Seven Wonders of the Industrial World

This episode focuses on the construction of the SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel to be both the first ship entirely made out of iron and the most luxurious vessel of the day. However, whilst the ship itself was a marvel of shipbuilding, its construction was marred by accidents, scandal and misfortune, including a destructive fire which practically wiped out the shipbuilder's yard, problems with the launch and financial scandals, all of which would contribute towards Brunel's deteriorating health and comparatively early demise in 1859 and the popular belief that the ship was 'jinxed' (a rumour leading to the urban legend of two bodies being found trapped in the hull upon its dismantling).

Focusing on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the episode examines the family that built it - John Augustus Roebling, who designed the bridge; his son, Washington Roebling, who took over construction following his father's death shortly after the project was announced; and Washington's wife Emily Roebling, who taught herself engineering principles and took on the burden of her husband's work after his health was destroyed by the decompression sickness he suffered owing to the length of time he spent working and overseeing matters in the pressured atmosphere of the underwater caissons used to build the bridge.

This episode tells the story of the construction in the early nineteenth century of the offshore lighthouse on Bell Rock, by the Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson. Bell or Inchcape Rock was a place which had claimed the lives of sailors and sank ships for hundreds of years, but which was underwater except for a couple of hours at low tide each day - causing difficulties in both constructing a design that would stand up to the terrible storms and waves that ravaged the area, and in actually constructing it during the few months of fair weather that were available each year, whilst simultaneously housing the builders who worked on it.