Modern Marvels
Season 3
199510 episodes
Episode 1
Space Shuttle
Aug 20, 199544m
Considered by many to be the most astounding machine ever built, this reusable spaceship is the apex of flight technology. This program recounts the challenges and the critical issues that led to NASA’s decision to create an “airplane” to navigate space.
Episode 2
Brooklyn Bridge
Oct 1, 199544m
It was an engineering feat of almost miraculous proportions and a design of spectacular elegance. Rare photographs and behind-the-scenes stories recall the politics, the struggles, and the tragedies that made possible “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.
Episode 3
Tunnels
Oct 8, 199544m
There is no more potent demonstration of man’s resolve than the design and construction of tunnels–avenues that slice through a conspiracy of elements in the single-minded determination to connect two points. Whether underwater, blasted through solid rock, or negotiating the shifting strata of earth’s unstable crust, we explore the design and engineering of famous tunnels…and the motivation behind them.
Episode 4
Tennessee Valley Authority
Oct 15, 199544m
During the depths of the Great Depression, it was FDR’s greatest triumph: A massive public works project that took a 40,000 square mile, disaster-prone river basin, and turned it into a model of industrial progress.
Episode 5
Oil
Oct 16, 199544m
From the first well in Pennsylvania to the gushing Spindletop and modern supertankers, the story of oil is the story of civilization as we know it. We’ll take a look at the ingenious and outrageous men who risked everything for “black gold” and unimaginable wealth.
Episode 6
Silver Mines
Oct 1, 199544m
It was called the "mother lode", a deposit of silver so massive that it would produce $300-million in its first 25 years of operation, establish Nevada as a state, and bankroll the Union Army in the Civil War. Named after an early investor, we'll see how the Comstock Lode, discovered near Virginia City, proved to be a scientific laboratory from which vast improvements in mining technology and safety were pioneered, including innovations in drilling, ventilation, drainage, and ore processing.
Episode 7
The NYC Subway
Oct 19, 199544m
A trip through time on the New York Subway beginning at the beginning– October 1904. We look at New York before the subway–a world of horse carts and elevated trains. We see early impractical experiments in transportation like the pneumatic subway or the elevated cable car. The program will deal with the technology of the subway, the construction, and financing. We look at subway stations and equipment.
Episode 8
The Railroads That Tamed the West
Oct 20, 199544m
The year was 1869 and America had just completed the greatest building achievement in its history–the Transcontinental Railroad. A thin ribbon of steel and wood now connected East and West. But the fledgling country now faced an even greater challenge–how to harness the awesome potential of the railroad to tame the still wide-open and wild West.
Episode 9
Paving America
Oct 29, 199544m
The story of the construction of our grand national highway system, from its beginnings in 1912 (it was conceived by auto and headlight tycoons) to its completion in 1984 (when the last stoplight was removed–and buried).
Episode 12
The Alaskan Oil Pipeline
Nov 4, 1995
Being starved by an OPEC embargo, America is desperate for oil, and in 1973 construction begins on a 800 mile pipeline, tapping into Alaskan oil to quench their insatiable oil hunger.