Victorian Inventions That Changed The Way We Live | How Victorians Built Britain | Absolute History

in the long reign of a single queen victorian inventions changed the world queen victoria came to the throne in 1837 the time she died in 1901 the modern world had been formed it was a time of outstanding engineering remarkable innovation all of it driven by ambitious pioneers it shapes the world we live in today efficient and fast new transport systems allowed people to move freely for the first time you get a real sense in here of victorian engineering [Music] giant feats of ingenuity saved lives the victorians had ambition they thought big and they got on with it amazing inventions revolutionized our domestic lives what i'm holding in my hand changed our homes forever automation transformed mass production factories could now produce goods at a rate never imagined before the change is like a nuclear weapon going off this is the story of how the victorians built britain this time i learn how the victorians harness the power of gas and electricity for the home this really was the invention that drove electricity into the home how brand new domestic appliances became the must-have items of the day you can't underestimate the effect of the gas cooker for the victorians this was absolutely amazing and how the victorians laid the foundations for the world we live in today [Music] in 1837 at the beginning of queen victoria's reign there were only five cities in britain that had a population of more than a hundred thousand people by the time of her death there were 49 in the 60 years of her reign the population of britain doubled [Music] this massive population growth created a frenzy of house building in the victorian period a third all the houses in britain today were built before the first world war most of them were victorian in fewer than 75 years they built six million homes [Music] many different types of housing sprang up to cater for all different classes back-to-back terraces for the poorer members of society smarter villas on the edge of towns for the more affluent even grand mansions for the new rich industrialists much of this new housing being built was intended for the middle classes a group that expanded rapidly during queen victoria's reign this burgeoning middle class had a sense of what we'd call being house proud and it was also a time that gave birth to the phrase home sweet home the victorian middle classes loved to show off their new homes they saw them as display cases for their taste and wealth the victorians desire for stuff was aided by the huge rise in mass production the factories across britain producing things to put in the victorian house for the victorian housewife to buy so you want to cram your victorian shelves with all this success because that signifies wealth an important element in showing off your home was adequate lighting at the beginning of the victorian era many homes were still being lit by candles or oil lamps but a lot of these new homes that were springing up all over britain would soon be able to rely on a brand new source of power gas and it came from a surprising source the key ingredient in the manufacture of this new gas wonder fuel was this coal by the victorian era britain was the world leader in coal mining we had lots of the stuff it was called coal gas or town gas and the victorians began to build gas works in every town in the land [Music] this is fakenum gasworks in norfolk first opened in the early years of the victorian period it supplied gas to the local people until it was closed down in 1965 it's the only surviving gas works of its type in england from victorian times [Music] alan this whole industry was based on somebody discovering that you can make gas from coal how did they do it it's quite a simple process actually underneath here is the furnace which is heating up a series of ovens which we call retorts into each of the retort call is placed the door is closed and then the coal is heated to about 750 degrees centigrade and the coal breaks down and produces gas and other products as well as coal so the coal isn't actually burning no it is actually heated in the absence of air therefore it can't burn it is just breaking it down into constituent products that rise in the form of a thick brown gas up through the ascension pipes here and into the hydraulic main above [Music] the first public gas works opened shortly before queen victoria's birth but by the 1860s there were over a thousand across the uk supplying every town and city the gas they produced was stored in these large tanks from these the gas was distributed to the local town through a network of pipes the main pipes were first laid under existing roads allowing towns to install street lighting for the very first time remarkably it's still possible to get a sense of that victorian atmosphere today [Music] in london a team of lamp lighters regularly takes to the streets to attend to over 1500 gas lamps spread across the capital the warm glow gives us a flavor of how victorian britain would have looked at night in the first half of the 19th century gas street lighting spread out beyond london to the rest of the country and once gas pipes had been laid for street lighting it was then possible for homes along the route to be linked to the supply who were the first people to get gas in their homes the first people to adopt it in homes were would have been the middle classes not the aristocracy though they were a bit sniffy about it they were i think it helped when buckingham palace adopted it so royal patronage was was very key to the success of the gas industry when queen victoria took up residence at buckingham palace in 1837 she had gas lighting supplied throughout the building it was soon followed by the house of commons in 1852 such influential converts to gas made it popular and the wealthy of the land soon followed suit then the invention of the coin-operated gas meter in the 1870s opened up this new wonder fuel to all classes of british society well the fears about this new fuel i mean after all it is explosive people were concerned that the gas pipes under the streets were transmitting fire because they saw that fire came out of the gas fittings so they assumed that it was fire within the pipes themselves and people would go along pass gas pipes and touch them to see how hot