For those of you in Australia who haven't caught up with this show yet, you need to! It's a brilliantly funny, but instructive look at historical technology (mainly military), with a focus (so far) on Australian inventions.
The eponymous boffin, builder and bombadier take a military invention, like the periscope rifle and recreate it from existing images, descriptions and plans where available. Historical controversies, such as effective range in this instance, are settled by this highly entertaining practical historical investigation.
Think Mythbusters with a particularly historical/military focus.
Other gadgets investigated are the ancient Chinese wheelbarrow mounted, rocket-propelled spear launcher, and the time-delay Scurry rifle, which allowed the Turks to believe that the trenches were still occupied while the ANZAC forces evacuated the Gallipoli trenches.
This little ripper of a show is on ABC1 at 8:15pm Sunday nights, right after Dr.Who. Sorry to all you international followers; you'll just have to wait until it comes to a TV station near you, or someone illegally uploads the episodes on to Youtube!
That sounds bloody awesome! I will try to catch an episode.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up, sounds amazing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Ben. I saw it 'advertised' a while back and then forgot about it. All three of the episodes are still on iView, which is great. Can our international friends access that?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/32299
James
I doubt it, James. I've tried accessing BBC programmes on the internet and have been given short shrift, so I assume that would be the same for our international friends. :-(
DeleteI watch the first three, great stuff. The quips and asides are brilliant. Good fun and interesting/educational to boot!
ReplyDeleteHello Young Rosbif,
ReplyDeleteThe reason the boys at the BBC gave you "short shrft" was because you weren't using the "App" thingy. If you fellows out there in war games land get the Iview "App" thingy then you can watch (Aunty) ABC anywhere you like. The same goes for the BBC. However you will need a "Padi" or an "Ipad" or something of that ilk. Made by some company, can't remember the name, got some thing to do with fruit. I'm going to lie down now. Cheerio.