| Summary: | EPISODE 12: Need For SPEED No prizes for second place! In this episode we learn how being the fastest enabled empires to be born and capitalism to thrive. We learn how British pirate, Sir Francis Drake, out-ran Spanish ships and stole enough booty to build his country into the greatest empire ever. But in an industrial age of global trade new ways of communicating begin to appear. In the American Civil War a new way of relaying military commands with electricity allowed Unionists to be victorious and for the North and South America to Unite again. Trade could now continue, at greater speed than ever before, with the invention of the steam engine. This era of American progress relied on an influx of new European immigrants to build it, and the faster they could cross the Atlantic, the better. Charles Goodyear first vulcanises a new industrial rubber that facilitates the mass-production of the automobile, liberating workers from smoggy cities and giving birth to the suburbs.
|
|---|