Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

What the Victorians Did for Us

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6.2/10
TV

Original language(s)
  
English

Editor(s)
  
Ben Giles David Murray

Distributor
  
BBC

Final episode date
  
22 October 2001

Genre
  
Television documentary

8.4/10
IMDb

Country of origin
  
United Kingdom

No. of episodes
  
8

Running time
  
23 minutes

First episode date
  
3 September 2001

Presented by
  
Adam Hart-Davis

Executive producer
  
Caroline van den Brul

What the Victorians Did for Us wwwgstaticcomtvthumbtvbanners529023p529023

Similar
  
What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Romans Did for Us, The Victorians, Victorian Farm, What the Industrial Revolutio

What the victorians did for us velocipedeamania


What the Victorians Did for Us is a 2001 BBC documentary series that examines the impact of the Victorian era on modern society. It concentrates primarily on the scientific and social advances of the era, which bore the Industrial Revolution and set the standards for polite society today.

Contents

The children who built victorian britain part 1


Speed Merchants

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Playing God

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Rule Makers

Video on YouTube

In 1875 the Bulldog Club defined the perfect British Bulldog, in a booklet that was circulated to breeders everywhere. From dogs to engineering, from sports to space and time, the world was becoming obsessed by standards, and the rules that defined them. This was the world of the Victorians.

  • Victorians standardised the rules for association football, or soccer, based on a range of games already played, such as the Eton wall game.
  • Walter Clopton Wingfield invented the game of lawn tennis, which allowed young men and women to socialise together, and to get more exercise than by playing the sedate game of croquet.
  • Victorians set down rules for formal dining, and invented the fish knife. Mrs Beeton documented recipes and how to run a household.
  • Florence Nightingale recorded extensive details of wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and used these statistics to demonstrate to a Royal Commission the effectiveness of simple hygiene in reducing unnecessary deaths.
  • In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table of the chemical elements, including gaps where as-yet undiscovered elements would fit.
  • Joseph Whitworth devised a series of standards for engineering, and built a rifle with an accurately-rifled barrel.
  • Greenwich Observatory was used to define the official time for the whole country, and the zero line of longitude.

    • Crime and Punishment

    Video on YouTube

    Social Progress

    Video on YouTube

    Pleasure Seekers

    Video on YouTube

    Making It Big

    Video on YouTube

    Conquerors

    Video on YouTube

    References

    What the Victorians Did for Us Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA