Original subtitles

My exploration into the chance encounters

and unexpected discoveries

that would bring light to the world

begins in the bath.

We live in such a bright and artificially lit world,

for many of us there's a desire to return back

to a low-light environment.

And that's why, when we want to relax,

we surround ourselves now with an ancient technology:

the humble candle.

Candles provide the simplest form of artificial light,

and we've been making them for thousands of years.

Despite their ancient origins, today they lie at the heart

of a multibillion-dollar industry.

But that wasn't always the case.

Today's sweet-smelling aromatherapy candles

are symbols of luxury,

but just a few centuries ago,

candles would have had the opposite effect.

Ordinary people made their own candles in an arduous process

that involved rendering rancid animal fat,

and when they finally lit them up indoors,

they filled their rooms with smoke and noxious fumes.

But all this was going to change.

To create a light that was both clean and bright

would take a chance encounter in the most unlikely of places.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Back in 1659, here on the island of Nantucket,

off the coast of Massachusett,

a group of English settlers set up a small farming community.

But it was out at sea they would make their name

in the story of light.

- Morning. - Good morning, how are you?

- I'm good. - Welcome aboard.

Thank you very much.

The farmers would soon discovr

a new source of artificial light.

It may sound completely bonkers,

but it lay within the body of a whale.

What's the likelihood that we're going to see something?

You never know.

It's a big ocean out there,

and depending on how well, you know --

it's always good to have a lot of eyes concentrating

on the horizon, looking for spouts.

Whales were very common in this area,

coming here to feed in the nutrient-rich waters.

Today they're a much rarer sight.

So whale watchers are a superstitious bunch.

There's a ritual here that the whale spotters like to use

to encourage the whales to come out,

which is they throw a blue M&M into the sea

to elicit the appearance of the mighty beast.

So I'm going to do this.

This is actually an historic tradition.

I believe there's a scene in Moby-Dick where they do this.

All right, here we go.

All right, show yourselves!

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Okay, there we have a spout.

Oh, yeah, I see it!

Look at that, look at that! There it is!

Big puffy plume off the surface of the water.

- Oh, I see the spout again. - Yep, very good.

- Now you've got the hang of it. - I could have been a whaler!

- They have massive lungs. - Yeah, look at that.

That vapor erupts from their lungs.

Can you tell what kind of whale it is?

Yep, in this case we can tell it's a humpback whale.

Really?

This individual is more than likely feeding.

Here it is diving.

Watch the tail floats go up... and down underwater.

That is spectacular.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Before long the settlers start hunting whales

like this humpback,

creating one of America's first global industries.

The prize was the whale's blubber,

which could be used in everything

from soap and cosmetics to lubricants and medicines.

But it took a crazy encounter by a legendary Nantucketer

to bring a brand-new type of light to the world.

On one fateful day in 1712, the story goes

that a powerful nor'easter blew Captain Hussey well out

into the deep waters of the Atlantic,

out in this direction,

where he encountered a species of whale

that had never been seen before,

a giant leviathan of the deep: the sperm whale.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales,

growing to over 65 feet long,

and they can be fierce and dangerous animals.

Legend has it that Hussey would soon discover

these whales contained a unique type of oil

not found in other species.

And it was this oil that would go on to play a key role

in the story of light.

But first he had to risk life and limb to catch one.

When a whale was spotted, they would lower the whale boats,

they would get in and they would start rowing,

six men in this boat.

When they get very close to the whale,

then the harpooner takes up his harpoon,

which looks like this.

They want to get really close to the whale.

You can't throw it too far.

Okay, so, I mean, you're just like 10 feet

from this giant beast?

- Or maybe even closer. - Wow.

And then you just take up that harpoon

and you try to actually spear it, yes.

You're just hooking it. Right, right, right.

So now the whale takes off swimming

because he's been struck by this harpoon.

And the line, which is in this tub,

is now paying out very fast,

and you are racing across the ocean

on the Nantucket sleigh ride.

That would have been some rid.

At the peak of the whaling industry,

over 5,000 sperm whales were slaughtered each year.

Once they'd caught and killed one,

the carcass was processed out at sea.

