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Season 3 · Episode 3
0.0March 16, 1998
In the first of two programmes to mark Science Week, Adam Hart-Davis travels to Egypt in search of the earliest heroes of science. Using a drinks can and a stove, he recreates Hero of Alexandria's invention of the steam engine. Other early geniuses include Eratosthenes, who calculated the earth's circumference using only a stick, and Alhazen of Cairo, who devised the pinhole camera.