BBC - Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2003)

How the Modern world was forged. The Industrial Revolution changed the world in countless ways - and produced many technical wonders in the process. Seven of the most notable are described here, each one proving that human creativity is as much alive in the modern world as it was in ancient times. From city sewers to the Panama Canal, these phenomenal man made creations changed the world forever.
BBC TWO presents a a ground breaking drama documentary series that tells the story of how our modern world was forged in rivets, grease and steam; in blood, sweat and human imagination. Narrated by Robert Lindsay, Seven Wonders Of The Industrial World recreates the epic monuments of the industrial revolution from Brunel's extraordinary ship, the Great Eastern, the Titanic of its day that helped to bridge the two ends of the empire, to the Panama Canal which linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans half a century later.
The series encounters the most brilliant pioneers of the industrial age and recreates their stories of burning ambition, extravagant dreams, passion and rivalry. Meticulous research of the original source materials, from private letters to newspaper reports of the day, reveal a wealth of fascinating facts, brought to life by leading actors including Steven Berkoff, Mark McGann and Ron Cook. Using CGI and reconstructions based on records and journals of the time, the epic monuments of the Industrial Revolution are brought to life. The great achievements celebrated in this series reveal as much about the human spirit as they do about technological endeavour.
The period of over 125 years from beginning of the 19th Century saw the creation of some of the worlds most remarkable feats of engineering, now celebrated as great wonders of the industrial world. The slowly evolving Industrial Revolution was the fertile ground that gave life to dreams in iron, cement, stone and steel. Dreams such as Isambard Kingdom Brunels extraordinary Great Eastern, the Crystal Palace of the Seas that he hoped would join the two ends of the British Empire and Ferdinands de Lesseps Panama Canal that linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans more than half a century later. The pioneers of the age were practical visionaries, seeing beyond the immediate horizon, the safe and the known, as they cut a path to the future. Yet their unique masterpieces could never have been built without an army of unsung heroes, the craftsmen and workers also willing to risk their lives as they laboured to bring each dream to life. Not to mention the financiers and shareholders hanging on for the ride as reputations were lost and won.
Part 1: The Great Ship
In the early 1850s Isambard Kingdom Brunel undertook his most ambitious project. He hoped his colossal ship, the Great Eastern, would provide an enduring link to the most far flung parts of the empire. Its revolutionary design attracted much criticism, however the concept laid down the blue print for ship design for years to come.
Brunel's colossal ship, the Great Eastern, is the only wonder described here that has not survived to the 21st century. In the early 1850s, Brunel hoped the ship would be his masterpiece, and that it would provide an enduring link to even the most farflung parts of the empire. At a time when most ships moored in the Thames were built to traditional designs in wood, and powered by sail, Brunel's 'Great Ship' was almost 700 feet long, a floating island made of iron. His vision was that it should carry 4,000 passengers, in magnificent style, as far as the Antipodes - without needing to refuel.

Part 2: The Brooklyn Bridge
The world's largest bridge stretching 1600 feet across the turbulent East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan Island, the Brooklyn Bridge was the ambitious brainchild of brilliant German engineer John Roebling. With 19th-century New York growing faster than any city in the world, an idea was born to unite Manhattan and Brooklyn with the longest suspension bridge ever built. Yet the ambitious dream of brilliant engineer John Roebling fast turned into a nightmare - a technological feat set against greed, corruption and a double family tragedy.
The foundations were to sink 70 feet below the river. The two mighty towers would dwarf much of New York. At the time such a bold design seemed almost miraculous, and all to be built out of a new material - steel. But the bridge was to exact the ultimate price from Roebling.