It was here the whalers uncovered something

truly bizarre that changed the course of history.

When they hacked their way into this creature's massive head,

they found something they had never seen before:

a vast reservoir of an oily substance,

over hundreds of gallons of it.

They called it spermaceti

because of its resemblance to seminal fluid.

Before long, spermaceti oil would become

one of the most valuable substances on the planet.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Extracting the spermaceti oil

is a revolting and laborious business.

They made a hole on the top of the head, and then they lower

the youngest, smallest person onboard,

who's probably a 14-year-old cabin boy,

into the head of the whale.

They put a kid inside the whale's head.

Right. He comes out with a bucket more of oil.

This whale's been dead for days probably, right?

Probably, yeah.

It must have smelled appalling.

It did.

It didn't take long for some bright spark

to see if the spermaceti oil would burn,

and this triggers a revolution in artificial light.

Spermaceti oil burns with an unusually white, bright light,

without odor or smoke.

It's actually twice as bright as a traditional candle.

It's a simple design, really.

Just a wick suspended in a reservoir of oil.

But spermaceti lamps and candles quickly became

the most prized form of artificial light

in Europe and in America.

The demand for spermaceti oil goes through the roof,

pouring millions of dollars into the American economy.

Eager to protect their profits, the Nantucket tradesmen

come up with a brand-new business idea,

and it's a practice still used throughout the world today.

By the late 1700s, spermaceti processing factories

have sprouted up all over Nantucket

and even into the mainland.

And the owners get together and form

the United Company of Spermaceti Chandlers,

and the organization gives them the power

to keep newcomers from entering the market,

and it also enables them to keep Nantucket whalers

from artificially raising the price of oil.

It's one of the first examples of monopolies

and price-fixing on record.

Spermaceti oil not only transforms

the way we light our world, it helps create innovations

in the most surprising of places.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

It's by the light of spermaceti lamps

that great authors like Benjamin Franklin

and Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen

write their greatest works.

During the 1800s, it's spermaceti oil

that lubes the steam engines and locomotives

of the Industrial Revolution.

And it was still used in the gearboxes

of American automatic cars up until 1972.

And because it stays liquid even at subzero temperatures,

an urban myth took root

that it was used in the Apollo 11 mission

to land on the moon.

Once we had bright lights like spermaceti lamps,

there's an immediate impact on our lives.

It meant we didn't go to bed at sundown,

we could stay up longer,

do our chores later into the evening,

and even read a book at bedtime.

But it's not all good news.

All this extra light messes with our sleep.

Are you having trouble sleeping, Steven?

You know, it's funny, I am. That's weird.

Can you explain why this is?

- It's actually quite natural. - Really?

Yeah. Until the advent of artificial lighting,

people all over the world --

rich and poor, north and south --

they tended to sleep in two phases each night.

They referred to their first sleep and their second sleep.

And so they'd sleep for how long?

People would sleep for a number of hours,

and then wake up sometime around midnight,

usually for an hour or two.

And what would they do during that time?

Well, according to records, some people broke the law.

It was an opportunity to get up

and pilfer from the neighbors.

I like it, pilfering in the middle of the night.

Yeah, people relieve themselves,

they looked after children or livestock.

Without being too explicit about this, the advice was,

do not conceive a child before your first sleep

when you're both exhausted from the day's labor.

Wait until between the first and second sleep,

when you're already rested.

That's the ideal time to conceive a healthy child.

With artificial lighting, the fact we could stay up later

meant our natural two-sleep pattern

was squeezed into one single sleep.

[ toilet flushes ]

But now many of us suffer from insomnia.

It's not unnatural to wake up in the middle of the night.

So insomnia, in a way, is our body

kind of reverting back to that older rhythm.

Yeah, the exposure to artificial light

has physiological effects, but we are going to fall back

and wake up every now and then in the middle of the night,

and there's just nothing wrong with it.

All right, I feel a lot better about my insomnia.

I'm going to try and get a little more shut-eye.

Perfectly natural.

All right, will you turn off the light?

[ ♪♪♪ ]

By the 1800s, our fascination with artificial light

had created a melting pot of inventions and ideas.

