Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 2572 Melville and Anna Bissell and the Carpet Sweeper. Today, a husband and wife engineer success.

Episode: 3363 Richard Sutton and reinforcement learning. Today, reinforcement learning.

Episode: 3362 A 1914 Engineering Magazine teaches us much about the evolution of our technology. Today, a revealing old magazine.

Episode: 3361 The versatile, intelligent, Raven has much to teach us. Today, ravens in thin air.

Episode: 1539 In which a thin layer of fluid determines whether an airplane flies. Today, a wind blows by us.

Episode: 1538 In which the various centuries show their faces. Today, we ask what a century looks like.

Episode: 1537 John Wilkins talks about life on the Moon, in 1638. Today, life on the moon.

Episode: 2570 Celebrating Human Ingenuity. Today, a story in two parts.

Episode: 3360 The incomparable sound of the legendary Fender Rhodes. Today we consider "The legendary Fender Rhodes".

Episode: 3359 An very special lineage: Charles Darwin: Grandson of Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin. Today, Charles Darwin’s grandparents.

Episode: 3358 Onesiphore Pecqueur and the invention of your car’s differential gears. Today, let us meet Onesiphore Pecqueur.

Episode: 1535 The mechanical clock as tactile philosophy. Today, we invent the mechanical clock.

Episode: 1534 Making sense of the slippery concept of acceleration. Today, let's think about falling.

Episode: 2563 The Prolific Isaac Asimov. Today, science or fiction?

Episode: 3357 Backpropagation: The idea that powers modern AI. Today, backpropagation, the trick behind modern AI.

Episode: 3356 A form of decorative calligraphic art emerges from penmanship instruction at 19th century business colleges. Today, when handwriting became art.

Episode: 3355 The rise of the lowly and ubiquitous Tin Can, and its various openers. Today, let us make tin cans.

Episode: 1533 The Triple Nickel: the first Black paratroopers become smoke jumpers. Today, a secret WW-II battle.

Episode: 1532 The invention and selling of the typewriter. Today, the typewriter teaches us its purpose.

Episode: 1531 On restoring the word theory. Today, let's theorize.

Episode: 2562 Paul Samuelson and the textbook Economics. Today, a book that helped educate the world.

Episode: 3354 Wharton Esherick's finely-crafted furniture, objects, and art enliven the studio building he designed and constructed. Today, building an autobiography.

Episode: 3266 Fireworks, Firecrackers, and Lunar New Year. Today, we ring the new year in with a bang.

Episode: 3353 An example showing how music, like other technologies, evolves. Today, a lesson from an old song.

Episode: 1530 Medieval masons and the mischief of success. Today, we meet a medieval mason.

Episode: 1529 Osborne Reynolds: of sand Reynolds Numbers. Today, a great Victorian engineer.

Episode: 1527 How Clean Water triggered the Great Polio Epidemics. Today, we wonder where polio came from.

Episode: 2559 Going, Going, Gone! A look at auctions. Today, going, going, gone!

Episode: 2035 The Gunpowder Plot: Terrorism little-changed in four hundred years. Today, historian Cathy Patterson asks us to "Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

Episode: 2739 Evolution of the Hall from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. Today, a room without a view.

Episode: 1526 Learning speech: the Paleolithic technological explosion. Today, we learn to talk.

Episode: 1525 Liberty ships: an amateur takes over the trade. Today, an amateur builds ships.

Episode: 1524 The other great fire of 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Today, the other great fire.

Episode: 1523 On saying goodbye to lighthouses and cabooses. Today, we say goodbye to lighthouses and cabooses.

Episode: 2556 Euclid's Elements, David Hilbert, and modern notions of mathematical abstraction. Today, making a point.

Episode: 3352 A Taste of Orange. Today we are "Tasting Orange".

Episode: 3350 Today honoring a special group of women scientists. Pickering’s Harem.

Episode: 3351 The curious struggle of the Crossbow. History is full of instances where armies cling to outmoded weapons.

Episode: 1522 A 1950 prediction of technology in the year 2000. Today, we go fifty years into the future.

Episode: 1521 John P. Parker, slave, freedom-fighter, inventor, and businessman. Today, we follow a slave out of slavery.

Episode: 1520 In which automobile makers gradually learn aerodynamics. Today, aerodynamics and automobiles.

Episode: 2555 The brave new world of digitizing books for the Web. Today, this old book.

Episode: 2862 Randomness out of Nothingness. Today, let's talk about how to pick random numbers out of thin air.

Episode: 3349 The Inhuman Distances of the Speed of Light. Today, inhuman distances.

Episode: 1519 Learning to acquire knowledge and create it at the same time. Today, we wonder where knowledge comes from.

Episode: 1518 A concern about computers and the redefinition of reality. Today, we try to tell fact from fiction.

Episode: 1517 The very odd bridge that Roebling almost built. Today, a strange bridge.

Episode: 1516 In which we must save the lore as well as the plants. Today, we have to save more than the endangered plants.

Episode: 2554 The Creativity of Slogans and Jingles. Today, "think different."

Episode: 3090 Friedrich Richard Petri. Today, drawing the frontier.