Original subtitles

a strange skull half human half

ape could this be Darwin's famous

Missing Link it was a kind of

holy grail of

anthropology this tiny piece of

metal changed the course of the Cold

War

the Americans had no

idea what they were looking at and

how it worked and can one

steam-powered calculating machine really

work he speculated maybe

steam could take over the work of the brain

a completely new

idea fascinating mysterious

objects long hidden in museums

laboratories and

[music]

archives now we can use the latest

technology to reveal their secrets

we can recreate them

disassemble and enlarge and so

forgotten things

revealing the hidden and bizarre these are the strangest

things in the

[music]

world at the beginning of the year this

strange looking skull sets the

archeology world in turmoil then it becomes the

center of a scientific

dispute and disappears for 100 years

in the depots of the London

Natural History Museum now thanks to it

modern digital technologies

are forensically examined in unprecedented

detail. This is the Piltd

human, an early human.

His skull is similar to that

of a

human, but the huge jaws and

teeth are more suitable for a

monkey. When it was discovered in 1912,

researchers believe it is the ultimate proof of

Darwin's controversial

Having the theory of human evolution in front of you

is clear evidence of

the connection between apes and humans -

the perfect missing

link - but upon closer inspection there is

something wrong with this

fossil. The molars in the

ape-like jaw show

microscopic grinding marks that you would not find

in any other Fossil

knows and in small cavities in the

skull there is apparently

artificial

material all of this only leaves one conclusion:

the PIL Human was not the missing

link but a

[music]

forgery but the true author remains

unknown for a long time. Thanks to the latest research

we can now identify the forger call by name

who is he what is the

strange hybrid skull all about and how was

it able to deceive the world for almost half a

century

[music]

the story of the forgery

begins in susex english in a

quiet village called

piltdown who was the discoverer of the pilown

man Charles Don, a lawyer from

the Hastings area in

southern England, an amateur archaeologist,

has already made several remarkable finds.

He is also called the magician

of

[music]

susex. He makes his greatest discovery

in a gravel pit in

Pilddaum. In 1912, Dawson Arthur

Smith Woodward writes in the Natural History Museum in

London that he had found a number of interesting

flints and a fragment of a

human skull

Smith woodw is a big name in

theont

he knows that the discovery of a

human skull in this place could be very

significant

the gravel has been estimated to be

half a million years old dated if

that is true, these bones would be the

oldest human fossils known to date,

not only in England

but

worldwide Smith Woodward rushes to pilown

during the following months

and he comes across further sensational

finds

they find further skull fragments a

piece of jawbone and a

dark brown canine tooth Discoloration

of the finds seems to confirm that

they were underground for a very long time.

Smith Woodward is bringing the

Icelandic finds back to

London. He has a number of skulls and

jawbone fragments and wants to put them

together so he can reconstruct

what the skull and jaw might have looked like,

the empty spaces between them

He fills the bone fragments with imagination

and

plaster, the result looks different than

any early human remains ever

discovered

[music]

the back of the head was

very similar to a modern human skull

while the jaw, except like a

monkey, the discovery sends

science into

turmoil It was primarily about a

person Charles

Darwin the discovery of the piltdown man

took place only about 50 years after the

publication of Darwin's On the

Origin of Species a treatise

on the evolution of various animal

and

plant species According to D, humans

and monkeys are close relatives with amin

also 50 years After the publication

of his work, there is hardly any evidence for

his theory until Charleson and the PIL

human

come into play. Half human half ffe that is exactly

what the researchers were looking for to support Darwin's

theory

Career didn't go much further in

1913 Dorson achieved

immortality the pilown man received

the scientific name

eoantthropus dorsoni dorsons man of the

dawn but there is a huge

problem the pilown man couldn't

be the missing link he was a

fake

but how was the hoax

exposed during the pildown Man is living in

the shadows in the London

Museum of Natural History,

archaeologists are making further early

human discoveries that do not resemble him in the

slightest.