But before you shout out "light bulb,"

there's one other dazzling innovation

I want to explore from this time period,

and it would once again change the course of history.

The very poor were increasingly living

in the dark slums of America's growing cities.

One man made it his mission

to shine light on their wretched lives.

It would take a flash of inspiration

for the next step in the journey of light.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

That man was journalist Jacob Riis.

In the late 1800s here in New York City,

Riis would write a new chapter in the story of light.

He creates a source of light so bright,

it allows him to capture an image

and change people's minds.

[ sirens blaring and horn honking ]

Riis is investigating a slum district

called Five Points in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

It's home to poor immigrants

who'd come chasing the American dream.

With half a million people

living in just 15,000 tenement buildings,

neighborhoods like Five Points

are among the most densely populated places on Earth.

Riis is himself an immigrant,

and so the squalor he finds here appalls him.

He starts taking late-night walks

through the back alleys and streets of Five Points,

peering into the lives of the people there.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

These cramped, dark, unsanitary hovels

are cesspits for disease and squalor,

far removed from the day-to-day lives of most Americans.

Here's Riis in his own words:

"The sights I saw there gripped my heart

until I felt that I must tell of them or burst

or turn anarchist or something."

Riis bangs out reports for newspapers and magazines,

but his words fail to arouse public interest.

He wants to share with middle America

the lives of real people from the slums.

Maybe a photograph would help.

Photography at this point is an experimental technology.

Each photograph required a single plate,

and they could be expensive.

And they weren't very sensitive,

so exposure times were extremely long,

even in good light.

So this is Riis' big problem.

He wants to photograph inside the tenement apartments,

but they're simply too dark.

What he needs is a bright, portable light source.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Throughout the 1800s, photographers try

all sorts of ways to light their photos.

A breakthrough comes with a metal called magnesium.

All you really have to do is set it on fire.

As you can see, it generates a bright light,

but it's not very stable,

and the fumes are really unpleasant.

But then, in 1887, two pyromaniacs from Germany

grind up the magnesium and add it to gunpowder.

This produces an explosive solution.

They call it Blitzlichtpulver, literally "flashlight powder."

Riis notices a small, four-line article in his morning paper

all about this new flash photography phenomenon

from Germany.

News of Blitzlicht has crossed the Atlantic.

Could this be the innovation Riis has been waiting for?

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Riis heads back down into the dark tenement hovels,

now armed with the Blitzlicht flash powder.

He wants to try to light up his nighttime images,

but it's a tricky and dangerous process.

All right, so what do we need to do to light this thing up?

- We need a flash gun. - I'm excited and terrified.

So this is a flash gun?

This is a flash gun right here.

That sounds dangerous already. Okay.

It is dangerous, of course, in the wrong hands.

Now, watch, we're going to put the cap inside.

- Don't push that button. - Okay. I won't, I promise.

Now, this is black powder.

Black powder is a form of gunpowder.

My kids would love this.

If this is what you needed to take photographs,

they would take photographs all day long.

They just like blowing things up.

In order to get a more white flash, we add magnesium.

I keep feeling like this is about to blow up in my face.

[ laughs ]

So that's the magnesium.

That's what's going to give the white light.

The powder underneath really kind of propels it.

I'm going to suit you up.

Nothing can go wrong now. I've got an apron on!

I look like some kind of deranged butcher.

- Hold it up above your head. - Right.

If it's above your head and the wind is blowing that way,

you won't burn your hair.

Oh, I see. Right.

It's going to be up about like that.

Keep it level. So that's it.

So now you're ready to fire.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Riis wants to photograph the people in the tenements

unposed and spontaneous,

so he sets off unannounced into the slums after midnight.

And you can imagine how surprising it must have been

for these people when a stranger walks into their home

and sets off a small explosion.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

[ thunder rumbles ]

Many of the occupants are left dazed and confused.

One account recalls, "A blinding flash,

the patter of retreating footsteps,

and the mysterious visitors were gone."

You can see how it was dangerous work.

Riis actually nearly blinded himself once,

and on several occasions, he actually set fire

to the tenements he was trying to photograph.

Riis said, "Our party carried terror wherever it went."