they were looking back to what extent did manufactured gas change the way people live their lives it led to a whole range of health benefits and societal benefits the environment was safer it was brighter and it gave people more flexibility over what they could do with their lives [Music] gas changed people's lives in victorian britain street lighting transformed even the smallest towns but soon it wasn't just a case of lighting up their streets and drawing rooms gas was about to revolutionize other parts of the victorian home and one room would be transformed more than almost any other the kitchen in victorian britain the arrival of gas had a profound effect on the way many people lived their lives first it was used to provide street lighting and then lighting in the home but later in the victorian period the invention of a brand new gas appliance caused something of a revolution it was the gas cooker up until the mid-victorian period cooking was carried out mainly on open fires or ranges you can't underestimate the effect of the gas cooker on british homes and kitchens and meals and diet because what you now have with the gas cooker is you can control the supply it is a straight supply of energy it's not going to go off and on and also you can control the temperature you can make it high medium low we take that for granted but for the victorians this was absolutely amazing one of the first gas cookers was installed at the reform club in 1842 for celebrity chef of the day alexis soyer he carried out early demonstrations of the benefits of cooking with gas the arrival of the new gas ovens and gas cookers played a part in the victorians revolution of the kitchen although initially only for the wealthy one of the major events of the victorian period brought them closer to the masses the thing that really created a kitchen revolution was that absolutely pivotal victorian event the great exhibition summer of 1851. the great exhibition was the very first international presentation of manufactured products it was organized by queen victoria's husband prince albert and held in a purpose-built crystal palace in hyde park for the millions who visited it was an eye-opening experience assembled in one place for the first time was everything that victorian technology could produce and chief among this new technology with the newfangled gas cookers after being displayed at the great exhibition more and more people now installed them in their new victorian homes the great exhibition really brought technology into the victorian home on a modern gas oven you can change the temperature it made cooking much easier much more experimental and also it meant that you could make a more complex meal and so we really do see the sunday roast becoming much more popular in this period it's something that the average middle class family can manage one house that demonstrates this victorian kitchen revolution probably more than any other is the home of victorian industrialist william armstrong he was one of the wealthiest men in britain and he was obsessed with kitchen gadgets [Music] what is it about this kitchen that a victorian coming in would think this is state of the art it's cutting edge experimental even oh it's good it's full of gadgets they're taking advantage of every modern convenience all the new mechanical aids probably the most modern kitchen of its time what is there in here that's going to surprise me the most ah well i think you ought to have a look at this if you want to be truly surprised what is it it's one of the very first dishwashers how does it work well it's quite simple really you've stacked all your plates into it but then there's these bars that have jests of water under pressure so you close the doors so you don't get a good soaking in the process and then this water would cascade down across the plates and this was a time when servants were plentiful and cheap they were indeed so really it's just a way of showing off a bit what's coming brand new today oh wow wash her up we must have one of those but in the new victorian kitchen it wasn't just about the high-end state-of-the-art equipment the victorians also invented much more basic kitchen utensils that we take for granted today the victorians were obsessed with novelty they loved gadgets as much as people do today and so they'd invent things like an apple corer or a potato peeling a potato peeler is a wonderful thing you wonder why no one ever thought of it before as new materials like steel became readily available mass producing items like kitchen gadgets was possible for the first time made them available to the masses this whisk i mean surely people before the victorians had whisks yes whisks were been around for a long time but it's that manufacturing that they had in the victorian age meant that it was easy to bend the wires steel was being perfected this could all be done on a machine which meant they could mass produce them gosh the victorians were fond of garlic weren't they it's not a garlic pressure it's not it's a potato masher but it just shows you know that they were looking for finer dining you know this was a house that was built to impress you had guests coming you wanted the fluffiest smoothest mash that was possible and all this lovely technology allowed you to do that [Music] the victorians were so ingenious in fact that even if the technology of the day wasn't advanced enough for them they still found a way to solve a problem in the grandest victorian kitchens they were introducing an appliance that was way ahead of its time [Music] here we have one of the very first fridges good gracious which at that stage was called a food store but this is how refrigeration really started in the home so this is a very well lined and insulated uh box it is it's built of timber which is an insulated material there's insulation between the zinc and the timber and this would have probably been stood in a scullery as well which is already cool and it meant that you could keep things for very much longer periods how would they have used it well the ice goes into the base and it has a drain hole in the bottom uh as well there's various removable shelves so you can have your ice cream bombs in here and you meet in another area so it's all well thought out and designed a fridge in all but name and of course electricity yes very much so the only thing