Ooh!
Ha-ha!
Ooh!
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Mmm-mmm...
- (ALARM CLOCK RINGS) - Ah... ah!
Ooh!
Ooh-ooh-ooh!
(RATTLING AND CLANGING)
- Watch out, pooch! - (WHISTLE TOOTS)
Coming through! Hello, viewers, and welcome to my World Of Invention,
the show that gives the spurt to expertise
and puts intelligence on the telly.
Today, we're looking at unusual forms of transport.
We'll be meeting a motorcycle fan
with a plan
on the Isle of Man,
discovering how the fictional flying saucer
proved a source of inspiration for real-life space craft...
MAN: If all things go well, we could be transporting
the first person to space by 2025.
Yeah! Whoo!
And Mr Jem, our science correspondent, takes the tube
as he investigates a form of rail travel that never caught on.
Argh!
Not like my runabout steam chair, eh, lad?
But first, here's a vehicle that not only takes you from A to B,
but takes you under the C as well.
Under the sea! (CHUCKLES) See what I did there, Ashley?
ASHLEY: Ah-ha! Very good, Wallace!
Now, we all know
that the submarine is designed for going underwater.
But, of course, it's also perfect at being undetectable.
So if you fancy doing a bit of travelling around while keeping a very low profile,
it's the perfect invention.
And that's how this amazing submarine came about.
Mikhail Puchkov from St Petersburg
started building his one-man, pedal-powered sub
in his attic 30 years ago.
He was just 20 years old.
(TRANSLATION) This sub is my life's work
and I would say it's the love of my life as well.
I'm very proud of my submarine.
Mikhail built his submarine
from old scrap and stuff he found lying around.
(TRANSLATION) I made all the parts and put all the different sections together.
I managed to find the pedals, seat,
window, propeller, steering wheels...
I collected them together and had to attach them to the main body
and do it all so that no-one would notice.
No-one would notice?! Why all the secrecy? Well, remember,
when Mikhail started building his submarine,
it was the Soviet era
and the head of state was the hard-lined Leonid Brezhnev.
Personal freedom wasn't at the top of his political agenda...
or even at the bottom of it!
(TRANSLATION) In the days of the Soviet Union, it was difficult to go abroad.
I couldn't just leave my job and go travelling in my own country.
Fearful of the infamous KGB, Mikhail had to work at night and bit by bit
his pedal-powered submarine slowly took shape.
By 1990, after nine long years and some scary ups and downs,
Mikhail's submarine could now
properly dive, resurface and travel along the sea bed...
as long as he kept pedalling, of course.
But it wasn't all plain sailing.
(TRANSLATION) One dark night I lowered the sub into the river
and started going down the Neva into the Gulf of Finland.
I got caught in some metallic net
and as I was trying to get out of the net
the locals called the police and the police called the KGB.
For three long days the KGB interrogated Mikhail,
but now it was the era of President Gorbachev,
perestroika and more enlightened times in the Soviet Union,
and much to Mikhail's surprise and relief,
the KGB didn't lock him up,
they did something quite extraordinary.
(TRANSLATION) The KGB helped me apply to university.
And so in 1990,
Mikhail became the oldest student
at the shipbuilding institute in St Petersburg.
But more importantly, he was free
to carry on travelling in his one-man submarine,
now with the blessing of the authorities.
In 1994, Mikhail decided to really test his submarine.
This time on a 40-mile round trip to Kronshtadt Island,
pedalling all the way.
(TRANSLATION) Physically, you could compare this
to attaching a wheelbarrow to a man,
dressing him in a rubber suit and getting him to drag it 20 miles or so.
I decided to switch to a motor system after that! (LAUGHS)
Now, after almost 30 years,
his sub has been transformed.
It's become bigger, blacker and the pedals are long gone.
It now has two engines,
an electronic navigation system
and a video link to the surface.
(TRANSLATION) The sub helps me take a break from all things ordinary
and from the daily grind.
It teaches me patience
and I also teach it some things in return. (LAUGHS)
We complete each other.
Now older and wiser, there's one thing that hasn't changed
since he started secretly building his sub 30 years ago...
Mikhail still just wants the freedom to travel around a bit.
(TRANSLATION) My dream is to paint the submarine yellow
and one day sail to Liverpool.