But at least he gets his photographs.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

With a set of images lit by flash,

Riis publishes his photos in a book called

How the Other Half Lives.

He then goes on a nationwide lecture trip,

projecting his photographs to audiences

using another light device:

a newly devised type of magic lantern.

JOHNSON: Jacob Riis would have loved this, right?

Yeah, it's really special to be able

to project his work this large, this bright,

because, you know, he would use a magic lantern,

- which has a candle inside. - Right.

A candle is essentially 1 lumen,

so he would project his work with 1 lumen,

and today we have 12,000 lumens.

It's so intense to be here and see these images

of this neighborhood, basically,

projected up on the screen.

It's kind of like we've created

the world's most depressing PowerPoint presentation.

[ laughs ]

People are walking by and shocked at these images.

Thanks to the innovations of flash photography

and the magic lantern,

Riis takes this previously invisible group of people

and makes them visible on a mass scale.

It sets in motion a dramatic change in public opinion,

triggering one of the great movements of social reform

in American history.

Thanks to Riis,

many of the city's worst tenement buildings

are torn down.

A decade of improvements follows,

with sewers, garbage collection,

and indoor plumbing.

Riis used his images to share his vision

and changed the way we see the world.

One century comes up with a way to capture images

in a dimly lit room,

and by the next century it has transformed the lives

of city dwellers everywhere.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

While the photographer's flash could light a room

for a short, blinding moment,

people at this time still relied on candles and lamps

to light their way after dark.

The buzz now was to create a continuous and bright light

at the flick of a switch.

It was time for the first ever light bulb moment.

So how many people does it take to invent a light bulb?

You know the answer. One, right?

Thomas Alva Edison.

Well, that's not exactly true.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Decades before Edison took an interest,

inventors from across Europe and America

had experimented with and patented

a range of designs for electric light bulbs.

[ knocking ]

But the problem with these early bulbs...

they didn't last that long.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

It wasn't until 1878,

almost 40 years after the first patented light bulb,

that the stage is set

for the grand entrance of Thomas Edison.

Edison was already a media sensation.

What do you think?

I've got a little Edison impersonation business

on the side.

He was dubbed a wizard for being the first person

to record a voice on a phonograph.

And now he sets his mind to the problem of electric light.

And the first thing he does is buy up

an existing Canadian patent.

Here's Edison in his own words: "I am not impressed

by the great names and reputations

of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention.

It's their ideas that appeal to me.

I'm quite correctly described as more of a sponge

than an inventor."

[ ♪♪♪ ]

This might not sound like the normal inventor mindset,

but by buying up patents, Edison could build

on other people's already existing designs.

People think that by filing a patent,

they're going to be automatically rich,

they're going to make a lot of money,

but most patents end up being worth

absolutely nothing.

It's the idea behind it that's important.

In the case of the light bulb,

there are, you know, dozens of patents,

people patenting parts of the invention,

people patenting the whole thing.

Many people have good ideas that can contribute

to the development of a major idea,

but they don't have all of the vision,

all the skill set necessary to do that.

So a smart person with a bigger vision will come along

and buy up that portfolio of patents

and then use them to their advantage.

That's not uncommon in today's technology world.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

With his newly purchased patent,

Edison reckons it will only take him a few weeks

to create a long-lasting light bulb...

but it's much harder than he thought.

So what does he do?

Edison is a master of what we now call vaporware,

announcing a nonexistent product

in order to scare off competitors.

Basically, he lies.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Edison announces to the press

that he's succeeded in inventing

the first long-life electric light bulb

and encourages journalists to come see it.

Edison invites each reporter, one by one, into a booth

where he showcases his miraculous new invention

and discusses the merits of his design.

But only for a few minutes max,

just long enough to ensure that the bulb doesn't blow.

And then he ushers the reporter out of the booth,

and then he goes in and screws in a new light bulb

and brings the next guy in.

When asked how long his light bulb will last,

he answers confidently, "Forever... almost?"

[ ♪♪♪ ]

But now Edison has to make good on his blatant lie.

Rather than work alone,

Edison employs the brightest minds of the time.

