Modern Marvels Season 3, Episode 8: The Railroads That Tamed the West

Space Shuttle

Considered by many to be the most astounding machine ever built, this reusable spaceship is the apex of flight technology. This program recounts the challenges and the critical issues that led to NASA’s decision to create an “airplane” to navigate space.

44 min

Brooklyn Bridge

It was an engineering feat of almost miraculous proportions and a design of spectacular elegance. Rare photographs and behind-the-scenes stories recall the politics, the struggles, and the tragedies that made possible “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.

44 min

Tunnels

There is no more potent demonstration of man’s resolve than the design and construction of tunnels–avenues that slice through a conspiracy of elements in the single-minded determination to connect two points. Whether underwater, blasted through solid rock, or negotiating the shifting strata of earth’s unstable crust, we explore the design and engineering of famous tunnels…and the motivation behind them.

44 min

Tennessee Valley Authority

During the depths of the Great Depression, it was FDR’s greatest triumph: A massive public works project that took a 40,000 square mile, disaster-prone river basin, and turned it into a model of industrial progress.

44 min

Oil

From the first well in Pennsylvania to the gushing Spindletop and modern supertankers, the story of oil is the story of civilization as we know it. We’ll take a look at the ingenious and outrageous men who risked everything for “black gold” and unimaginable wealth.

44 min

Silver Mines

It was called the "mother lode", a deposit of silver so massive that it would produce $300-million in its first 25 years of operation, establish Nevada as a state, and bankroll the Union Army in the Civil War. Named after an early investor, we'll see how the Comstock Lode, discovered near Virginia City, proved to be a scientific laboratory from which vast improvements in mining technology and safety were pioneered, including innovations in drilling, ventilation, drainage, and ore processing.

44 min

The NYC Subway

A trip through time on the New York Subway beginning at the beginning– October 1904. We look at New York before the subway–a world of horse carts and elevated trains. We see early impractical experiments in transportation like the pneumatic subway or the elevated cable car. The program will deal with the technology of the subway, the construction, and financing. We look at subway stations and equipment.

44 min

Paving America

The story of the construction of our grand national highway system, from its beginnings in 1912 (it was conceived by auto and headlight tycoons) to its completion in 1984 (when the last stoplight was removed–and buried).

44 min

The Alaskan Oil Pipeline

Being starved by an OPEC embargo, America is desperate for oil, and in 1973 construction begins on a 800 mile pipeline, tapping into Alaskan oil to quench their insatiable oil hunger.