(# INSTRUMENTAL: Yellow Submarine)
WALLACE: Now that's what I call a man of sub-stance!
Yes, there are so many ways to get from A to B,
and with my new chair,
it's a walk in the park.
For example, if I need a leg-up to reach the next item,
the runabout steam chair will always rise to the occasion.
Ho-ho!
There we are! Makes life much easier, eh, Gromit?
But it's not steam power we're looking at next.
It's all about electric motors.
ASHLEY: That's right, Wallace.
Electric-powered cars these days
are stylish and even fashionable,
but most people don't know that inventors have been bringing us electric vehicles
for over 150 years now.
But although they've always been green, quiet and efficient,
most of us still drive around in cars
powered by a dirty, noisy internal combustion engine.
However, there's an exceptional inventor in Potters Bar, north London
who's determined to change all that.
And, believe it or not,
this is the research and design headquarters
of an international company,
which is a major player in the field of electric motors.
And it's all powered by the unique talents
of the extraordinary - and some might say eccentric...
British inventor Cedric Lynch.
This is the book from which I learned
how to make the first electric motor I ever made at the age of about five or six
and it shows how to make an electric motor from a cork and a needle
and some dressmaker's pins and a magnet and some Plasticine.
I can remember
the fascination with which I saw this thing actually running.
Despite leaving school at the age of 12,
Cedric became obsessed with electric motors
and incredibly came up with a radically new design whilst still a teenager.
And this was his first prototype,
manufactured using flattened soup cans.
This souped-up motor
was so special, it won him an invitation to showcase it on Tomorrow's World.
Cedric Lynch from Potters Bar with his interesting design of motor.
Now, the magnet here provides a continuously variable field,
which means the motor/battery combination
can work at its most effective throughout the marathon.
Got that, everyone? Let's be honest,
most of us would be rather bamboozled
by the workings of an electric motor, but for Cedric,
and apparently Michael Rodd, they're second nature.
Over the years,
Cedric has continued to work on his design.
The soup cans are long gone and now
a small factory in Gandhidam in India
is producing a far more sophisticated-looking Cedric Lynch motor.
The efficiency of my motor is approximately 93% maximum,
which means that 93% of the electrical energy going into it
is given out as mechanical power and only about 7% of it as heat.
It's this efficient mechanical power of his motor that Cedric believes
can help the progress of electric transport for everyone.
He's continually testing his motors in his own home-made electric runabout.
I use this vehicle
many days for travelling between Potters Bar and Finchley,
but I've also been to Yorkshire, Norfolk, Birmingham, Anglesey, Coventry,
Southampton...
Cedric's next stop, however, is the Isle of Man, for the legendary TTRaces.
But he's not going there to watch, he's taking part,
because Cedric has two motorbikes racing in the TTZero,
a special, slightly quieter race for motorbikes powered
by electric motors.
CEDRIC: We entered the TT Electric Race because it raises public awareness
of the performance capabilities of an electric vehicle.
He's up against some of the most well-resourced teams
in the industry.
But Cedric's confident
that his highly efficient motors
can make a difference.
With just minutes to go
before the starter's flag, the atmosphere is...
highly charged.
(# MOTORHEAD: Ace Of Spades)
The track weaves its way around the island's
famous 37-and-a-half mile course
and pushes the strange-sounding electric bikes and their riders to the limit.
And to prove I was telling the truth about how good Cedric is, he has a great result,
with his two bikes coming in second and fourth.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
I'm clapping everybody who finishes
because it is a magnificent achievement, isn't it?
With the race only just finished, Cedric is already thinking about next year.
We can build a bike with nearly twice the battery capacity that we had now,
which will give us the ability to go much faster on the straights.
With his unique motor design
and over 30 years'experience of building electric vehicles,
it may well be Cedric picking up first prize next time.
Oh-hoo!
Looks like he's got the electric motor down to a TT,
eh, lad? Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!
You know... Ooh!
People often ask me,
"What are your top six most peculiar forms of transport?"
Ah, yes, why don't we take a look
with our archive librarian, my friend Goronwy?
Thanks, Mr Wallace! And in this week's countdown,
we've got six very peculiar ways of getting about.