He calls them his "muckers,"

and sets up the world's first research and development lab.

On top of that, he creates a new business model:

to give his staff an extra incentive,

he awards them with shares in the company.

The team try out over 6,000 different materials

for the light bulb filament.

Edison is even inspired by his old fishing rod

and gets his muckers to experiment

with stuff like bamboo.

It takes almost two years,

but they finally manage to create

a long-lasting light bulb,

which burns for an incredible 1,200 hours.

The first public display of Edison's incandescent light

happens on New Year's Eve, 1879.

Edison said, "The electric light

has caused me the greatest amount of study

and required the most elaborate experiments."

Edison's light bulb is not so much a single invention

as it is a collection of small but ingenious improvements.

By 1880, electric light bulbs go into mass production.

Edison announces that lighting our homes now comes cheap.

With spermaceti oil lamps,

we got just seven hours of light

for an average day's wage.

But with electric light bulbs,

it was 1,200 hours for the same money.

Edison created a new kind of workspace

that would prove crucial for the next century's businesses:

the modern corporate research and development lab.

And on top of that, he inaugurated a tradition

that would be widely adopted by the technology sector:

paying their employees in shares and not just in cash.

In a sense, Edison didn't just invent technology,

he also invented a system of inventing

that would drive 20th-century innovation.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

It took a while for electric light bulbs to take off

because most homes didn't have a source of electricity.

But as our cities slowly began to crackle with power,

Edison's influence spreads far and wide.

Edison's light bulbs radically change our work life,

creating the first 24-hour factories

and the innovation of shift work.

This massively increases productivity

right across the globe.

Electric streetlights cause a drop in crime

and open the night to the entertainment industry,

from music halls to the movie.

[ film reel clattering ]

And with our homes now bathed in electric light,

it opens a door to other electrical appliances:

the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner,

the food mixer transform the role of women,

halving the hours a housewife spends on chores,

allowing many to enter the national workforce.

[ typewriter keys clacking ]

While Edison and his R&D team light our homes

and bring the world into the age of electricity,

there's one arena Edison actually failed to tackle

in his lifetime.

[ bat cracks and crowd cheers ]

And that was to bring light to sports.

Until the 1930s, professional sporting events

like baseball games

were actually relatively small-scale affairs.

The games had to be played during daylight hours,

usually during the work week,

which meant that a big professional baseball game

might only attract an audience of a few thousand people.

To increase numbers,

games would have to be played after work,

but that's when it got dark.

[ "Charge!" plays on organ ]

In his old age, Edison dreamed

of lighting up large spaces like this,

but it's not a simple task.

One of the biggest challenges

is there are players all over the field.

The game is very omnidirectional.

You never know which way they're going to turn.

I mean, what made it so difficult?

We have to put lights all around the field

to make sure that we minimize shadows.

And we have to make sure we put them

in the appropriate place,

to not put them in offending zones

of the batters and the players

so they truly don't get blinded by light.

[ generators winding up ]

The man credited with the solution is R.J. Swackhammer,

a lighting designer for Edison's company,

General Electric.

It wasn't so much a technological innovation.

It was more the precise placement of floodlights

plus narrow-beamed spotlights

around the irregular-shaped field,

creating an even distribution of light.

[ crowd whistling and cheering ]

In May 1935,

the first Major League Baseball game played under lights

was the Cincinnati Reds versus the Philadelphia Phillies

with an evening crowd of over 20,000 people.

So we're here at home plate, we've got the lights on.

So I feel like I'm pretty well lit.

Now what is it about the lighting

that is so special on me here?

Light's hitting every side of you,

so no matter where the people sit,

no matter where the cameras stand,

you're rendered with light on all sides.

That also helps if you're a batter.

You can see the ball being lit

from left, right, forward, and back.

You can see how it's turning and whether or not

you should swing low, high, left, or right.

And how much power is driving this whole spectacle right now?

This is 1 megawatt, 1 million watts,

which costs about $100 an hour to run,

where compared to your typical house,

is about $100 per month.

Despite the obvious advantages of lights,

not everyone was convinced about lighting stadiums.

The president of one club announced,

"There is no chance night baseball

is going to become popular.

