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  • 4/23/2025

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00:00Around the world, the race to win wars and explore the universe has created some of the most incredible products ever designed.
00:08And we use them every day, unaware of their amazing origins.
00:14On incredible inventions, hot air balloons, and how the idea of using one takes flight on the war-torn battlefields of Europe.
00:24Synthetic rubber, the connection between World War II and the tires we use today.
00:30Metal detectors, how an instrument used to find hidden treasures has been saving lives for decades.
00:37We reveal the amazing history and engineering behind these incredible inventions.
01:00Against the dark backdrop of the nighttime sky, sky lanterns add magic to any celebration with their fiery glow.
01:07But did you know that these tiny hot air balloons were actually once used in warfare?
01:14It's true. They were used to send battle orders to Chinese troops during the 3rd century AD.
01:19The principle behind the hot air balloon is basic physics.
01:24To create lift, the balloon fills up with a lighter-than-air gas, such as hydrogen or helium.
01:29Or, more commonly, with hot air.
01:32They're first used for warfare by the French during the Battle of Flores in 1794.
01:38That's when the new Republican French troops sent up a balloon to direct artillery and spy on the enemy.
01:45They are even used during the First World War, although it was a little dangerous for the operator.
01:50Can you imagine being an observer in a wicker basket, hanging underneath a balloon at the Battle of the Marne, the Battle of the Somme?
02:02You must be ready to leap for your life.
02:05These guys were gutsy, but they were vital.
02:09By the Second World War, balloons are being used to keep an eye on enemy aircraft.
02:14In the Second World War, of course, you have them as the barrage balloons to prevent planes coming too low to do their damage above important sites.
02:22The introduction of the hot air balloon as a military piece of equipment really did open up a new dimension of warfare,
02:30because it took your observers, first of all, high up into the air.
02:34It is a massive step forward for the military machines of the world.
02:39The hot air balloon, truly an incredible invention.
02:49Cameron Balloons in England have been making hot air balloons since 1971.
02:53They are the largest manufacturer of hot air balloons in the world.
02:57There's no such thing as an average hot air balloon, because they're all individual and bespoke.
03:02But I suppose it takes us between 6 and 12 weeks to make a balloon.
03:08Sometimes a bit longer if it's a complicated special shape.
03:11And we make probably between 90 and 120 balloons a year.
03:22The hot air balloon making process starts with actually sitting down and discussing what the person actually wants.
03:30Once we've got that established, we can then put it into production.
03:34There's quite a lot of design and planning and artwork set up that happens.
03:39And then it can go into cutting, where all the fabric and the tapes and all the materials are got together for the fabric part of the balloon.
03:49The material that will make the balloon itself is cut into all the different shapes that will be required.
03:59Different materials are used in different parts of the balloon.
04:02The main ones we use for hot air balloons are one called Hyperlast, which is used at the top of the balloon.
04:09It's a very slippery, strong fabric, very heat resistant.
04:13And in the middle section of the balloon, we use a ripstop nylon, which is very light, very strong.
04:20And it's even lighter than your normal computer paper at home.
04:23And at the bottom of the balloon, we use a fabric that's very similar to racing car driver suits.
04:29It's very heat resistant because, of course, that's where the radiant heat from the burner is.
04:35The different pieces are sorted into sections for easy identification later on.
04:39Meanwhile, the burners that supply the hot air to the balloon are built from scratch in the factory.
04:46To better suit the needs of a hot air balloon, Cameron balloons have developed different materials over time.
04:52Materials need to be long-lasting, so they're constantly tested during the production process to ensure they meet quality and safety standards.
04:59The material pieces are sewn together, incorporating the load straps that form the structure of the balloon
05:07and bear the weight of the basket, burners and passengers.
05:11The overall construction of a hot air balloon is actually quite simple.
05:15There's a load ring at the very top of the balloon.
05:18From that point, it carries some tapes which come down to a load ring at the burner.
05:23So the fabric just holds in the hot air.
05:26The load tapes carry the load and the ring at the top and the ring at the bottom actually help suspend all of that.
05:33Despite the developments of new alternatives,
05:36the baskets are still made from traditional materials.
05:40Depending on customer requirements, they are fitted out with leather-covered padding and trim.
05:46We not only have to apply all the customers' requirements for different color trim and cushions and so on,
05:54but this is the place where the passengers and the fuel tanks will be.
05:58It has to perform under duress and in fact it has to do drop tests and various crush tests.
06:05Once finished, the balloon is thoroughly tested by the team before delivery to the customer.
06:17We continually inspect our work as we go along and then we go to a final test and inspection stage.
06:32And this we do all together on every part of the balloon to make sure that we are 100% happy with it
06:39so we can hand on heart give it to our customers with full confidence.
06:44Our daily lives are made easier by any number of amazing innovations.
06:48but there's one that's arguably the greatest of all time.
06:52And that's the wheel.
07:10The wheel's origin may be a bit lost in time, but the rubber around a car tire is directly linked to World War II.
07:28How? Well, it all begins with natural rubber.
07:33Rubber comes from the rubber tree, as it is called.
