Connections - Season 2 - Eps 9: High Times
The connection between polyethylene and Big Ben is a few degrees of separation, so let us recount them: polyethylene, radar, soap, artificial dyes, color perception, tapestries, Far East goods, fake lacquer furniture, search for shorter route to Japan, Hudson in Greenland, the discovery of plentiful whales, printing the Bible, Mercator map, Martin Luther's protest, star tables, Earth as a flattened sphere, and George Graham's clock which of course leads to Big Ben.
About Connections
Title: Connections
First Air Date: 1978-10-17
Last Air Date: 1997-01-01
Status: Ended
Rating: 7.688/10 (from 8 votes)
Language: EN
Seasons: 3
Total Episodes: 40
Network: BBC One TLC
Genres: Documentary
Production Companies: Unknown
Synopsis
Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. To demonstrate this view, Burke begins each episode with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually ancient or medieval) and traces a path from that event through a series of connections to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world.
Cast
James Burke
Self - Presenter