The game was meant to be played in the lord's own sunshine."

[ crowd cheering ]

But soon sports stadiums across the country

and around the world are being fitted with lights.

[ shutter clicking and bat cracks ]

The simple ability to play at night

had some surprising consequences.

Lighting up stadiums

effectively brought sports to the masses on a global scale,

and it helped create the national pastime

of spectator sports from baseball to football

to basketball, all the way to monster trucks.

And it turned sports

into a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry.

[ cheering ]

Artificial light may have started out

as a way for us to illuminate our dark world,

but we now had the power to use it just for fun.

Garage inventors could now create lights

just to bring color and excitement to our cities.

If there's one place on Earth that's famous for its lights,

it's Las Vegas.

The city is lit up like a Christmas tree,

and everywhere you look, the vibrant glow of neon.

Now, the marriage of Sin City to its gaudy neon lights

came about by a chance encounter with the work

of a crazy French scientist.

That man was Georges Claude.

Claude is a chemist by trade,

but he cares less for academic studies

and more for fantasy books.

Claude is an avid reader

of the early science-fiction novels of Jules Verne,

whose tales of adventure

open his mind to new possibilities.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

In 1902, working in Paris,

Claude makes an accidental discovery

while studying the composition of air.

[ rattling ]

Air was known to contain around 78% nitrogen

plus 21% oxygen and 1% "other."

It's in these "other" gases

where Claude's thirst for mystery and his eye for a buck

collide in spectacular fashio.

So Claude has got all these extra strange gases

lying around, and so, like any self-respecting mad scientist,

he decides to pass a current of electricity through them,

and one of those gases lights up a vivid shade of red.

That gas turns out to be neon.

[ buzzing ]

Neon gas itself was not a new discovery,

but it had been mostly ignored by other scientists.

The fact it glows brightly

when you pass electricity through it

gives Claude an idea:

he invents and patents the first neon tube light.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Claude decides to set up a stall in the streets of Paris

to showcase his amazing new electric light.

Neon! People... you want some neon?

Word spreads all around the world,

and before long the orders are coming in,

and Claude can't meet the demand.

Look at this glowing color! You can make signs from it!

And so, to protect his invention

and bring his product to the market,

he decides to embrace a new business model:

the franchise.

Franchises, and the trade secrets they protect,

dominate the world of commerce today.

It's how some of the very best ideas go global.

I get chills any time I talk about franchises.

- Really? - I do.

Thank God we have you on the show. That's great.

You may be the only person in the world.

Well, I get chills about it

because it's one entrepreneur saying to another entrepreneur,

"You don't have the money to do this big company?

Buy into my idea.

Put a little money down, start your own business,

and then pay me the equivalent of a royalty

over a period of time."

When I was growing up, you had all of these black men

who just had ideas,

but they couldn't get the capital from the banks.

But yet they pooled together all their money

to buy a McDonald's franchise

or to buy a Buick franchise or a GM franchise,

and by opening up that,

they built wealth in the community,

put their kids through school, employed the community,

and the wealth just spread.

That was the most impassioned speech

about franchises I've ever heard.

I find franchises to be great business models

when the underlying idea of it is so powerful

that it captures the imagination of an entire community,

if not a nation.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Back in 1920s Las Vegas, Claude's neon light franchise

was picked up by an entrepreneurial sign writer

called Tom Young.

Young's Electric Sign Company

still keeps Las Vegas alight to this day.

I caught up with his grandson, Jeff.

So what brought your grandfather to Vegas?

My grandfather was born in England

and immigrated as a young man to Utah

and was a hand letterer was his trade.

And early on he was travelling through this area

to see family in California

and started selling signs in Las Vegas.

How did he start thinking about really lighting up the signs?

Light and energy were such a big part of this area

because of the building of Hoover Dam, and he thought,

"All that electricity,

there's going to be an opportunity down there

to make some pretty bright signs."

- Right, right. - Yeah.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

With a loan of $300, Young sets up a sign writing company.

Later, he opens a branch

in the still-small town of Las Vegas.

Tom Young brings a completely new aesthetic and scale

to sign writing,

and at its heart is neon lighting.

