Diploma Lecture 2012

Pre-sessional lecture 10th August 2016

From the ultra clean environment of a microchip factory to the railway engineer who lifted a city to install sewers, innovation expert Steven Johnson traces the surprising journey from dirty to clean in our lives. He discovers the unsung heroes of this transformation, like the doctor who secretly experimented with a deadly chemical to treat the water supply, and the storekeeper who revolutionised cleanliness in the home.

For at least 100,000 years, humans have known how to make fire. But the skill to make cold is a very modern technique. Innovation expert Steven Johnson traces the unsung heroes of cold, like the doctor who was desperate to beat fever and created a refrigerator, the rookie heating engineer who discovered how to cool our homes and set off a mass migration to the desert, and the young man who cut ice from a lake and transported it thousands of miles.

It was only a few centuries ago that the best source of light came from burning oil scooped out of a whale's head. Innovation expert Steven Johnson discovers the unsung heroes of invention in the surprising journey from the candle to the neon lights of Las Vegas and the world of lasers.

The ability to transport our voices over long distances has been one of the greatest transformations in how we live our lives.

From submariners who live on an 18-hour day to the railway clerk who fought to standardise time zones, and the cobbler who invented the first cheap watch, innovation expert Steven Johnson discovers the surprising journey of time in our lives. He locates the unsung heroes whose ideas transformed our world of time from the sundial to clocks accurate to billionths of a second.

A five-part series presented by best-selling author Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From, Everything Bad Is Good for You), investigating the little-known stories of revolutionary innovations.