07:36It's a tree that originally found in South America.
07:39And what you do is you take the tree, you cut the bark, and sap slowly runs out of it.
07:43This sap is a milky mixture of water and latex.
07:47Latex contains rubber and latex molecules,
07:50and what's then done is it's processed with a bit of acid, and the rubber itself can come out.
07:55The peoples of South America used it for many things, including waterproof coats, shoes, and balls
08:00to play their ball games that they're quite famous for in ancient cultures.
08:04Natural rubber may be a useful material, but it does have its limits.
08:08It has only a certain temperature range over which it will work.
08:11In cold winters, it will freeze rock solid and become effectively like a rock and not very useful for its elastic properties.
08:18When it gets too warm, it will melt, which obviously doesn't work very well if you're trying to use it as a tire in a hot country.
08:23In 1839, Charles Goodyear accidentally stumbles on the way to improve the versatility of natural rubber.
08:31It's called vulcanization, and by adding sulfur and lead to natural rubber and heating it,
08:37the process cross-links the natural rubber fibers and molecules, making the materials more durable.
08:46When a compound melts, its molecules slide past each other.
08:51If rubber is cross-linked, then the compound loses that ability,
08:54so it retains the stretchiness of rubber over the greater range of temperatures.
09:00This new improved rubber has many uses.
09:04So, the world goes crazy for rubber tires.
09:07But what is the World War II connection?
09:09When the Japanese invade Southeast Asia in 1941, the majority of the world's rubber resources fall under its control,
09:16creating a difficult situation for the U.S.
09:19The U.S. was entering the war, and it needed supplies of rubber in order to man the battleships, the destroyers,
09:25and everything in parts of the munitions in the war effort.
09:28The problem was they had a million tons worth of rubber,
09:31and were going through it at a rate of about 600,000 tons per year,
09:34so a year and a half supply at most.
09:36They formed the Rubber Reserve Committee so that all scraps of rubber could be taken in and recycled and manufactured and reused.
09:44About three years later, towards the end of the war, they'd worked out enough factories to produce it
09:50to produce 70,000 tons per month instead of 231 tons per year.
09:56And this obviously greatly increased the ability for the U.S. to help the Allies to fight the war.
10:01Synthetic rubber keeps the U.S. war machine moving during the dark days of the early 1940s.
10:07But what's the secret behind this war-winning technology?
10:11Synthetic rubber was originally developed by William Tilden in 1879.
10:16He worked out that he could take isoprene and polymerize it.
10:19Later on, it was discovered that adding sodium to the mixture,
10:22you could increase the polymerization and thus produce synthetic rubber quite quickly.
10:27After its success in World War II, synthetic rubber never looks back.
10:31And today, it's used far more widely than its cousin, natural rubber.
10:36An amazing 70% of all road tires today are made from synthetic rubber.
10:41So the next time you take a trip in your car or a ride on the bus,
10:44remember that you're being carried along by material that was developed to win World War II.
10:50Coming up next, a special experiment to show the extraordinary forces at work on an ordinary tire.
10:56Synthetic rubber may be an outstanding invention, but the different forces acting on car tires make this wonder material even more impressive.
11:18To begin, our tester takes two catalogues and begins to interweave their pages.
11:27The experiment will work best if you use two soft bag catalogues and try and sandwich as many pages as you can.
11:33Although a few pages at a time will still give you a result.
11:38Some time later and the two weighty catalogues have most of their pages resting in between each other.
11:43Now then, try pulling them apart. It's not so easy. And it's all because of friction.
11:50Friction is the force that opposes motion when two surfaces come into contact.
11:55Place a sheet of paper on top of another and it's easy to slide them apart.
11:59But when you have hordes of papers all actually together, then the force is immense.
12:04So, how much force is needed to pry the two books apart? This calls for an experiment.
12:14The materials. Wood, weights, wire, pulleys, clamps and an assortment of screws.
12:21Our tester constructs a rig that will allow weights to be suspended from each book.
12:27So we can find out how much weight will make the book slip apart.
12:33Let's see if we can beat Mother Nature's friction.
12:37Gradually, our tester adds the weight.
12:41The wires go taut under the string.
12:44But the books refuse to budge.
12:46How much weight can the pages take?
12:48Well, quite a bit actually.
12:51In the end, our tester is defeated with just about 154 pounds.
12:57The size of a human trying to pull the two books apart.
13:00We have to stop the experiment as our rig threatens to break under the testing conditions.
13:05And our conclusion is, never underestimate the power of friction.
13:11The prospect of finding buried gold and precious metals draws thousands around the world to the hobby of detecting.
13:18Detectorists, as they are called today, have found fabulous hordes of ancient treasures that have sat undetected for centuries.
13:28In 1919, their mission gets a major upgrade with the invention of the metal detector.
13:37It all begins with two electromagnetic coils.
13:40In your metal detector, you're sending an electrical current through the sender coil.
13:45The changing of that electrical current creates a changing magnetic field, a magnetic pulse, in the detector.
13:51This pulse goes into the ground.