[ buzzing ]

These are some of the biggest signs in the world here.

These I-beams were just massive,

because it was supporting a 260-foot display.

Our plastic fabrication is back in this area.

We actually just shipped out

a giant flamingo that's going downtown.

The scale is much bigger here

than you'll get anywhere else in the world.

Caesars at 165 feet, Mandalay, Mirage, Bellagio:

we've had involvement with every casino

that you can think of in Las Vegas.

This is our glass room.

I'll take you in there and show you.

By using different color glass tubes

and even different gases,

Young creates a rainbow of bright colors.

JOHNSON: So for someone like your grandfather in 1920,

what is it about neon that seems so immediately useful?

Well, at the time, light bulbs, you could turn them on and off,

but they didn't really have color

and you couldn't bend them.

You get a tube of glass,

and you can bend it virtually in any shape,

in virtually any color.

I mean, there was just nothing like that anywhere,

and so it just took off like wildfire.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

It's a remarkable story of how different ideas

and skills came together to create something brand-new.

A new technology from France

collides with an immigrant sign designer from England

in the middle of the American Southwest.

Young realizes that neon isn't just about light.

It could also be used to make words.

It's one of those chance encounters

that will ultimately transform the look of an entire city.

Neon light becomes the ultimate way to advertise.

Hotels and casinos use it to lure people in.

The giant neon displays

are even seen as a new form of art.

These lights inspire a generation of architects

to abandon the sterile, serious designs of Modernism

and embrace the playful, symbolic excess

of the Las Vegas strip.

This is how change happens.

Scientists discover a new kind of gas,

which creates an amazing business opportunity,

which ultimately leads to a new artistic movement,

and every step of that journey, neon lit the way.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

People like Young were now using light

to send out a bold, bright message.

In the final chapter in the story of light,

it would be used not for illumination as such,

more as an industrial tool.

And this time as well,

inspiration didn't come from scientists,

but from science fiction.

Just a minute!

Ladies and gentlemen, I think something is happening.

[ ominous string music plays ]

From H.G. Wells in the 1800s

through to Flash Gordon and Superman in the 1930s,

early sci-fi stories, comic strips, and films

often used beams of light to zap people.

[ laser buzzes ]

The innovation of what came to be called the laser

didn't actually come about in the real world

until the late 1950s and early '60s.

Not for the first time, the science-fiction writers

were well ahead of the scientists.

When the laser finally becomes reality,

its first mainstream use isn't as a terrifying weapon,

but as something a little less exciting:

[ beeps ]

scanning barcodes.

[ beeps ]

Barcodes were invented back in the late '40s

by two grad students,

Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland.

They'd overheard a shop owner

wanting a way to read product information at the checkout.

Well, you'll want one of this, sir.

Six pence a card.

Six pence, eh?

To read the barcodes originally took a cumbersome device

inspired by a movie projector

and powered by a large 500-watt light bulb.

But with the invention of the laser,

a different kind of light was created.

It's very pure, made from single colors of the spectrum,

and can be focused to a narrow beam.

With a laser,

small, handheld scanners were possible.

Okay, so it may not seem like the sexiest of innovations,

but the ability to quickly and efficiently scan barcodes

transformed retailing all around the world.

Each transaction could be recorded and tracked

into the supply chain,

which meant that you never ran out of goods.

Big retail outlets were able to maintain

vast inventories of goods, which gave them

a critical advantage over smaller mom-and-pop stores.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

With barcodes and laser scanners,

retail outlets ballooned into the huge stores

that now dominate shopping malls across the world.

Lasers effectively changed the face of shopping.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

Today, lasers have come to enable

so much in our daily life.

Lasers transform the music and movie industry

with the innovation of CDs and DVDs,

and they make an awesome stage show.

High-power lasers are behind every journey we make.

They revolutionize construction for transport,

with laser cutting, drilling, and welding

used in building every car and airplane.

And laser light transforms global communications,

as nearly every telephone call, email, and web search

is now carried as pulses of light

through a system of fiber optics.

Science fiction might have given birth

to the idea of lasers,

but they're now an essential tool in scientific research.

