Machines Time Forget 4x60
(C4/Discovery) Series Producer/Writer, Windfall Films. Director: Chariots of War and The First Submarine episodes.

History is littered with mysterious achievements, feats that cannot be explained by the known technology of the time. In this series historians and artisans tackle four of these ancient exploits: Assyrian chariots, the first submarine, cathedral cranes and a ship mounted Byzantine flamethrower

Using a British Museum wall relief depicting a Chariot as a starting point, a carriage maker, horse trainer, weapons expert and an historian try to figure out how these mobile war machines were deployed by the Assyrians in 8th century BC campaigns. Two and four horse chariots are built and road tested to destruction at the site of an Assyrian battlefield on the present day Turkish-Syrian border.

In First Submarine the challenge is to reconstruct David Bushnell’s 1776 revolutionary egg shaped submarine, designed to attach a mine to the side of HMS Eagle, in New York harbour;

Cathedral Crane attempts to reproduce the technology that stonemasons and timber framers needed to lift heavy loads during the construction of their lofty gothic masterpieces.

Finally in Fireship an expert in ancient metalwork and a Byzantine military historian attempt to come up with this ancient version of napalm used by the defenders of Constantinople in AD674 against the Muslim fleet.

About Fireship. “...a team of historians and engineers risk life, limb and a severe singe to recreate from materials available at the time a spectacular model of this extraordinary weapon.” Daily Telegraph

About Chariot “Ambitious effort to rebuild the war machines of ancient cultures” Paul Thacker Archaeology

About Cathedral Crane “Crane... had as much tension as any soap or reality show” Steve Pratt on Television

C4 Website
quote