As it turns out, the

ancestor of man did not have a large

brain but a small one.

He walked upright, so he was the

opposite of the Piltdown Man

[Music]

in the London Museum of Natural History The

alarm bells ring in 1949, using the techniques available at the time,

the age of the

pildown man was determined with

sobering

results. Apparently these remains were

in no way older than 50,000 years ago.

50,000 years ago, modern humans had

already spread into Africa, parts of Asia and

Australia, the pild humans

cannot The missing link

may have been all just a

mistake. In

1953 the skull was

examined again. The new

radiocarbon dating revealed that it was

a medieval human

skull and a 500-year-old

orangutan jaw fragment.

Orangutans were never

native to Great Britain,

so it cannot be It's a simple mistake, it's

more a case of a malicious

forgery. How could it remain undetected for four decades?

That was a precisely planned,

albeit clumsy, forgery. The experts

were obviously deceived by the

brown color of the finds.

In real fossils, this

dark tone is one long exposure to

minerals in the groundwater but

the pilown coloring does

not stand up to chemical analyzes

the bone fragments as well as the

stone and

bone tools that were also discovered were

colored with potassium dichromate, a solution

that leads to a brown color

so that the finds look as if

they

belong together but the forgers have them

even more tricks in

store when bones become fossils

they mineralize and become almost as

heavy as stones the forgers had to

find a way to make the bones

heavier the piltown bones

are too young to be fossilized but

they are heavy close examination

promotes incredible things

Nowadays, the counterfeiters have filled cracks in the bones

with tiny stones to make them

heavier.

The closer the researchers look, the

worse it gets. The canine tooth

clearly comes from a urangutan

The molars

were felled to make them appear more human

and it gets even

worse because the mass was used to

hide stones in cavities in the jaw and teeth to make them heavier

but to the trained eye

this filling was easy to

see but why do experts

These obvious traces of forgery were

not noticed. The pildown

skull should be left as untouched

as possible because of its supposed importance,

so a series of

casts were made and this is

crucial. During the casting, all

differences in material are leveled out, as well

as many differences in texture that could have given the

researchers clues to a forgery

The counterfeiters benefit

from a very special aspect

of national pride. In 1912 there had been

no significant

finds of human fossils in Great Britain.

Unlike in mainland Europe,

the French discovered the chromanon

man, the Germans discovered the

Neanderthal and the Heidelberg man.

A French archaeologist is said to have denigrated the

British as pebble collectors

The Piltdown

people would have been allowed to play again in the concert of the

greats.

For British academic circles, this

is the right find in the

right place by the right

people. This certainly plays a big

role in why British academics

fell for this fake.

The question remains who is behind it

A good 100 years ago, the latest

studies finally give the name of the

fscha prize. Suspicion first falls

on various people: the celebrated

academics, the charismatic lawyers,

the famous writers. The list

reads like something out of a novel by

Agatha

Chrisy or maybe even like a

Sherlock Holmes kemie which goes straight to the point The

first suspect

to lead the forgery was, among others,

Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, the

author of the Sherlock Holmes

series, he was

interested in science and belonged to the same

archaeological society as

Dawson and he occasionally played golf

in PIL

but what could be his motive

he increasingly turned to that

Spiritualism and received a lot of

ridicule in the

scientific world for it. Spiritualists

claim to be able to communicate with the dead,

but around 1912 this movement was

largely disenchanted and was ridiculed by

science.

He developed a

defensive attitude towards the research

theory. According to this

approach, perhaps

rakes wanted to do something against it Theory speaks

Cony himself never revealed himself if he

wanted to expose paleoanthropological circles he would have had the trap sprung during his

lifetime but

he didn't do that alone that's why we can conclude

sir conus

[music]

the palontologist who put the skull

together he had the

specialist knowledge and The necessary materials

to create such a fake

would certainly have been beneficial for his career. Such a

highly publicized find would certainly have been

beneficial.

