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Jeremy Clarkson – technological historian

Just a short posting to say that our man Jeremy Clarkson has been doing a series of shows on BBC2 TV entitled Inventions That Changed The World, and doing them very well, to judge by last night’s episode, which was about The Computer. He was particularly interesting about Tommy Flowers, the man who built the “Colossus” computer, which used valves, and which cracked German codes at Bletchley Park during World War 2. Clarkson also reckoned that Charles Babbage had done pretty well and deserved better backing for his “difference engine”. Babbage never got it built, but, said Clarkson, some techies recently did build Babbage’s machine, and it worked.

But my real point is not how well Clarkson said that Flowers, Babbage and their ilk did with their computers. Rather I want to emphasise how well Clarkson himself did with his TV show.

I missed the first one, which was about The Gun, and I must be very bad at googling because I was unable to find much in the way of blogosphere comment on that show, which must be wrong. But if I can, I will watch later ones in this series, on such things as The Jet, and The Telephone.

For many years now, I’ve been deeply depressed at the unwillingness of TV people, and showbiz people generally, to take technology and technological history seriously. The only history that really seems to fascinate these people is their own. Jeremy Clarkson, for all his flippancy, does take technology and its history very seriously. And he uses that rather over-emphatic style of his, which can get on the nerves when he is merely waffling frivolously about cars, to emphasise truly important points. Thus, of Babbage’s restored difference engine he paused dramatically before saying, with heavy emphasis, that … “it worked”, which is fair enough since that is after all the important point.

So, Clarkson – the man the lefties all hate with a passion, because he makes so little secret of hating them – is doing very well on the telly. That Brunel show really seems to be leading somewhere.

13 comments to Jeremy Clarkson – technological historian

  • Two things: firstly it is possible to go and see where WWII was actually won and where the first computer was built (and where it has been at least partly reconstructed) at Bletchley Park. The museum there has received absolutely no government money of any kind (or at least this was the case when I visited 18 months ago) because this kind of thing is not held in high respect amongst the sorts of people who allocate such money. This is a tremendously good thing, as this has also meant that there has been no attempt to make the museum politically correct and/or to dumb down the content as appears to be almost a requirement if you do accept government money for such things. (The people running the museum complain about their lack of funds and don’t necessarily understand their good fortune, however).

    Secondly, the reconstructed Difference Engine is in the Science Museum in Kensington, and is well worth going and having a look at. This is a peculiarly schizophrenic museum these days, in that the old section of the museum is full of untold wonders from the history of science, technology and engineering, and the newer Wellcome Wing, which is the sort of ghastly politically correct and content free museum with lots of flashing lights that you get when you allow publicists, management consultants and telephone sanitisers to design it.

  • Harry Payne

    The first part of the series, on guns, was as interesting as the computer part. Mr. Clarkson got to play with his spud gun and fire an awful lot of hardware forbidden to us mere mortals. I was particularly impressed with his complete inability to hit a van with an AK-47.

    It was unfortunate that in the computer section he gave Kevin Warwick so much as the time of day.

    I don’t know if I’m incorrectly interpreting his unabashed love of all things British as containing more than a fair share of poking fun at the Americans – there were a couple of the traditional cheap shots in the gun episode, and he wentto pains to stress that the American contingent at Bletchley was the only one to have air-conditioning. As next week’s sposide is the jet engine, it will be interesting to see how he plays the legend of Frank Whittle and the post WWII development of the jet.

    It certainly seems to be one of the more interesting series on TV at the moment; well up there with Takeshi’s Castle…

  • RandomLurker

    A somewhat off-topic aside to Harry Payne: as someone who knows a few things about guns and is familiar with the location where The Gun was filmed, I can guarantee that he was not firing live ammunition at that van. Which makes one wonder what the point of that exhibition was… *shrug*

    It’s a shame I missed the Computer episode; I’d hoped to catch the entire series.

  • Will

    Harry Pane,

    Clarkson didn’t hit the van because he was firing blanks. If you’d been watching closely, you’d have noticed a distinct lack of impacts anywhere.

    Clarkson does spend an unwarranted amount of time poking fun at the yanks. I thought the distorted Stars and Stripes soundtrack accompanying the doomed, imperial/metric confused, Mars probe was a little OTT (especially considering the timing – where’s Britain’s successful Mars probe then, Jeremy?) and he did bang on about the ‘American flowers’ who required central heating, which was as far as I could see totally off-topic. Maybe he throws a few such bones to ensure his improbable BBC contracts don’t dry up.

  • Nah, Jeremy just enjoys taking the piss out of Americans. But he’s decidedly old-fashioned about it: he dislikes Americans because of their personalities, not because the USA is a bastion of evil Capitalism. If anti-Americanism were generally of the Clarkson variety rather than the Socialist variety, it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

  • anglosphere2003@hotmail.com

    I agree with Michael Jennings’ comments above about the Science Museum. I spent 6 hours in the the first room (history of engines) without realising how long I’d been there. Fascinating stuff. The Wellcome Wing is the complete opposite: pointless.

  • Funny — when I happened upon this show, I thought of about fifty people I knew who would really enjoy it. Brian Micklethwait, you were one of them.

    I love Clarkson, and my admiration increases as others’ disdain grows. He’s doing everything right, and even his potshots at us Yanks make me smile.

    Not keen on the jeans, though.

  • There was one blog that I know of which featured commentary of the Gun episode: Biased BBC where they were none too pleased at his apparent advocacy of gun control.

  • waf

    Clarkson’s two programs in this new series have been very good. I don’t like his car shows, and in both if these programs I was struck by how well-researched they were.

    For the record, the point of the blank-firing AK47 episode was, as he said in the piece, that with automatic fire like that, one could ‘make a whole army keep its head down’. Which is truly the point to be made about these weapons.
    Well done Clarkson.

  • jeremy clarkson spends too much time poking fun at the U.S.? more like the U.S. spends too much time trying to police the world

  • Clarkson actually is well know for being un-PC and taking potshots at everyone – not just the Americans. He displays some wonderful scathing wit about the French and Germans (and to a lesser extent Italians) in the BBC Learning Zone (Open University cultural 101 programs) that are being shown at present – while also being nicely self depreciatory about our British failings – feeding an Italian Gourmet society on aweful British convenience food (surely the worst in the world!), getting French stylists to do a total makeover and re-dressing for him etc.

  • sdasfsdf

    Jeremy Clarkson is a nazi and a hypocrite, he claims that global warming is not caring, and then when you prove it is, he says he does not care what will happen in 2080, he does not care if the world dies out, surely someone who does not care what happens in 2080, should not be listened to, just like somebody who mdoes not care what ahppens in India, should not be listened to when we discuss India, he would not care if his kids died ,off, i am fed up of me helping hid kids, but him not he;ong mine, he is scum, and evil, and is the main cause of global warmingm, by his lies, and evil right wing, far rioght liezs, that will kill more than stalinm, hitkler, pol pot, and mao, and kaiser, and the tsar, and queen victoria put together, i like watching his tbv programmes though, bush is even more evil,

    5:53 PM

    Anonymous said…
    but he is a horrible scumbag who deserves beaten up, as he hates nerds, and is a bully who beat up piers morgan, and he cheats on his wife, and even worse, she likes that, so he married to a real scumbag, an eye for an eye, no wonder lefties supported stalin against them

  • lilly

    jeremy is brill, he does take the mic out of other countries but only in a dry sense, it’s not like he really dislikes them, u should just take it with a pinch of salt, he is one man just coz he takes the mic dosn’t mean everyone in his native country agrees. he is fantastic though and always puts a smile on people’s faces