At number six, this strange form of transport is the Commute O Bag,
perfect for getting to work at the bank.
(LAUGHS) The river bank, that is!
When economists talk about inflation,
is this what they're going on about then? Cheerio, mate!
And at number five, making petrol to drive a car
usually means burying a forest under a layer of sedimentary rock
and waiting for a million years.
But, if you're in a hurry, why not just stick the wood straight in the tank,
like this gentleman from Buckinghamshire?
He's designed a wood-burning car
and on a good day, it'll do 40 miles to the sycamore.
At four, this strange form of transport is a bicycle
designed for riding on ice, so I suppose you'd call it an icicle.
It's not a lot of use for cycling to work,
unless you work at an ice rink...
and live at the ice rink as well,
so you won't really need to cycle to work, will you?
You know, I can't really see the point of this one.
Number three of our peculiar transport rundown
is one for people who like the idea of
going for a walk, but don't fancy the actual walking bit.
They'll do 160 miles to the gallon and if you're carrying any bags,
well, obviously,
they go in the boot.
At number two, it's the monorail. Stylish,
impressive, fast. Just make sure you're not
drinking a cup of tea when it takes a corner, that's all.
And at number one, our most peculiar
form of transport is the Duoped pedal wheels.
Is it faster than walking? No. Is it safer than walking?
No. So what was the point, then?
I can't remember now, really.
# Bom-bom bom-bom Curiosity Corner... #
Mmm, oh! Welcome to Curiosity Corner, viewers.
(WHINING HUM)
Hey, did you know, that in a secret railway siding just outside Crewe,
British Rail were once working on something very curious indeed?
Why don't we take a look?
(WHINING HUM)
WALLACE: When you're ready, lad.
TANNOY: We apologise to passengers and are sorry for the inconvenience caused...
ASHLEY: Back in the 1970s,
it was a time of nationalised railways and interminable strikes.
And if you were a commuter, getting around
- wasn't easy. - #Last train to London... #
And let's face it,
even walking was difficult.
Transport in this country needed something revolutionary,
some real blue-sky thinking,
a challenge that British Rail engineer Charles Osmond Frederick
took quite literally.
His answer to the problem was...
a flying saucer,
and not just any old flying saucer, but one powered by a laser beam.
In 1973, care of British Rail, Charles patented his design.
I became interested in what sort of system you could use
that would do the things that
flying saucers were reported as doing.
So I sketched something out and we've got
a device here that you use
to get the thing going. So one way of doing that
is to have a disc, which you spin...
at a very high frequency using laser beams.
That was the basic idea of how you'd gain some thrust.
Sadly, for the long-suffering British Rail commuters,
the 4.44 flying saucer to Crewe never arrived.
But fast-forward a few decades and it turns out
Mr Frederick's idea wasn't just a pie in the sky...
This is a laser-induced discharge here...
because Dr Leik Myrabo in Brazil
has also invented a flying saucer powered by a laser beam.
He calls his vehicle the Lightcraft.
But this time it's not funded by British Rail, thankfully,
but the Brazilian Air Force.
I believe Lightcraft are the future of flight transportation.
If all things go well,
we could be transporting the first person
by 2025 and we could have
a fully mature green transportation system for planet Earth.
Dr Myrabo thinks the Lightcraft
will totally transform intercontinental travel as we know it.
A big jumbo jet takes off carrying 100,000 pounds of jet fuel.
On a beam-propelled vehicle, there's no fuel on board.
And so the entire structure, size of the vehicle and everything,
shrinks way below what you'd have with a conventional aircraft.
Dr Myrabo has already tested miniature prototype Lightcrafts
in the US and although they look a tiny bit like designer lemon squeezers,
he has successfully proved that a laser beam...
that's light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, to you and me...
can superheat a spinning Lightcraft, causing the air beneath it
to explode
and propel the craft upwards.
Three, two, one...
(CRACKLING)
(WHIRRING)
DR MYRABO: The first time that we demonstrated Lightcraft in flight
this was compared by many people to the Wright brothers
flying the first aeroplane.
Yeah! Whoo!
Here in Brazil,
Dr Myrabo is testing full-size Lightcraft engine segments
by firing a billion-watt laser at them
inside a sealed tube.