And if the old sci-fi fans might have been disappointed

to see lasers used for barcode scanning,

they'd be thrilled to see

what scientists have planned for them next.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

This is the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility

near San Francisco.

It's here that we can look into the future story of light.

This is a high-security facility.

I've been scanned and swabbed and searched,

but I'm here because inside this building,

scientists have created

the most powerful laser system on the planet,

and the hope is that they can use the light

to create not a death ray,

but instead a near limitless supply of clean energy.

The goal here is to use laser light

to power nuclear fusion,

the same process that drives our sun and the stars.

The head man is Mike Dunne.

The objective of this facility is to try to reproduce,

in miniature, what's happening at the center of the sun.

And how far along in the process

towards that fusion goal would you say you are?

We're still going through the experimental journey.

And in fact, today there's a major experiment under way

to see if we can get to that next level.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

In the control room, the team of scientists

and engineers are preparing to fire the laser system.

When they flick the switch,

a single pulse of low-power laser light

is sent off through fiber optic cables.

But then, in this cavernous room,

it gets split up into 192 separate laser beams,

and their power is amplified 4 million billion times,

reaching a total output of 500,000 gigawatts.

The lasers then get routed down to the basement,

to the fusion reaction chambe.

You know how you see something that seems really futuristic,

and you're like, that looks like something from Star Trek?

It's like, this actually was from Star Trek.

DUNNE: This is the engine room of the starship Enterprise.

It's incredible.

So this is the heart of the whole facility,

where the laser beams come down from above.

We focus each laser beam down to a tiny point in space

about the width of a human hair,

onto this fusion fuel.

That red dot inside the fuel cell

is a tiny droplet of frozen hydrogen.

When the laser beams strike i,

the hydrogen atoms are converted into helium,

releasing lots of energy.

MAN OVER RADIO: Countdown started, T-minus 270 seconds.

Back in the control room, they're ready to fire.

[ alarms blaring in distance ]

So I can tell something very important is going on in here,

because they've got all these computers,

and not a single person is checking Facebook.

[ laughs ]

MAN OVER RADIO: System shot sequence ready, T-minus 30.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

[ man gives indistinct update ]

MAN OVER RADIO: Copy.

System shot sequence

ready in T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Shot.

- We're still alive. - We are.

- So that's good. - First good sign.

So what just happened?

For an instant in time,

about 100 trillionths of a second, we created,

just over there, the hottest place in the solar system.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

This facility is still at the experimental stage,

but someday, possibly very soon,

the world could be powered by fusion energy

created by laser light.

The hope is that we can optimize this laser system and the fuel

to get more energy coming out of the fusion process

than the laser itself delivers.

And if you can harness that,

then you've got an inherently clean,

inherently safe form of energy

that will last for probably a few million years.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

When you stand and look at this extraordinary machine,

you really have to pause for a second

and remind yourself that just 200 years ago,

the state of the art in artificial light

involved cutting up a whale on the deck of a ship

in the middle of the North Atlantic.

[ ♪♪♪ ]

But here we are today,

and we're creating miniature suns on Earth.

This is the journey of light,

and it started as this attempt to just read a book

before we went to bed...

[ crowd cheering ]

and then it became a massive form of commerce,

and then it became a form of advertising,

and then it became a form of art,

and now we're in this room trying to create

the next chapter in the story of light.

What started as just an attempt

to illuminate our lives after dark

now may be the future of energy.

In the next episode,

I'm looking at how we got to today's refrigerated world.

It took people like the college dropout

who tried to ship blocks of ice

cut from a frozen lake in Boston to steamy Georgia...

Everywhere he goes, the ice melts.

and a guy trying to feed his family in the Arctic.

Imagine trying to live the entire winter

on, like, moose jerky.

Discovering how to make things cold

has changed our world in many unexpected ways.

[ grinding noise ]

Oh, my God!

How We Got to Now was made possi

the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

and by contributions to your PBS station from...

[ ♪♪♪ ]

To learn more about How We Got to Now,

visit us on the web at...

How We Got to Now is available on DVD.

A companion book is also available.

To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

Captions by LNS Captioning Portland, Oregon www.LNScaptioning.com