Programme three:
The Stuff Of Light
For the penultimate programme in the series Simon Schaffer
charts the extraordinary discovery of what light actually is, and how
mankind learnt to control light and use it for his own ends with potentially
devastating consequences.
It was the eccentric and brilliant Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell
who showed that beams of light, electricity and magnetism are all different
aspects of something scientists now call electromagnetism.
Light according to Maxwell is an electromagnetic wave, no different
in essence to radio waves or the microwaves that heat up our ready meals.
This was a discovery that revolutionised the world. All the ubiquitous
technologies of modern living - electricity, mobile communications and,
of course, our ability to illuminate the world 24 hours a day - stem
from unravelling the mystery of light.
But there is a dark side to this tale. The science that gave us electric
light also gave us the atom bomb; it's a story of how man started by
fearing the dark, and ended up fearing the light.
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