The explosion created is, incredibly , four-times hotter than
the surface of the sun
and it's this huge explosive power
that Dr Myrabo confidently believes will send a full-size passenger Lightcraft
into the sky.
DR MYRABO: It's realistic to assume that we could have
a vehicle like this flying
within about 15 years and it could create a brand-new revolution in flight.
You'll go to a lightport,
buy your ticket there, no advanced reservations required,
and get anywhere on the planet in 45 minutes.
Oh-ho! And I wonder how much a day return would be on that. Ha-ha-ha!
Astronomical, I'll be bound!
- (WHIRRING AND CLANGING) - Oh! Ow!
Oh, dear, I'm buffeting, lad.
I'd better check me blast pipe.
- (LOUD BANG) - Oh! (COUGHS)
Next up, we're going to give a high-five...
(COUGHS)
to the man who brought us the C5.
Thanks, pooch.
He's this week's Inventor of the Week, Mr Sir Clive Sinclair.
Invention is my passion, I just love the idea of coming up with a product
that when people see it, they get excited by it.
And that's what I try to do.
So what kind of exciting things has Sir Clive brought into the world?
Well, first it was the pocket calculator.
It's hard to imagine now,
but calculators used to look like this.
Imagine taking that into a maths exam!
But it was thanks to Sir Clive's ingenuity with transistors
that the pocket calculator
could actually fit into a pocket. For a short while
in the early '70s, it was even fashionable to be seen solving calculations in public!
SIR CLIVE: We had quite a bit of trouble finding
someone to retail that, but then once people
got used to the idea, it created great excitement.
(# THE HUMAN LEAGUE: Together In Electric Dreams)
Next, Sir Clive introduced us to
his digital watch and this changed the way we thought about time for ever.
No more gently rotating hands on a nice round watch face,
now we had the sharp precision of the futuristic digit.
(# THE HUMAN LEAGUE: Together In Electric Dreams)
But it was the legendary range of
affordable Sinclair personal computers that really made Sir Clive
a household name.
They're selling so well,
they're selling like hot cakes, that we're having to control the crowds.
SIR CLIVE: Everything was done from scratch...
the operating system, the architecture of the machine, em, keyboard,
everything was done from scratch.
It was, for quite a while, the best-selling computer in the world.
On the back of his amazing success with his computers, Sir Clive
decided to take a huge leap
into the unknown.
His restless mind was already looking to the future
when he introduced the Sinclair C5.
NEWS REPORTER: Today's press launch of the C5
at Alexandra Palace had all the razzmatazz of a three-ring circus.
SIR CLIVE: I'd always thought that electric vehicles were a really neat idea.
They're silent, they're non-polluting and, in principle,
they're economical to run.
The C5 was quickly trashed,
not by this unobservant lorry driver, luckily,
but by pretty much everyone else.
No seat belt, no skid lid, no protection... Frankly horrifies me.
Whoever brought out that, well, wants putting up a wall and shooting.
SIR CLIVE: I found the C5 a considerable learning experience.
It came as a shock when we launched it and we hadn't prepared people for it
and I think if you've got something really radical like that,
you do need to prepare people.
The C5 was a brave attempt at an all-British electric vehicle,
but with a top speed of only 15 miles an hour
and concerns over road-safety, it was a commercial disaster.
But Sir Clive,
like any proper inventor, never runs out of ideas
and now he's about to unveil his latest venture.
We've had a sneak preview of the son of C5,
the rather groovy looking Sinclair X 1.
The X1 is a single-seat, enclosed electric car,
with pedals as well, so you can pedal it or electrically power it,
and it's got a range of about 30 miles.
(# WILLIE NELSON: On The Road Again)
Due for release in 2012, the X 1,just like its predecessor,
still has the ability to turn heads in the street,
and proves that, at 70,
Sir Clive shows no signs yet of giving up.
I think it is potentially
a vehicle that could make a big change to the way we travel around cities and towns.
One can never be sure, but it's my hope.
(# WILLIE NELSON: On The Road Again)
- Oh, yes, electrifying stuff. - (RATTLING AND CLANGING)
Whoo! You know, cutting-edge technology
is not without its problems,
but it's nothing to get steamed-up about.
Even the most famous inventors had ideas that never got off the drawing board,
as Mr Jem is going to show us.
