Engines of Our Ingenuity
1,144 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 7 hours ago - ★★★★★ - 165 ratingsThe story of technological progress is one of drama and intrigue, sudden insight and plain hard work. Let’s explore technology’s spectacular failures and many magnificent success stories.
This content is in service of Houston Public Media’s education mission and is sponsored by the University of Houston. It is not a product of our news team.
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Episodes
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1162: Systems
April 26, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.61 MBEpisode: 1162 Systems: Much more than the sum of their parts. Today, let's see how machines transcend themselves.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1979: Airplane Reservations
April 25, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 1979 How to process five thousand airline reservation requests in one second. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd buys plane tickets.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3001: Archimedes To the Rescue
April 24, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.73 MBEpisode: 3001 Archimedes to the Rescue. Today, Archimedes to the rescue.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2739: Hall
April 23, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 2739 Evolution of the Hall from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. Today, a room without a view.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1161: Roman Water Wheel
April 22, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.63 MBEpisode: 1161 An old Roman mill tells about the acceptance of technology. Today, we try to make sense of an old Roman power plant.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1159: Nevil Shute’s Ordeal
April 21, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.62 MBEpisode: 1159 In which Nevil Shute looks at the ordeal of aerial bombing. Today, Nevil Shute predicts the chilling anonymity of war.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1158: The Crystal Palace
April 20, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.61 MBEpisode: 1158 The Crystal Palace, the 1851 exhibition, and Victorian art. Today, we look for art to equal the building that holds it.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1157: Marketing Model A
April 19, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.64 MBEpisode: 1157 Merchandising Windows 95 and the Ford Model A. Today, we sell Model A's and Windows 95.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1971: Lame, Cauchy, and Kummer
April 18, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.75 MBEpisode: 1971 In which Lame, Cauchy, and Kummer race to prove Fermat's last theorem. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd relives a race.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3029: Model Citizen
April 17, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.65 MBEpisode: 3029 Model Citizen. Today, lets talk about models.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3241: Hooker’s Green
April 16, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.82 MBEpisode: 3241 Green with Immortality. Today, we go green with immortality.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1156: The Machine as Mirror
April 15, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.66 MBEpisode: 1156 We mirror machine mirrors we mirror machine mirrors we ... Today, an analogy game.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1154: Adam’s Belly Button
April 14, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.62 MBEpisode: 1154 In which Adam's navel poses the question of pre-creation history. Today, a silly question about Adam's navel paves the way for evolution.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1153: Grosseteste and Bacon
April 13, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.63 MBEpisode: 1153 Grosseteste, Bacon, and the rise of realism. Today, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and cyberspace.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1152: Macbeth
April 12, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.62 MBEpisode: 1152 Macbeth, populism, and insanity. Today, Shakespeare tells us how to stay sane.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1961: The Four-Color Problem
April 11, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.75 MBEpisode: 1961 The Four-Color Problem -- an strange old puzzle, almost resolved. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd colors maps.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3121: Getting Typhus
April 10, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.73 MBEpisode: 3121 Charles Nicolle and the Transmission of Typhus. Today, we get typhus.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2985: Relative Accuracy
April 09, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 2985 Relative Accuracy. Today, we'll question the virtue of accuracy.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1150: Arguing Racism
April 08, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.65 MBEpisode: 1150 Arguing racism: Time for rational, rather than moral, arguments. Today, we analyze racism.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1149: Heat Transfer
April 07, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.67 MBEpisode: 1149 Heat Transfer Conference ("Wherever there's a thermal gradient"). Today, we move energy.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1148: 1846
April 06, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.66 MBEpisode: 1148 1846: Origin of the Smithsonian Institution in a momentous year. Today, let's talk about American expansion, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1147: Points Off
April 05, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.61 MBEpisode: 1147 Points-Off thinking: a damaging force in education and sports. Today, we ask how many points to take off.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1952: Constants of Nature
April 04, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 1952 The only-possible constants of nature: The only-possible us. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd looks at the grandest machine of all.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2944: Max Planck’s Triumphs and Tragedies
April 03, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.76 MBEpisode: 2944 The Father of Quantum Theory, The Perseverance of a Scientist Facing Multiple Tragedies.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3123: Vincent Coleman
April 02, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.76 MBEpisode: 3123 The Halifax 1917 Explosion and Vincent Coleman's Final Goodbye. Today, a final goodbye.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1146: Creating a New Country
April 01, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.61 MBEpisode: 1146 Early Massachusetts: a cultural beachhead, not yet a new country. Today, America leaves its Eastern beaches.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1145: Jacquard and Babbage
March 31, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.6 MBEpisode 1145: Jacquard, Babbage, Hollerith, IBM: from weaving to computers. Today, a story about wool weaving and computers.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1144: Fokker D-VII
March 30, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.68 MBEpisode: 1144 A Fokker D-VII mysteriously lands on an Allied airstrip. Today, the last vestige of fictional war.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1143: Shakespeare and Medicine
March 29, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.6 MBEpisode: 1143 Shakespeare's long-standing fascination with medicine. Today, Shakespeare's fascination with medicine.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1950: Girolamo Cardano
March 28, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 1950 Girolamo Cardano: The tormented life of a towering renaissance thinker. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd shares a story of triumph and tragedy.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2714: Hub Motors
March 27, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.74 MBEpisode: 2714 Hub Motors, aka In-Wheel Motors and their applications in electric vehicles. Today, re-inventing...wheels.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3296: Keeping the Lights On in Hong Kong
March 26, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 3.38 MBEpisode: 3296 Icons of Hong Kong: Neon Signs, and Local Cinema. Today, we hope the lights never go out in Hong Kong.