However, if the fake were exposed,

his international reputation would have

been destroyed

Charles

Dawson, he was the one who claimed to have

come across these finds,

he was clearly very

ambitious and after his death the

finds simply stopped. For a

century, one

suspect after another was targeted by

the fer. Now the latest investigations have

solved the key once and for all In addition, in

another artifact from the London

Natural History Museum, pildown human

2 is located in another location called

piltdown 2, around one and a half kilometers from the

original pildown site,

dwon finds another human

skull and it has exactly the same

coloring as the one from the first

site in

2016, both of which are piltd skulls examined using the

latest scientific methods

the results are

clear the teeth of pild 2 come

from the same orangutan as those of pildown

1 and similar techniques were

used to fill the jaws with stones

and the filler

has the same chemical

composition as that of pildown

1 who also always behind PIL mench

must also be responsible for the second

of all the suspects only

one knew about pildown 2 and that is Charles

Dawson Charles Dawson is the forger

of the

pildown skulls also investigations into his

other amazing finds which earned him the

title of Wizard of Sussex

Last doubts from almost

everything is a fake,

as it turns out, dwson was an experienced forger long before

the pildown skull was found.

After more than a century,

the piltdown man file can finally

be closed [music] in May 1960 in the UN

Security Council, the world comes to an

object Face that has been

a headache for the US secret services for years.

A previously unknown Soviet

bug was hidden in the residence of the US

ambassador in

[music]

Moscow. You have to imagine that

in one of the most dangerous times in

US history, their most dangerous opponent was able to

overhear their every word, which particularly shocked the US secret service

the bug remained undetected

for 7 years

the Americans knew what to

expect from the Soviets

the problem was that they were unfamiliar with this type of

device and could not detect it

the USA was in the

dark the Americans didn't know

what they were dealing with and how it

worked

they called this bizarre thing

just the thing the USA is under pressure

if you don't understand the device

the Russians could use it against them at any time and

anywhere

but how does the

thing work a simple wooden

US coat of arms and inside just a few

metal parts It

was just a metal cylinder with

more metal attached to it, completely inconspicuous

and pretty

harmless, an electronic listening device

without

electronics, there are no batteries or

cables, there is also no huge

radio antenna hanging out the back, it is practically

impossible to

discover how it works, which

Soviet genius

came up with it and why did it keep us exponents

in suspense for so long

[music]

after the end of the Second

World War, espionage became an

important tool in the Cold War

between Russia and its former

ally the USA the spasohaus the

residence of the us ambassador in Moscow

was targeted by the Soviets in 1945

a wooden version of the

great seal of the United States is ceremoniously

presented to the US ambassador by young pioneers,

the Soviet equivalent for

boy scouts. What the ambassador doesn't

know is that the seal is bugged.

The seal is given a place of honor in the

ambassador's office. The USA has been duped

and notices it not

even that's not a coat and

destory a man in a floppy hat and

trench coat the most powerful nation in the

world has practically had a band of

boy scouts parade it around

why do the Americans overlook

the bug they know that the Russians are taking

advantage of every opportunity that comes their way the Americans knew what they were

about The Soviets have to expect the

spa house was meticulously

combed, everything that gets into the building is

checked in detail, but the bug remains

undetected, it passed all

the security checks of the US embassy because

it was not visible on the x-ray,

it is remarkably inconspicuous after

years of

information skimming, the US

secret service It was only by chance that we became aware of the

bug's radio transmission.

Some details are

still under wraps, but an

American or British radio operator

heard something from the

ambassador's office in the Spaso.

The radio signals can only mean one thing:

there is a

bug after that is clear, but it will be

found quickly It had been there for 7 years,

how could it remain hidden from the most

technologically advanced nation in

the world?