- (LOUD BANGING) - Whoa!
(COUGHS AND SPLUTTERS)
Oh, dear! (COUGHS) I think I've blown me gasket, Mr Jem!
Don't worry, Wallace. You're not
the only great inventor who's had problems with pressure.
If you've ever made a decent journey in Britain,
chances are you'll have been on,
over or in
something built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
But despite his brilliance,
not everything Brunel touched turned into engineering gold.
In a quiet corner of the Didcot railway museum,
there's a strange-looking monument
to one of his rare and most ambitious failures.
This is a section of a 20-mile stretch of pipe,
moving people at unheard of speeds. Unheard of speeds.
When commissioned to build a new line in south Devon in 1847,
Brunel decided to overcome the hilly terrain with an atmospheric railway.
The system replaced steam locomotives with a vacuum tube running between the line
that pushed the carriages along it using atmospheric pressure.
In here, you have a piston and the piston is attached to a stub
that comes up through here, the stub is attached to the carriage.
From this huge straw, you suck out the air in front
and it's the atmospheric pressure behind that pushes it along.
JEM: So how does the air around us shift a 30-ton train up a hill?
Well, you've got to imagine the air is made up of invisibly small molecules,
like little ping-pong balls whizzing around
and they - dum, dum, dum - knock into things.
Now, at the moment, I've got
the same sort of amount of ping-pong balls hitting that hand
as I have that hand, so I'm not pushed anywhere,
but if I remove half the air molecules from this side,
suddenly - dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum - I start moving.
And that is exactly what happens inside this pipe.
Brunel's piston, in here, isn't so much sucked along by the vacuum in front of it
as it is pushed along by the air behind it.
And at that time, this left-field new technology
could produce immense levels of power,
30 tons could be shifted at over 60 miles an hour.
In fact, this held the land-speed record.
The fastest man on Earth was whisked along this at 84 miles an hour.
Wow!
JEM: It seems difficult to believe that it ever could have worked,
so I decided to build one myself.
(# BARRY GRAY: Thunderbirds Theme)
Brunel built his atmospheric railway
because he thought it would have the power to cope with steep inclines.
I think he was right,
so I've built one with a really steep incline.
Brunel's atmospheric railway was powered
by big steam-powered pumping stations every few miles along the track,
and they're what's creating the low pressure ahead of the piston
that pulls the train along.
For me, I've gone for a slightly cheaper option.
At the top of this tube, I've got three supermarket-value vacuum cleaners
to remove about a fifth of the air
from inside here.
Doesn't sound like much,
but just that pressure difference from the outside to the inside
should give about a kilo of force
for every area the size of a postage stamp on my piston.
(STRAINING) Let's see if this does what it's supposed to do.
When I flick that switch,
there could be half a ton of force pulling me straight up that tube.
That, to me, seems a little unlikely.
(VACUUM CLEANERS WHINE)
Argh!
Ah! Man, that's gone quick!
Argh!
I change my mind!
- It seems very likely! - (VACUUM CLEANERS STOP)
That's a little bit quick.
That is so powerful!
That works so well!
I'd say the vacuum railway was abandoned a bit too early.
So why did Brunel's system fail in 1849?
What went wrong, technically, was they couldn't get a proper seal on here.
The leather straps would crack in the heat in the summer,
freeze very hard in the winter
and rats used to eat it, because they'd softened it with tallow
to make it seal better, so they couldn't make a proper seal.
JEM: But it worked. It broke the land-speed record,
it just had a problem with rats.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, defeated by meddling vermin.
He should have built a steam-powered rat-trap,
but I guess, sooner or later, all inventors must face failure,
even the great ones.
You see? It can happen to the best of us.
Still, even if steam power isn't the future,
I'm not one to let a good invention go to waste.
Stoke her up, lad! There's life in the old banger yet!
Mmm! I'll say one thing for it - it doesn't half make a lovely cuppa, eh, lad?
Bottoms up, viewers!
(SLURPS)
If you've enjoyed our show, grab your mouse
and log on to our World Of Invention website...
bbc. Co. Uk/wallaceandgromit
You'll find a fantastic competition,
details of our road show,
as well as lots of ways to get you inventing.
Pull your finger out and get clicking!