Engines of Our Ingenuity1142: Legend and Flight
March 25, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.63 MBEpisode: 1142 The accumulation of empirical data in the legends of flight. Today, old stories turn from legend into experimental development.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1140: Twentieth-Century Tents
March 24, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.65 MBEpisode: 1140 Tents: a very old and very modern architecture. Today, a new architecture -- the tent!
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1139: The Wounded Story-Teller
March 23, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.66 MBEpisode: 1139 The Wounded Story Teller recovers from illness. Today, we tell the story of an illness.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1138: The Texas City Disaster
March 22, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.63 MBEpisode: 1138 Texas City, Roseburg, World Trade Center, Oklahoma City: a story of fertilizer and cigarettes. Today's story is about cigarettes and fertilizer.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1948: Lobster Shells
March 21, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.73 MBEpisode: 1948 Sex, Love and Lobster Shells. Today, guest scientist Andrew Boyd asks where lobsters come from.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2977: Thomas Jefferson and the Maison Carrée
March 20, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.77 MBEpisode: 2977 Thomas Jefferson, the Maison Carrée of Nîmes, and the Virginia State Capitol. Today, Thomas Jefferson in love.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 3016 Simpson’s Paradox
March 19, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.78 MBEpisode: 3016 Simpson's Paradox. Today, paradoxical averages.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1137: America at the First Modern Olympics
March 18, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.61 MBEpisode: 1137 America goes to the first modern Olympic Games. Today, amateur America goes to its first Olympic Games.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1135: Ol’ Man River
March 17, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.62 MBEpisode: 1135 Trying to hold a river that doesn't want to be held. Today, the Mississippi writes a parable about going with the flow.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1134: Linear B
March 16, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.66 MBEpisode: 1134 Linear A and Linear B: Decoding the old Minoan scripts. Today, we struggle to read what our ancestors are saying to us.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1133: Lucille Treganowan
March 15, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.6 MBEpisode: 1133 Of Lucille Treganowan and automobile transmission repair. Today, let's meet an unexpected auto mechanic.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1929: Switched on Bach
March 14, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.72 MBEpisode: 1929 Wendy Carlos and Switched-On Bach -- new technology, new music. Today, guest scientist Andy Boyd makes music.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2998: Evolution in a Test Tube
March 13, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.75 MBEpisode: 2998 Test Tube Evolution. Today, evolution in a test tube.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2851: Unplanned Obsolescence
March 12, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.73 MBEpisode: 2851 The Lake Breeze Fan: Unplanned Obsolescence. Today, invention and obsolescence.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1132: The Siege of Paris
March 11, 2024 05:01 - 3 minutes - 1.65 MBEpisode: 1132 In which balloons deliver the mail during the Siege of Paris. Today, the very first airmail service is used to break a siege.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1131: John Hunter
March 10, 2024 06:01 - 3 minutes - 1.65 MBEpisode: 1131 John Hunter: idiosyncratic medical pioneer. Today, the history of medicine provides a strange hero.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1129: Alphonse Penaud
March 09, 2024 06:01 - 3 minutes - 1.62 MBEpisode: 1129 In which Alphonse Penaud invents the model airplane. Today, a very young man teaches us to fly, after all.
Engines of Our Ingenuity 1128: Of Whales and Elephants
March 08, 2024 06:01 - 3 minutes - 1.6 MBEpisode: 1128 Of whales and elephants: a remarkable convergence of attributes. Today, we find that whales and elephants have more in common than just size.