Light Fantastic (TV series)

Did You Know?

• In 1847, as a sixteen-year-old, James Clerk Maxwell was taken to see a prism made from a special Icelandic crystal.
• The third episode charts the discovery of the true nature of light and the subsequent development of modern technology such as electricity and mobile phones.
• The pioneers credited in the third episode include James Clerk Maxwell, Joseph Swan, William Armstrong, Thomas Edison, Wilhelm Röntgen, J. J. Thomson, and Max Planck.

Let There Be Light

The first episode examines how the efforts of Greek, Arab and Christian scholars to understand the divine nature of light contributed to the origins of modern science. Early Greek philosophers first investigated the nature of light and vision, noting that light seemed to fill space and offered clues to the universe's structure. They abstracted phenomena where light behaved unusually, such as why distant objects appear smaller or why objects change shape underwater.

Empedocles proposed that vision occurs because light streams out of the eyes and touches objects. Euclid built on this in his Optics, using geometry to show that rays from the eye follow straight lines, allowing predictions about light and optics. Al Hazen, who earned a living selling copies of Euclid's Geometry, later challenged Empedocles' theory while imprisoned after failing to stop the Nile's flooding. He noted that his eyes felt pain when exposed to light after darkness, which seemed inconsistent with rays emitted by the eye.

Al Hazen instead argued that light rays travel in straight lines and enter the eyes after bouncing off objects. He studied refraction and reflection symmetry, producing a seven-volume work that became a standard text. After Al Hazen's death, the Catholic Church sought to produce a Christian knowledge of light. Translation of Islamic scholars' work allowed Roger Bacon in the 13th century to develop Al Hazen's ideas through experiments with light distortion and colour effects using glass and water.

The Light of Reason

This episode examines the connection between practical tools that manipulate light and the emergence of new ideas, focusing on the work of Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Vermeer, Robert Hooke, William Herschel, Ole Rømer, Charles Darwin and Ernest Rutherford. Brahe, granted the island of Hven by Denmark's Frederick II, observed a comet in 1577. His measurements proved the comet was farther away than previously thought, challenging the Church's traditional view that God had placed Earth at the centre of the Universe.

Light, the Universe and Everything

The final episode examines how light connects to the eye and the mind, alongside the rise of photography and cinema. It covers the work of John Dalton, Benjamin Thompson, Thomas Young, Lord Rayleigh, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Wedgwood, Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Albert Einstein. Some Victorian scientists, using insights from color blindness, thought they could demonstrate English cultural superiority by measuring racial differences in color perception. In 1898, William Rivers and Cambridge academics traveled to the Torres Straits with a tintometer to test this. Rivers discovered that the islanders’ color perception was nearly identical to the English. After returning, he helped spread the conclusion that no scientific basis for white supremacy existed. The episode also covers Priestley’s discovery of photosynthesis.