Podcasts cast entertaining eye on technology history

3rd September 2018

Mick Elliott

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Guglielmo Marconi, Hedy Lamarr and Grace Hopper all feature in a new comedy podcast series called History Makers produced by RS Components. The podcasts explore a modern day technology theme, such as Wi-Fi, artificial intelligence or 3D printing, and delves into the lives of the great inventors from centuries past who made it all possible, with a few laughs along the way.

The podcast is hosted by Robot Wars judge and DesignSpark blogger Dr Lucy Rogers alongside award-winning comedians Harriet Braine and Bec Hill.

Each episode brings a famous maker from the past face-to-face with an innovative present-day technology through a combination of facts, jokes, sketches and songs. The presenters pay their respects to the struggles and triumphs of makers who went before, and reflect on whether the inventions that came after them are really as beneficial as we think.

The six episodes were recorded live, before an audience, over three summer sessions hosted at London’s Canal Café Theatre.

History Makers was created with expert help from a crack team of producers, writers and script editors with credits across multiple BBC shows.

History Makers episodes will be released every Monday throughout early autumn. Full episode details are below.

Release date	Episode	Topic
3 September	Episode 1	From radio to Wi-Fi. The story of Guglielmo Marconi, father of modern radio, and Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood star turned inventor. What would they make of our Wi-Fi-saturated world?
10 September	Episode 2	From Frankenstein’s monster to AI. Mary Shelley’s famous horror story Frankenstein imagined a creature that rises up against its creator. As AI affects more and more areas of our lives, are we creating our own monsters?
17 September	Episode 3	Grace, the grandma of COBOL. Grace Hopper was a gifted engineer who helped build the first commercial computers and develop COBOL, one of the first programming languages. Today, computer programs are everywhere – but are they a blessing or a burden?
24 September	Episode 4	Longitude, latitude and laughs. Horologist John Harrison built clocks precise enough to measure longitude at sea, making ocean travel far safer. These days, we take accurate timekeeping for granted – but is there a downside to living by the clock?
1 October	Episode 5	From Wedgwood’s wares to 3D printing. Josiah Wedgwood developed innovative new ceramics and the classic blue and white Jasperware. What would he think of a machine that outputs perfectly formed items at the touch of a button – the 3D printer?
8 October	Episode 6	From calculations to cyber. Ida Lovelace saw the way forward from Charles Babbage’s calculating machines to a true computer, laying the groundwork for cybernetics. Will we still appreciate her work in a world run by robots?