Catch up TV

Series 1: Episode 3

University Challenge legends Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull travel through time, exploring their favourite British scientific breakthroughs from across the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era.\n\nThe final instalment sees the duo visit the birthplaces of their favourite inventions between 1850 and 1900, the height of the Victorian era, when British progress began to impact our everyday lives. \n\nThey begin in 1858, with a visit to Crossness Pumping Station – part of the first sanitation system ever built for London which revolutionised public health. They then retrace the footsteps of Charles Darwin at London Zoo in 1859, where they get their hands on a first edition of Darwin’s masterwork On the Origin of Species – a book that broadened understanding of human existence. \n\nAfterwards, the duo visit a dinosaur park in Crystal Palace – home to the first prehistoric statues ever seen and the first public park dedicated to science.\n\nNext is a stop-off at a Victorian fern forest in Devon, where Monkman and Seagull partake in the Victorian hobby of fern-hunting, a pastime taken up by Victorians who had newly afforded leisure time. They travel to a remote beach in Cornwall in 1870 for the story of Britain’s first successful undersea telegraph line, connecting Britain to India. They demonstrate this momentous breakthrough in rapid communication by sending messages to each other using Morse code.\n\nAt London’s Savoy Theatre, the pair visit 1881 and the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. Here, they demonstrate the world-transforming invention of the lightbulb by connecting a pencil lead, a battery and a glass jar.\n\nFinally, Monkman and Seagull visit Cambridge to hold a modest glass tube from 1897 that was in fact responsible for the discovery of the electron - a breakthrough that paved the way for modern-day electronics.

Source: BBC 4