What the Stuarts Did for Us

What the Stuarts Did for Us is a 2002

Episodes

Episode one: Desygner Livinge

In the beginning of the Stuart Period a curious new device appeared, it looks like a church bell but in fact it's an exercise machine. This machine was one of many trendy new ideas that enhanced the life style of the Stuarts. It was the beginning of designer living.

— Adam Hart-Davis

Hart-Davis travels around Britain to introduce the idea and inventions of the Stuart Period in architecture and life-style.

• Neo-classical architecture was introduced to London by Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of London
  .
• The fountain pen was first mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and it allowed him to write on the move.
• Coffee houses
  drew people from far and wide with their pleasant smell and allowed sober social intercourse.
• dumbbells
  invented for those that could not make it to the church towers.
• Colourfast dyes were created in Britain's first chemical works at Ravenscar when supplies of the mordant alum were cut off.
• The
  three-piece suit and necktie were created by Charles II
  as a political weapon in his war against France.

Hart-Davis travels around Britain to introduce the idea and inventions of the Stuart Period in science and engineering.

• Experimental science was introduced by the Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon
  who died inventing the frozen chicken.
• Properties of
  pressure cooker
  .
• The
  Midlands
  .
• The
  GMT
  .
• Principia by Isaac Newton
  established three simple laws that revolutionised our view of the universe.

Hart-Davis travels around Britain to introduce the idea and inventions of the Stuart Period in economics and politics.

• The
  King James who united the kingdoms of England and Scotland into Great Britain
  .
• Hackney Carriage
  .
• road atlas by John Ogilvy
  further revolutionised the transport system and standardised the mile.
• The seed drill allowed Jethro Tull to put his revolutionary new planting techniques into practice leading to modern agriculture.
• The Fire Office of
  fire service
  .
• The
  national debt
  .
• The constitutional monarchy introduced following the restoration of Charles II is the backbone of the UK's modern political system.

Episode four: Newe Worldes

In a Dutch spectacle shop a chap called Zacharias Jantzen looked through two lenses at once and got the shock of his life, he was seeing the world in super-close-up. Jantzen had made the first microscope, giving the Stuarts a window into an entirely new miniature world.

— Adam Hart-Davis

Hart-Davis travels around Britain to introduce the idea and inventions of the Stuart Period in

• The microscope as refined by Robert Hook and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek allowed the microscopic world to be viewed in detail.
• The
  Edmund Halley
  allowed the investigation of the depths of the ocean.
• Galileo
  challenged long held views of the heavens.
• The
  planetary motion
  .
• Science-fiction was developed through the imaginations of Cyrano de Bergerac and Bishop Francis Godwin
  .

• What the Stuarts Did for Us at
  IMDb