When this carved seal

was examined, all that was found inside was a

harmless-looking small object, a

metal cylinder with other

metal parts on it,

rather inconspicuous. The USA is faced with

a

puzzle They just can't figure out

how it works, it

just doesn't correspond to the usual design of listening

devices. Finally, the

mysterious bug ends up on the desk

of a technical expert from the British

secret service

[music]

They send it to Peter W from

MI5. He's supposed to find out how the bug

works. W needs it 10 weeks to reveal the

secret of the ingenious device

the phenomenon on which the thing

is based is called

resonance one of the best-known

examples of resonance are

glasses half full of water

[music] if

you run your moistened fingers

over the rim of a wine glass

it begins to vibrate very slightly and

a ringing tone is created,

this resonance effect occurs because

the length of the specific sound wave

fits into the space above the liquid. In the case of a metal container, it is the same way that

the radio waves spread in it

like the sound waves in the glass. That is the

secret of the bug

[music]

the thing is a tiny metal cylinder

with a special resonance frequency

for radio waves, it receives waves with

a certain frequency, it throws them

back again. Activating the bug is child's play for

the Soviets. There

was a van in front of the embassy

that sent a strong radio frequency

into the office and this

radio frequency signal left the Vibrating cavity

The ingenious thing was that one end of the

cylinder was lined with silver foil, which caused

the thresholds of conversations in the room to

vibrate.

The size of the cavity in the cylinder

changed, which in turn

affected the reflected radio waves in the van, so all you needed was

a headphone and a

receiving device to hear what was

going on in the room,

that many years pass before the bug is

discovered. If you don't send any

radio waves to the bug, it is not

active and therefore undetectable. You have to

catch the Soviets in the act of

transmitting radio waves from the van. Otherwise they will find it man

nothing the bug is a brilliant

invention but its developer is not a

shady secret agent but has

amazingly made a name for himself as a pioneer of

modern music who the

hell is this

[music]

man he was a kind of

scientific superstar a studied physicist from

a family of musicians and On top of that, he is a

genius when it comes to

electronics, his name is le sergewi ter

in the western world he is better

known as

le R, he achieved this primarily through his

invention of the etheropon.

thetheropon is the world's

first electronic musical instrument

Insane device with

a wailing, mournful, wonderful

sound

played in the air

above the sjetreunglau to

open to present the Soviet

flagship technology

travels to Paris London and

New York to present the miracle

but when the ter

returns to Russia in 1938 he finds a

different country Stalin rules as a

dictator in the Soviet Union, his

secret police are everywhere than

in the West, Teremin is

branded as a counter-revolutionary and

sentenced to 10 years in prison. He

is sent to Siberia in a gulak, but

then the

tide turns. One of the most

dangerous and feared men in

the Soviet government saves him

from the gulak

Beria Laenia heads the

Soviet secret service KGB Eretete Terin

a deal to be spared from prison in

exchange for the development of an

undetectable bug Terminin delivers

Thanks to his ingenious invention, the

Soviets can skim off secret operations for 7 years.

The Soviets knew that

this bug

would give them valuable information but They

couldn't have imagined what would happen in

these 7 years from

1945 to 1952.

In these 7 years, the USA dropped

two atomic bombs on Japan

[music]

Russia and the West divided

Germany into occupation zones,

NATO

was created, the Berlin Airlift was created

Called to life the USA enters the

Korean War

and the Soviets hear everything.

Much of the information

gained about Termin's wze flowed into

Soviet politics and decisions

without being able to trace exactly

where it

came from, but the story of the bug is

not over yet

Russia may

have systematically spied on America, but the USA

is not

active either. They are developing the U2 reconnaissance aircraft,

the most technically advanced

aircraft in the world. Russia is spied on from

such a high altitude that it

cannot be reached by Russian defense missiles, but

on May 1, 1960, something dramatic happened

[Music]