Part 3: The Bell Rock Lighthouse
In 1800, Robert Stevenson set about doing what had been considered impossible - building a lighthouse on the deadly Bell Rock reef eleven miles off the east coast of Scotland, the scene for countless shipwrecks. Robert Stevenson's plan to build a lighthouse to protect seamen from a watery grave was widely ridiculed, although, against all odds he was successful and his structure still shines out across the North Sea today.
Robert Stevenson's Bell Rock Lighthouse was created between 1807 and 1811, when the world was very different from how it is today. Stevenson, the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, had dreamed for years of making his mark on the world, by bringing light to the treacherous Scottish coast. He aimed to take on the most dangerous place of all, the Bell Rock, a large reef 11 miles out to sea, dangerously positioned in the approach to the Firth of Forth. Battling against the odds, Stevenson did eventually build his lighthouse, and to this day it shines out across the North Sea, the oldest offshore lighthouse still standing anywhere in the world.

Part 4: The Sewer King
Sewage-contaminated streets and houses were responsible for the death of more than 30,000 Londoners from disease by the mid-19th century. Three epidemics of cholera had swept through the city, leaving over 30,000 people dead. And sewage was everywhere, piling up in every gully and alleyway, in the cellars of houses in poor districts - and even seeping through cracks in floorboards.
In the summer of 1858, while the Great Eastern was being fitted out for her maiden voyage, London was in the grip of a crisis known as the 'Great Stink'. The population had grown rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, yet there had been no provision for sanitation. As the problem reached crisis point, engineer Joseph Bazalgette proposed a scheme that would link 1,000 miles of street sewers with an 82-mile long sewerage super-highway. Bazalgette's vision required extraordinary engineering solutions and set the standard for cities all over the world.

Part 5: The Panama Canal
With the growth in travel and trade, by the late 19th century shipping had become big business. Having completed the building of the Suez Canal in 1869, a Frenchman, Vicomte Ferdinand de Lesseps, dreamed of an even bolder scheme: the Panama Canal. Work started in 1880, but, rocked by financial scandal, the plan was not completed until 20 years after de Lessep's death in 1894.
Hailed as a triumph of engineering upon its completion in 1914, the Panama Canal linking the great oceans of the Atlantic and the Pacific, took 35 years of struggle to complete and cost 25000 lives. Lesseps decided he would cut a path across the isthmus of Panama,and thus unite the great oceans of the Atlantic and Pacific. Once out in the tropical heat of Panama, however, the French found themselves facing impenetrable jungle, dangerous mudslides and deathly tropical diseases, as the project proved to be an undertaking of nightmare proportions. The passage was finished just before World War I broke out by Theodore Roosevelt and his engineer John Stevens.

Part 6: The Line
How two corporate giants raced to link the east and west coasts of America. By the middle of the 19th century, the benefits brought by the host of advances of the industrial age were gradually beginning to reach America, which soon developed a spectacular achievement of its own - the Transcontinental Railway, reaching right across the continent. In 1862 it was commissioned by President Lincoln to bridge the gap between east and west. The 1,800-mile Transcontinental Railway was built by two competing teams, one building from the east and the other from California who battled against hostile terrain, hostile inhabitants, civil war and the Wild West.
The other team was building from the east and the other from California in the west. In 1869, the two teams' tracks were joined, shrinking the whole American continent, as the journey from New York to San Francisco was reduced from months to days.

Part 7: The Hoover Dam
America's Colorado River is one of the world's most dangerous and unpredictable waterways. As pioneers explored and found their way across the vast continent of America, they were frequently stopped by poor or hostile environments such as the desert regions of Arizona and Nevada. In the early 1900s, however, engineers began to realise that even here it would be possible to make the desert bloom, by building a dam across the Colorado River. Some 60 storeys high, and of a larger volume than the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hoover Dam was soon to break all records, taming the wild river and changing the face of America forever, providing electricity and irrigation to the deserts of the west.
At the height of the depression of the 1930s, poverty-stricken workers on the dam, earning just a few dollars a day, died from horrific explosions, carbon monoxide poisoning and heat exhaustion as it slowly came to fruition. The chief engineer, Frank Crowe, did nevertheless get it built ahead of schedule and under budget - notching up one more extraordinary piece of evidence for the ingenuity and tenacity of man.