you've got to do is replenish the ice that's the only job with it really this brand new innovation the fridge was beginning to appear in the houses of the wealthier victorians it had long been known that packing food in ice helped prolong its life but now the notion of ice in drinks for instance and the manufacture of ice cream was becoming popular during the mid-victorian period there was a huge increase in the demand for ice the industry that grew up to cater for it is one of the great forgotten stories of the victorian era such was the demand for ice that a huge import business was established first bringing the ice from america and then from norway although little is known about it now here at the london canal museum in king's cross there's still evidence of this extraordinary industry i'm meeting ellen leslie an expert on the victorian ice business much to my surprise beneath the canal museum are two enormous cylindrical spaces they're huge aren't they ellen what is this place this is a commercial ice well that was built in the late 1850s to store ice how much ice would have been in here it's huge it would take about two to three thousand tons tightly packed in why is it here at what is now the canal museum this was because ice could be delivered from the docks brought up the regents canal and then distributed from here what did they want the eyes for on a commercial level restaurants and fish mongers needed ice but what about the private consumption of ice from here well certainly only the very wealthy would have had an ice box or an ice chest it took a while for it to be something that the masses would enjoy but it affected their eating because it enabled food to be kept fresh for longer uh it changed maybe the kind of desserts they had because they're able to make ice cream and sorbets on the ice so what people were eating in the 1840s so what they were eating in the 1890s was was quite a big change it may have only been the very rich that could now store their food in a prototype fridge but the new mass-produced ice cream was something that was available to everyone it was sold in small glass bowls called penny licks but because they were often just wiped clean before being used for the next customer they were banned in the early 20th century just as wafer cones came in when did this industry peak uh probably about the 1870s 1880s uh it was a short-lived uh because by the end of the 19th century they were starting to manufacture ice um artificially so this extraordinary ice trade that i must say i'd never heard of almost exactly coinciding with the reign of queen victoria herself absolutely yes [Music] victorian life at the home was now becoming more sophisticated at every level new inventions were transforming the way the victorians lived across the classes and for many it meant the creation of a whole new world of leisure time throughout the victorian age the house and home was becoming a more comfortable and pleasant place to be new house designs catered for all classes of society and new technology was making the lives of the victorians more civilized and standards of living were improving one of the biggest breakthroughs was the introduction of a regular gas supply it was literally bringing people out of the dark before gas lighting you have a candle light but on a dark evening you only have light in your own immediate area and the thing with gas lighting it could light up a whole room with the victorians now being able to extend their day there was a boom in games and hobbies they played games such as charades and blind man's buff which became collectively known as parlour games after the room that they were played in most parlors also had a piano but by the 1870s the victorians had even invented one that played itself the pianola will mechanically play a tune and for the first time ever you could enjoy music without needing an actual musician to provide it [Applause] as the victorians began to have more leisure time they got busy inventing more things to make that time more pleasurable the pianola was surpassed by a device called the graphophone a precursor to the record player [Applause] the victorian parlor was beginning to resemble a modern day living room the concept of home entertainment as something canned and packaged arrived with them we did not invent it one of the most novel inventions in the victorian era was a whole new room the bathroom it's impossible to imagine a house without one but before water was piped to houses in the 1850s all of your toilet business and washing was done in bowls in the bedroom this is completely new and revolutionary previously of course you have to go to the well to get your water you have to physically heat it on the hearth take it upstairs and then use it for your bath now suddenly sanitation keeping yourself clean actually became rather easy you could have quite a few baths you may be even going to have one every day bathing as we know it was now possible because of the marriage of piped water and a regular gas supply producing hot running water after all when queen victoria came to the throne most people hardly washed at all and a bucket of cold water was the upper limit of luxury but some victorians went one step further at crackside the lavish victorian home of millionaire industrialist william armstrong the bathroom he created is well more than just a bathroom gosh it's a bit it's like a present day hotel it is where you relax and brandy and uh brandon's need fulfilled yeah and craigside even boasts something that we take for granted every day but that was brand new for the rich victorians gosh it's it's huge and we'd call it a shower what did they call it they called it a water douche and of course you just pulled it like the old lavatory chain you pulled the chain and then you got this sustained douche of water which they reckoned you shouldn't have for any more than a minute and a half otherwise why because it was so cold yes and it wasn't good for you to be sustained any more than that all right but it's still the obvious ancestor the modern shower isn't it oh without a doubt it's just the whole embodiment of what a shower is today and years ahead of its time yes the new shower in cragside was cutting-edge technology for the time but from the 1880s they would soon be on offer to victorians of more modest craigslist owner william armstrong