Connections: Remember the cornflakes from last episode? Thanks to the fact that corncobs make adhesives to bond Carborundum discovered by Edward Goodrich Acheson, otherwise known as silicon carbide, to grinding wheels used to grind lightbulbs. Silicon carbide is also then used as protection against armor-piercing shells developed to hit tanks that start life as American tractors, which use diesel engines developed thanks to funding from Krupp, who inspired Bismarck's welfare scheme based on Quetelet's statistics that inspired the Charles Babbage's difference engine, whose punch cards were used to rivet the "SS Great Eastern," the monster ship that laid the transatlantic cable insulated with gutta-percha used to manufacture golf balls for factory managers in industrial Scotland, where James Watt had a run-in with Cavendish, whose protegee was James Macie aka James Smithson, who caused all the row in the capitol building, so the money got used to set up a world-renowned institution named after James Macie's new family name, which was Smithson: The institution known as the Smithsonian

Starring:

James Burke

Genre:

Documentary, History