# Seven Wonders of the Industrial World



## Brian G Turner (Oct 11, 2003)

I'm very much an Ancient and Mediaeval era sort of person - it really really does take a serious show to get me interested in the history of the industrial revolution and industrial processes. 

However, there's one screening here on BBC2 on Thursdays - and I'd expect North American viewers should be able to see it soon enough on either Discovery or PBS (at a guess).

Either way, "Seven Wonders of the Industrial World" is a really awe-inspiring series - not least because it focusses so much on the people element. Gone is the narrator disembodied from the overview, replaced instead by actors telling the story.

That in itself is normally not enough - but then place them in front of a fully reconstructed historical landscape and you have a winner of a program.

I mean, the other night, with the building of the Panama Canal, you really did see the canal being built: a massive CGI set-up of workers and steam-shovels working away in the canel bed...the rockslides...and the dry-test opening of those immense lock gates...

And that's the point of success for the series - it really does make the history look and feel contemporary, and does what history always should do: and that's _humanise_ it.

In this series you see how it broke and made the people who worked on it - not just the stars, but the forgotten supporting cast of history, covering a full range of people of the experience.

Here's the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/seven_wonders/

It's actually part of a new wash of great-made history programmes washing through the BBC at the moment - there was one about the building of the Giza Pyramids a few weeks back, there's one on the Colosseum next week, and in a fortnight's time we're going to be placed into a full mock-up of Pompeii and how that was experienced.

Groovy! 

[EDIT: edited the biggest typos out!]


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## littlemissattitude (Oct 11, 2003)

I'll be looking for these shows.  They sound very interesting.  Or, as you said, Brian - groovy.  This is a word that needs to make a comeback, by the way.


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## Brian G Turner (Oct 12, 2003)

Groovy is a good word - it never went away; was just sleeping for while.


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## Foxbat (Oct 13, 2003)

It certainly is a quality programme but I'm a bit peeved that they did not see fit to include the Forth Railway Bridge. Not only is this a beautiful and eye-catching structure but it has its human side too. There are tales of men trapped in the massive caissons used during construction. When it proved impossible to help them, they were left to die.
This bridge is one of the finest feats of engineering in that time and the fact that it is still standing and in use is the proof of that.


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