All language subtitles for Strangest.Things.S01E07.Curse.of.the.Piltdown.Man.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_eng

[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
whodunit,

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.