didn't just stop at the shower he created a bathroom of the future [Music] wow i mean it's it's it's not armstrong's bathroom it's armstrong's personal spa it is they called it the turkish bath suite what in total has he got here in this vast suite of rooms well he has a hot room so you can sweat out all your impurities and then you came into here and you then went into the plunge and immersed yourself in the water you could have it to any temperature you liked um or you could take an ordinary bath then after that you then went out for a vigorous walk onto the moor just to finish it all off in the context of the time the bathroom suite here at craigside is breathtaking you're seeing the very first examples anywhere of the sort of thing that you and i now take for granted heating the home had always been a laborious and painstaking task that mostly didn't work that well running water and the ability to heat it now created the opportunity to warm the whole house the victorian home was transformed because now with gas and with hot water you can heat your home there are hot pipes going all around it and although the actual radiator per se was really introduced very late in the victorian period we do see versions of the radiator beginning in the 1840s mixture of pipes and radiating plates and some houses did have these so the victorian house is beautifully warm the poorer members of victorian society were still having to rely on open fires but for the more wealthy radiators started to appear in homes and the concept of central heating was introduced for the first time at cragside they developed an ingenious heating system that yet again was way ahead of its time got a bit of a hole in the floor down here yes we're going down okay and in order to see it for myself andrew is taking me under the floorboards [Music] and everyone was much shorter in those days less well-fed not this short oh goodness oh [Music] good gracious it's absolutely extraordinary isn't it look at these we're actually under cragside itself now are we in the basement underneath the floorboards what are all these pipes for well these are the grand heating system for crackside you could send this hot water coursing through these great ranks of pipes which then emanated the heat that went up into the rooms through grills and also a whole pipe system through the house [Music] throughout the lavish and highly decorated rooms are radiators hidden discreetly behind wooden panels [Music] the hot water pipes heat up the hallways and even provide under floor heating in the spa area so you didn't see the engine room of the central heaton at all when you were in that opulence it was all underneath here how much of a breakthrough was this in the history of the home oh it was phenomenal and there was nobody had attempted this before on this scale he was really at the cutting edge of modern living he was the first he was the biggest advances in the victorian home were brought about by the introduction of gas every town had its own gas works and large gas tanks became a feature of the landscape these derelict gas holders are now part of our industrial heritage their numbers are dwindling as they're being torn down to make way for redevelopment the other great pillar of the power industry that still looms large today also began in the victorian era electricity the way we use electricity in our homes now is arguably the invention of an extraordinary man joseph swann a visionary victorian physicist and inventor he was one of a group of scientists and engineers from the northeast of england who were at the forefront of developing electricity as the victorian era's brand new driving force swan's special contribution to the great victorian invention of electricity was this the light bulb or as he would call it the incandescent carbon filament lamp he developed it here at his victorian home at gateshead on the outskirts of newcastle [Music] in the heart of the city center in newcastle is the literary and philosophical society built just before the start of the victorian era it played a crucial role in joseph swan's career it was here that he demonstrated his new light bulb at a major presentation the current chairman of the litton phil as it's locally known is paul gailunas paul how important was the litten phil to joseph swann it was important to scientists and engineers in the region and have been for 100 years many important developments were announced as lectures here and it's here that joseph swan demonstrated the successful electric light bulb for the first time yes that's absolutely correct and i believe that there was standing room only in the lecture theater which actually held 550 people so there's a lot of interest in the town and the newspapers reported over several days actually and i can read a little bit from it the great invention of the day mr swan's lamp with its mild and warm brilliancy steadiness and controllability was then shown to the delight and astonishment of all and the room lit up with it this lamp is superior to gas in every respect as a light and it goes on and on it goes on and on so it made a really big impression right certainly did joseph swan's demonstration was astonishing the news of his new lamp went worldwide but there was a rival to his invention on the horizon scientist thomas edison was developing a similar invention in america although it's now widely agreed that swan just beat him to it so joseph swann was the first why haven't i heard of him why have i only heard of thomas edison well they were working on it at the same time and edison claimed to have sold the problem but actually swann was the first person to get the thing into production was there a row between them edison sued swann because edison claimed that he was infringing his patent and the thing went on for a year or two eventually it was resolved amicably and edison actually invested quite heavily in swan's company they traded as edison and it was the best of all worlds i think for them joseph swann had come up with an invention that would eventually light up the world but now a new race was on to supply the power to the home to bring swan's bulbs to life [Music] in the victorian period the new wonder fuel gas had transformed the way people lived but as the victorian age drew to a close a new power source was about to transform the world in newcastle