Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity
Title screenshot
Genre	History of science
Presented by	Jim Al-Khalili
Narrated by	Jim Al-Khalili
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	3
Production
Running time	45 minutes
Production companies	Open University and BBC
Original release
Network	BBC Four
Release	6 October (2011-10-06) – 20 October 2011 (2011-10-20)

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity is a British television series outlining aspects of the history of electricity. The series was a co-production between the Open University and the BBC and aired from 6 to 20 October 2011 on BBC Four. The programs were presented by Jim Al-Khalili.

Episodes

• Spark: How pioneers unlocked electricity's mysteries and built strange instruments to create it.
• The Age of Invention: How harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity transformed the world.
• Revelations and Revolutions: After centuries of experimentation, how we finally came to understand electromagnetism.

Spark

In the first episode Al-Khalili introduces the history of our understanding of electricity and the harnessing of its power.

In the second episode Al-Khalili covers the scientists who discovered the links between electricity and magnetism leading to a way to generate electric power-[7] Hans Christian Oersted, Michael Faraday, William Sturgeon and Joseph Henry.

The development of commercial applications started with

• History of electromagnetic theory
• History of electrical engineering
• History of electric power transmission

References