Incident As it turns out, the

Soviets have a weapon with

Russia accusing the USA of

illegal spying on the US Ambassador

to the United Nations Henry Lodge

is in need of explanation he is using

a classic

defense strategy,

the

others have started hry LOD wants to justify the U2 program

and says yes, we

spied on them but they also did the same thing to us

and then he shows that

after it was classified for 8 years, the

whole world is now looking at the

thing, a wood carving and a few

bent

pieces of metal, he certainly felt very

flattered on the one hand At the

time, it was the most advanced aircraft

of all

time. On the other hand, it was just a

piece of

metal. That's a nice comparison,

especially if you're the inventor of the

latter,

but the Soviets covered up

Teremin's contributions to the bug. It wasn't until

decades later that his name was associated with the

bizarre listening device to

be brought

[music]

in a storage room of the London Science

Museum lies a wondrous

device from the 19th

century, a 180-year-old machine

that solves complex mathematical equations,

it was created over 100 years before the

first electronic computer and was

unique in the world. In today's

computer age it is difficult

To understand how absurd this idea

was at the time, a detailed reconstruction

now brings it back into the

public eye. This is the

number 1 difference machine,

a

problem-solving machine. It is 72 cm

high and 61 cm wide. Its 2000

precision components made of bronze, steel and

iron and its gears and levers have been

developed It was designed to

solve equations that previously only the human brain could solve. It

is supposed to revolutionize science and technology

by preventing calculation errors. There

has never

been anything like this before. Suddenly it was so

impossible that it

seemed this machine is supposed to change the world,

but who is its builder? how

does it work and what revolution is it

supposed to bring about?

The early 19th century is a very

eventful time in

Great Britain. Steam propulsion is on the

rise and people are discovering

the possibilities that it brings with it

[music].

Instead of muscle power,

machines are now used in

weaving mills On construction sites in the mining industry there

was the idea that

people could be replaced by machines,

but this revolution is largely based

on

mathematics.

Calculation results had to

be produced just as quickly as textiles and

other

goods, but the electronic

calculator does not yet exist, not all

calculations are done with the help of

printed ones mathematical tables,

the calculations that went into the

mathematical tables of the 19th

century were

made by human computers, i.e.

people who sat down and

calculated everything. In 1820, the mathematician

Charles B received a commission from the Royal

Astronomical Society to track down possible

errors in the tables and

the consequences Such errors

could be enormous, collapsing bridges,

short railway lines, all the technology, all

the expansions, all the finances, everything

was based on accurate

mathematics, small errors, big

consequences, he is horrified by what he

finds, there are a number of possible sources

of error

Printing takes over at each of

these steps, errors can

creep in. He

looked at these tables and said

in frustration, I wish I could make them

out of steam

and he wondered whether steam engines

could take over the work of the brain. The idea was way ahead of its time

and just seemed

crazy a completely new

idea, despite the advances of the

industrial revolution, the abstrs but

Charles bbbage ticks

differently. Babis was a polymath

of the 19th century. People like him

devoted themselves to the questions of their time, i.e.

the questions of the

industrial age. It was about

economy and industry, for example how

machines improve

to understand how they

worked, in principle he was a

mathematician with an exceptionally

practical

disposition, he became a professor at the

Lukasan Chair of Mathematics like

Isaac Newton before and Stepen Hawking after

[music]

his talent was revealed to him as a child, his genes

and his Inventiveness

Blitz as a child developed

a device with the over-walking WTE and

he almost drank while

testing it. It is hardly surprising that a

mind as adventurous as his produces such

adventurous thoughts.

Babit invents a machine

that is second to none, 21.5 meters

high and almost 4 tons Heavily built from

more than 25,000 parts, it is intended to

be a real calculating machine and not

just a subtraction and

addition aid.

The machine is intended to solve polynomial equations

from which key tables such as

logarithm tables

are created. When calculating, it uses

the so-called method of differences.