victorian engineers were experimenting with electricity for the first time and a local inventor joseph swan had perfected the first usable light bulb but how did he do it what have we got here john this is a replica of the very first successful electric lamp that joseph swan built this one here it is it is indeed how does it how does it actually work well the key thing is it got a filament a very fine carbon uh thread going from the top to the bottom connected to these terminals here and here which are powered by a battery what makes the light it's the heating of the electric filament and it glows white hot that's 2500 degrees centigrade roughly speaking and that was the key challenge that swann had to face none of the metals that were known back in the victorian days would stand anything like white heat they would melt so swan was a chemist he knew the properties of materials and he settled upon carbon as the material it's a non-metal but it does conduct electricity why doesn't it burn up well that was the other challenge of course to create as higher level of vacuum inside that bulb as you could with the technology available at the time it was very difficult to create a complete vacuum in the bulb but swan discovered if you switched the light on as the air was being sucked out it burnt off all the remaining oxygen this resulted in the sealed bowl blasting much much longer [Music] the bulb he went on to mass produce also had a more resilient coiled filament instead of a straight one so this is what he came up with as his first the first commercial example of the incandescent filament electric lamp can i hold it you can yeah it is very similar to to a light bulb today but am i holding in my hand something that actually changed our homes forever yes you are because the predecessors of the electric lamp all involved burning something in the home you had to burn oil or you had to burn gas or you had to burn a candle now those were all in victorian times quite quite dirty materials and this was an opportunity to have light inside a room without burning anything noxious so what i'm holding in my hand broad cleanliness light and convenience to our homes absolutely swan's light bulb harnessed the new power of electricity on a relatively small scale there was obviously novelty value and more in being able to light up his little lamps and it must have seemed like magic to victorians who up until then had had to rely on candles and gas lights but the electricity industry was starting to grow and the north east was crucial to that too when joseph swann perfected his light bulb the only way of powering it was with crewed batteries but around the same time a team of engineers also from the northeast designed a generator so large it could provide electricity on a commercial scale for the first time this resulted in the construction of the world's first power station in newcastle they received parliamentary permission to build it in 1899. it was finally opened the year of queen victoria's death in 1901. this was the spark that would eventually lead to the national grid and the widespread distribution of electricity for all and it was all down to the victorians here at cragside the lavish victorian mansion in northumberland william armstrong was also experimenting with generating electricity but he came up with a way of doing it that was a century ahead of its time [Music] he invented hydroelectricity generating energy for his house using the power of water [Music] here at cragside armstrong was intent on filling his home with the latest advances of the day joseph swann was a friend he worked and collaborated with him he was first in line to have his greatest invention installed here in this room how did it work out then in his collaboration with joseph swann here at crackside it meant that this was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity and it's in this very room that joseph and lord armstrong worked on these very lamps and lord armstrong's genius in all this is taking that light bulb and powering it by water power something we talk about today an alternative form of energy and here they were perfecting this in 1880 and were able to light the house through water with the new brand new incandescent lamp so we're not we're not just looking at the past here we're looking at the future we certainly are this really was the invention that drove electricity into the home it's the light bulb that drives electricity in the home william armstrong and his fellow victorian engineers scientists and inventors profoundly affected the way we live our lives during the 64 years of victoria's reign the victorian home changed beyond all recognition with so much else the victorians created the world in which we live the mod cons that they introduced are the thing that identifies us most closely with them the bath the shower the lavatory those things we couldn't live without them we have the victorians to thank for those the victorians created britain as we know it today everything that we are and we use is thanks to the victorians our towns our transport our construction our homes they made everything that we have it's all thanks to them the home probably more than anywhere else is where the victorians felt the impact of those massive advances cragside was the ultimate test bed for those changes but the newfangled ideas and gadgets would eventually reach down to the rest of us from the top down the victorians changed our lives forever [Music] next time i learn how cotton changed the world we were in a society where you could look as you wanted discover how the victorians brought the sea to landlocked manchester there are those that think that the manchester ship canal is the finest feat of engineering of the entire victorian era and kicked off the great rivalry between manchester and liverpool it was all manchester thumbing its nose at liverpool in short yes

Channel: Absolute History

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Rating: 4.904201 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, how the victorians built, how the victorians built britain, how the victorians built britain absolute history, how the victorians built britain episodes, victorian essentials, victorian gas, victorian homes, michael buerk

Id: TBQwYMvClXM

Length: 43min 1sec (2581 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020