"Why is it so?", was the challenging catch cry of Professor Julius Sumner Miller whose expositions on the phenomena of physics was a phenomenon itself in the 1960s and 1970's. I recall a television series commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, way back when I was very much younger which was vastly entertaining as it was informative, and educational. You Tube has enabled me, and others to revisit the good professor and his scientific stage craft...I hope you also enjoy the nostalgia and the wonderment of enquiry simply conveyed.
Some how public television went from information on science and society and a focus on both entertainment and basic knowledge to a circus aimed at the lowest common denominator. We have become a nation of observers and we no longer focus on the facts but the illusions. The quality of some of the scenes recorded by people with their cell phones is both beyond any conception that we could of had 30 years ago, but the 30 seconds of footage can be edited to prove nearly anything. We now live in a society in which the concept of a chain of events leading to some outcome is ignored and only a few seconds of carefully selected images are used to give the desired outcome. Until about 1850, nearly every small town in the world was capable of existing with the resources it had available for some period of time. The blacksmith, miller, shoe maker, etc could at least repair and extend the life of what they had and in most cases they could grow, process, and store the food they needed to stay alive. We have now reached the point that the US is having problems building cars because the factories can not get the special chips needed to control the electronics that makes everything work and 99 % of the population has no idea of how things work on even the basic levels shown in the above films, nor any real interest in knowing why they work. I am afraid that we are approaching the point the Roman Empire reached in the 300 AD era, the water still comes out of the water system from a source a 100 miles away, but no one can build a new system nor will the political system or the population do anything to really halt the slide into chaos. Jimmy Stewart was an actor and military pilot back in the 1940's and early 1950's and to me a symbol of the attitudes of the best of our population at the time. He was in the B47 bomber project,not as an actor, but as a planner in the process that was a continuation of the B17, B24, B29, B50 evolution of using heavy bombers to protect the nation. Being alive and living near a SAC base in Tucson Arizona and then joining the USAF in 1956, one has to both admire and realize that the mind set that existed in the USAF is no longer there. The cold hard fact was that no one flying those bombers had very much hope of ever returning to their home bases, nor any real belief that those bases might even still exist. I know it was a national goal and I think a lot of us realized on some level that knowing the basic concepts behind a lot of the technology was part of the idea behind the civil defense of our nation. If we survived in the fall out shelters, it would be necessary to rebuild our country again and many of the people who had watched the educational films of the time, had at least a basic understanding of what was behind the tech of the day. Good catch Chell, I enjoyed watching those clips and the chance of me stumbling on them by accident are near 0. Thank You.
Does anyone else remember Don Herbert? Mr. Wizard? Late '50's, early '60's? Similar but aimed at younger kids. He gave kids the idea that science was interesting and fun.
when I was kid even the studiest kid program had a little learning segment involved >>> know how many small kids learned to count to ten watching the Bozo bucket game?