Consequently, it is called

[Music ]

difference machine In

1923 babit convinced the British

government that all the problems that were

caused by human calculation errors could be

solved. He was

listened to. You have to remember that it wasn't

just a wild rumble. This

man later became perhaps the

most important mathematics professor of his

time. The British government granted

him 1,500 Pounds by today's standards

around 230,000 € in 1832

babit then presented his difference machine

number 1

the prototype for his ultimate

dream machine Prototype was only a

third as wide and high as the

originally planned machine but with

its 2000 different brass and

steel components it was already very

impressive and it

works, it reliably calculates

square numbers or cubic numbers and solves

simple quadratic equations,

it doesn't work in theory but

also in

practice. BAB rightly believed in itself and its

machine, but how exactly

does this miraculous

device work? It created what we

would today call algorithms So a

series of calculation steps that then

automatically produce a result,

but in the pre-electronic

age the machine has to make do with

gears and levers alone.

Difference machine number 1

uses toothed drums that are provided with numbers

and are attached one above the other.

The numbers are arranged in ascending

columns.

The drums

are in each column for one then tens

hundreds thousands and so on

a drum turns over the ne to

zero a transfer mechanism adds

one on the drum above at the beginning

all drums are set to certain

numbers depending on the calculation to be solved

this is an arrangement of

columns that are rotate synchronize

and thereby

carry out calculations first the

middle row adds its values ​​to the right row

then the left row is added to the middle one

and the rightmost one then shows

the final result and was

correct the difference machine number 1

is a masterpiece it solves the

most pressing problems of the new

industrial age by

providing absolutely accurate calculations

but the babbit difference machine does

not go beyond a prototype,

the larger version is never

built, which is why the

project fails. The large version of the machine

consists of 25,000 components, all of which

have to fit together perfectly, every

single part has to be precise and made by hand

be manufactured otherwise the

machine

won't work bbit had to deal with permissible

tolerances no machine is

perfect and you have to determine how much

inaccuracy is permissible if the

margin is too large the

machine could easily tilt with 25,000 parts. At the

beginning of the 19th century

this level of accuracy is just as

illusory as a flight to the moon babit

promises the government a finished

machine within 3 years but

even the prototype difference machine

number 1 eats up 9

years but in addition to the problematic

precision manufacturing there are also

problems with Babi's big ego in short

diplomacy is not his strength

he was sometimes a bit harsh

he complained about children playing too loudly

or barrel organs and with

some

emphasis that wasn't always well received.

In 1832 B schoffe Art became

too much for his technician Joseph Clement.

He and Clem fell out and

then the whole project came to a

standstill but without a technician

could3 who, by today's standards,

paid 2.3 million euros and

got almost nothing in return. She quits the

project. Babb's difference machine was

never completed. She didn't get beyond the

prototype, but BB is already thinking

ahead. He is designing a

difference machine with a circular

calculator that operates independently

supplied with numbers he calls the project the

analytical machine

machine should, as B said,

eat its own tail it should

run through its calculations and then

decide based on that what to do next

that's more in the direction of

a

thinking machine that's a

problem-solving machine and

solving problems is what brains

do, it was basically a

programmable computer, you told it

what you wanted to do, change the task and

change your memory during the calculation process, every

calculation we do with modern

computers would have been

possible with bbage's analytical engine

if it was big enough

if the construction of such a machine would have

taken forever if bbbage's analytical

machine were built so that it had the

technological properties of a

cell phone, it would be as big as a

mountain and would probably need 1000 years to

write even one SMS, but

theoretically it could do it

Nobody is willing to spend more money

on a babbit project. The

difference machine number 1 remains his

physical

legacy

for the time being because in

1991, 120 years after his death,

the difference machine number 2 was created, which was based on an

improved design of Babb plans.

Several thousand metal components were

assembled into a huge metal block and the machine

it worked, it ran perfectly when

you

started it bbbit ideas are way ahead of their time

difference machine number 1 leads him to the

possible development of

thinking machines babbit

didn't invent the modern world, but he

at least foresaw it to some extent