War.

Spy Technology

“He who would become a surgeon should join the army and follow it,” Hippocrates counseled nearly 2,500 years ago. In this history of medicine under fire, we see how a small army of medics, nurses, surgeons, stretcher-bearers, and ambulance drivers, races to keep pace with the deadly advances of war.

Battlefield Medicine

Whether it jingles in our pockets or folds in our wallets, it flows by the billions from government factories that have mastered the art of making it.

U.S. Mints: Money Machines

Avalanches, earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings–all mean human tragedy unless rescuers respond within a moment’s notice of disaster. Here are the latest advances in rescue technology, including: a Searchcam system that locates buried victims, and the Jaws of Life that can extricate a person from a crushed car in seconds.

Rescue Equipment

In antiquity, a hollow reed served as an underwater link to oxygen. As in days of old, humans still need self-contained breathing equipment for a variety of reasons–food-gathering, commercial, recreational, military, and scientific. Dive with the best as we test scuba diving’s past, and look to a future of mechanical gills.

Scuba And Deep Sea Diving

Offshore drilling is one of the greaest technological dances mankind has ever attempted. From the very beginning of oil discovery, the oceans and their vast reserves became the ultimate frontier. For those willing to take the risk, the oceans offer unprecedented success and unimaginable failure.

Offshore Oil Drilling

Join us for a highly charged hour as we see why Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite took on earthshattering dimensions as his product blasted out the natural resources that built our modern world. We also examine its impact on construction of the roads, tunnels, and dams that provide us with energy and transportation.

Dynamite.

The task was monumental: Build the world's largest dam in the middle of the desert, and tame the river that carved the Grand Canyon–all in seven years! When the Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, it was the largest dam in the world. We'll reveal how this engineering wonder of the world was conceived and built.

Hoover Dam.

Step up to the plate and play ball as we take you on a tour of those amazing edifices of the national pastime–baseball stadiums! From the sandlots and wooden ballparks of the 1800 and 1900s to the monolithic multipurpose stadiums of today, baseball parks have grown into technological wonders that pull in and cost millions.

Baseball Parks

Much of New York City’s history can be viewed via its bridges–all 18 that connect Manhattan Island to its neighbors. Join us for a look at these architectural masterpieces from the age of iron and steel; and, see how they have changed destinies, linking some to opportunity, others to ruin.

New York Bridges

Delves into the little-known, hugely important, multi-billion-dollar industry of product testing–where wrinkles get ironed out and goods are stripped of marketing and hype to see if they work. Meet product testers who serve as truth squads in an eccentric world of machines devised to “sneeze” at tissue paper and “sleep” on mattresses.

Crash Testing

The idea of floating to earth from great heights dates back centuries, and from the beginning parachutes combined entertainment with life-saving utility. The parachute has also played a vital role in modern warfare since WWI. We’ll see how parachute technology has made the world safer, and more fun!

Parachutes

Tracks the technological innovations that made newspapers what they are today, while exploring the stories of the publishing tycoons who became some of the most powerful men of the 20th century. From the invention of the printing press in the 15th century to computerized newsrooms to the Internet, we examine the history of the news.

Newspapers

Since the invention of gunpowder, fireworks have thrilled audiences around the world. We’ll view highlights of fireworks exhibitions throughout history, and go behind the scenes to explore how science and art mingle in this unique, ancient craft. The world’s preeminent fireworks families explain how they create their spectacles.

Fireworks

Though “simulations” date back to cave paintings, devices for interacting with “synthetic realities” are a recent invention. See how simulators are used as training tools for nearly every profession today where hands-on experience is too costly or dangerous–from the 1929 Link Pilot Trainer to simulated virtual realities.

Simulators

The history of civilization could easily be measured in terms of our ability to make, use, and improve tools–an activity that is at least 4 million years old! At the tip of our toolmaking timeline are power tools. We’ll examine today’s power tool industry, which is booming thanks to more powerful, lighter, and quieter cordless tools.

The Tool Bench: Power Tools

Well over two million years before the evolution of modern man, his primitive ancestors were making tools. The use of tools is thought to be one of the keys to human evolution itself and it permeates nearly every aspect of history. We even measure history according to our ability to craft tools; the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age.

The Tool Bench: Hand Tools

Join us for a second look at the big earth-moving machines used to tackle the most challenging jobs on, under, and off Earth! We'll ride on specialized behemoth dump trucks, delve below sea level to view dredging equipment, and leave the planet altogether to explore earthmoving equipment in space.

More Earthmovers.

The art of fortification evolved along with man’s need to defend his territory from attack. There was no other reason. From hills surrounded by branches and crude fences to intricate walled cities, to impenetrable castles – the strongholds of the past echo the history of great battles for territorial control.

Forts

Emergency room medicine has only been a recognized specialty since 1989, and it took close to two millennia to get to this point. We’ll examine advances that led to the modern emergency room–from the Byzantine’s establishment of the first hospitals around 1050 A.D. to today’s telemedicine. The prognosis for its future looks good.

Emergency Room

Set the sedan’s safety brake and hop on your “hog” for a 2-hour high-speed history of the motorcycle–from the 1868 “steam velocipede” to the early 20th century, when they were a low-cost alternative to automobiles; from Harley-Davidsons preferred by Hell’s Angels and police to motocross riders who take bikes into the air and onto the dirt. We also look to the motorcycle’s future, featuring Jay Leno’s jet-propelled Y2K sportbike and Erik Buell’s bike-without-a-gas-tank creation.

Motorcycles

Since civilization’s earliest days, man has sought protection from those who would rob him of riches, knowledge, and even life. This is the story of the evolving systems designed to safeguard our most precious possessions, and of the enduring psychological war between protectors and thieves, each intent on outfoxing the other.

Security Systems

Throughout history the same builders and engineers that paved man's path out of the caves and into the modern world also caused some of mankind's worst disasters. Often a huge calamity is traced back to a tiny cause, insignificant in itself, but triggering a domino effect. We'll revisit notable disasters and search for probable causes.

More Engineering Disasters.

An exploration of the rich history of one of the world’s greatest technological achievements–the harnessing of power from Niagara Falls. From the “War of the Currents”, a battle between geniuses Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, to the Robert Moses Plant, primed to take the powerhouse into the 21st century, we highlight its story.

Niagara Power

HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.

All Episodes of Modern Marvels

Browse all episodes of Modern Marvels

Season 1

Grand Coulee Dam

Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 12/10/1993

The Empire State Building

Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 1/21/1994

The Panama Canal

Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 3/4/1994

Cruise Ships

Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 3/20/1994

Transatlantic Cable

Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 3/27/1994

Mt. Rushmore.

Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 3/13/1994