13:53And where it is picked up by a metal object, the changing magnetic pulse causes a current to be generated in the metal.
14:03And that current then generates, in turn, a magnetic response that your metal detector is now picking up through the receiver coil.
14:12And that then, in turn, generates a changing current in the metal detector that is used to signal that you have found an object in the ground.
14:21It may surprise you to learn that the first use of these devices is not to find treasure or precious metals, but to clear the battlefields of France after World War I.
14:34By World War II, a lighter, more user-friendly design is invented.
14:39And in 1942, after the German army is defeated at El Alameen in North Africa, the Allies are in hot pursuit.
14:48Closing in on the enemy, the Allies are stopped in their tracks by a deadly minefield.
14:53But, armed with a newly designed mine detector, Allied troops locate and disarm the explosives.
15:01Metal detectors today have many applications.
15:04They play their part in the war on terror by scanning passengers for hidden weapons at airports.
15:10They're also used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
15:14But, of course, metal detectors aren't just used for security and in war.
15:19Another interesting use is the local Dallas Aquarium.
15:23They have a big penguin tank with a number of penguins where you can watch them swim.
15:27And, as it would be, people invariably want to throw things into the water.
15:32The penguins will ingest these things.
15:34So, the zoo there will actually take those penguins and line them up and scan their little bodies with the hand scanner to see if anything's in their bellies.
15:41And they've found quite a few metallic objects the penguins have ingested that might have otherwise killed them if they were not removed quickly.
15:49As the technology develops and improves, it's increasingly likely that the Earth will give up more of its metal treasures.
15:56Some of them buried for millennia.
15:58Hold on to your booty.
15:59After the break, we'll visit a factory to see how a metal detector is made.
16:11Today, Garrett Metal Detectors in Houston, Texas, is one of the leading producers of metal detectors.
16:21Charles Garrett, an avid treasure hunter, began building his prototype metal detector more than 50 years ago.
16:28Still very much a family-run business today, Garrett has grown into one of the leading metal detector manufacturers in the world.
16:36The production process begins with magnetic modeling.
16:39This helps the engineers to monitor the detector's performance and design the style and shape of the all-important detection coil.
16:48The plastic casing of the metal detector is then designed using computer-aided design, or CAD, software.
16:55This allows the engineer to look at the stress patterns of the plastic and enables him to produce the most durable, functional, and ergonomic design possible.
17:03The component parts connecting wires and other elements of the circuit board are then mapped out.
17:11Once this is done, it is then time to put the electrical components onto the circuit board.
17:17First, the solder paste is printed onto the circuit board, ready for the board to be moved onto the pick-and-place machine.
17:25The many different components that make up the metal detector's circuit board are picked from a reel by a high-speed pick-and-place machine and placed onto the board.
17:34Automated processes such as these allow for extreme high accuracy and fast production of the circuit boards.
17:41The boards are then placed through a reflow oven, in which the solder paste is heated, which fuses it to the components and the board.
17:48The key element of any metal detector is the search coil.
17:58The coil is made by winding copper wire on a plastic bobbin.
18:02It's custom-designed and computer-controlled, so that the number of windings, location of the wires, and the tension can be consistent.
18:11The coil is then passed on to the coil wiring line.
18:14The circuit board, freshly spun magnetic coils, and cables are all put into the plastic shell and then secured with heated glue.
18:26Now that the coils have been placed into the shell and the wires have been connected, they are all encapsulated in epoxy resin using an automated mixing and dispensing machine.
18:35With the search coil complete, the aluminum tubes of the metal detector, which will form its stem and handle, are bent to shape.
18:43This bends the metal to exactly the right shape, depending on the model of metal detector being produced.
18:50Holes are then punched into the freshly bent metal stems to allow for the plastic casings to be fitted to them.
18:56The metal detector is then finished on the final assembly line.
19:04The circuit boards are first placed into a programmer that installs the detector's software.
19:10Once this is complete, the board is calibrated using test objects such as coins that spin over the detection coil.
19:15This sends signals to the board then allows the operator to calibrate it, as well as signaling that everything is working as it should be.
19:26With the board complete, battery contacts and speakers are fitted into the plastic console casing.
19:32The circuit board and front panel are added.
19:35The casing's label is stuck into place before it is passed down the line to be screwed and secured.
19:41Batteries added and then branded.
19:45Now a torque wrench is used to secure the nuts for the connectors.
19:50One connector is for the search coil and the other is for the headphones.
19:54The freshly powdered coated stems are now attached to the console, as well as the cuff assembly.
20:00The detector is attached to its search coil and different metals are again passed over it in order to verify that the detector is detecting with the correct sensitivity.
20:09Final assembly complete and all tests passed, the metal detector is then boxed up and shipped off, ready to discover incredible new treasures.
20:20So there you have it.
20:23A glance through the hidden history and super science of some amazing products that you use every day.
20:29Hot air balloons, synthetic rubber and metal detectors.
20:33They may seem common and ordinary.
20:36However, these products help change the world, one incredible invention at a time.
20:40The Left
20:45The Left
20:47You