Original subtitles

[narrator] Does this strange 11,000-year-old deer skull

have links to a British Atlantis?

[Dr. Ben Elliott] All of a sudden, we have this data

which is giving us an impression of this lost landscape.

[narrator] Is this ancient relic the work of a prehistoric astronomer?

Is it just a decorative disc or is there some hidden meaning?

[narrator] And did this weird contraption really shape the modern world?

Honestly, it looks like something invented by a steampunk scientist.

These are the most remarkable and mysterious objects on Earth,

hidden away in museums, laboratories, and storage rooms.

Now, new research and technology can get under their skin

like never before.

We can rebuild them,

pull them apart,

and zoom in

to reveal the unbelievable,

the ancient,

and the truly bizarre.

These are the world's strangest things.

[narrator] In the Yorkshire Museum is a truly ancient artifact,

created by humans in the unimaginably distant past,

the end of the Ice Age, 11,000 years ago.

If you think about going back to the Pyramids of Giza,

and then going back another Pyramids of Giza amount of time,

you still wouldn't be 11,000 years ago.

It's a vast amount of time.

[narrator] Now, using cutting-edge technology,

we can bring it into the light.

Close examination reveals the skull has been drastically altered.

Strange holes have been cut into it.

These holes are made artificially in very selected points on the skull.

[narrator] The antlers had been cut down and honed.

The bony protrusions inside had been removed.

This might have started out as the skull of a deer,

but people have worked it into something far stranger.

It's been carefully trimmed and carefully perforated.

[narrator] The changes might be dismissed as some bizarre combination

of natural processes if this skull were unique.

[Elliott] This isn't just a one-off.

There are 33 of these red deer skulls

which show exactly the same patterns of working and manufacture.

[narrator] Who made it?

What is it for?

And what secrets does it hold about humanity's distant past?

Northern England, 1948.

Archeologists unearth a prehistoric site called Star Carr in North Yorkshire.

Because of the acidic peat soil of an ancient lake bed,

a lost world, 11,000 years old, has been preserved.

[Elliott] We don't just get the stone tools.

We get the organic materials, so the bone, the wood.

It's incredible that we get so much material, such a breadth of material preserved,

that just doesn't normally survive for these vast amounts of time.

[narrator] And one group of finds in particular captivates the experts.

To a lay person, this just looks like a deer skull.

So why does it shock the archeological world?

[Prof. Kevin MacDonald] It's been worked.

It's been reduced in size around the base of the horns.

It's been manufactured.

[narrator] And when experts try to reproduce the process

used to create this eerie skull,

they discovered that it's far from simple using only Stone Age technology.

This is a time before metal tools.

This is a time before drills.

[Elliott] The process starts off with the reduction of antlers.

Then it looks as if the frontal bones and the lower jaw

and the lower part of the brain case

are removed quite carefully in a very specific way.

[narrator] This is done by wrapping the bone they want to keep in clay.

The skull is then heated in a fire.

The exposed bone becomes brittle and can be broken off.

And the process doesn't stop there.

[Elliott] We get these holes which are made artificially

in very selected points on the skull.

It's done with a pointed stone, or a flint axe, perhaps.

[narrator] Each deer skull takes hours, even days, of meticulous work.

It's not a level of craftsmanship

experts expected to find on an 11,000-year-old site.

Because back then, just surviving this far north is an achievement.

[MacDonald] The temperature then would have been about

8 degrees Celsius colder on the average than today.

It would have be difficult just finding food.

Spending a lot of time working on a deer skull

might not have been the most practical thing to do with your time.

So, this must have been important to them.

[narrator] What is this weird skull for?

The answer may lie in a closer examination.

A natural deer skull has sharp, bony ridges inside.

This one does not.

Some of the knobbly protuberances on the inside of the skull,

they've been smoothed away.

[narrator] Along with the holes cut into it,

archeologists now believe this can explain what it's for.

They've been modified specifically with the intention

of them being worn on the head.

Perforations are created in order to allow

strapping or webbing to be passed over the skull

and under the chin of someone who wants to wear them.

[narrator] So are we simply looking at some kind of Ice Age hat,

or does it have a deeper purpose?

[Elliott] The original interpretations focused on the idea of them being

hunting aids or hunting disguises,

and that people were donning the antlers and skulls of deer

to improve their chances of success in hunting.

[MacDonald] We know that this was a practice of Native Americans.

For example, in California, in historic times,

the last of the great Yahi hunters, Ishi,

explained how he used to wear such a crown of deer antlers

in order to attract the interest of white-tailed deer.

[narrator] But at Star Carr, archeologists run into

a problem with the camouflage theory.

If the skulls recovered from the ancient lake bed

are simply utility items for hunting,

you'd expect them to be used until they wear out, or break.

[MacDonald] These headdresses were in perfectly good condition

when they were put into the lake.

You have to ask, why throw away a perfectly good headdress?

[Elliott] It looks as if they are being placed

deliberately in the open water areas as part or some form of ritual.

[narrator] What is the purpose of this ritual,

and why is the deer skull so important to it?

One hint might come from Upper Paleolithic rock art.

Recorded in the cave of Trois-Frères in the Pyrenees,

what looks to be a man wearing a deer suit,

perhaps even in the course of transforming into a deer,

or simply dancing, wearing such a costume.

[narrator] Similar horned figures appear throughout ancient history,

across many cultures, from Italy to Denmark and France.

What are these monstrous figures?

Are they connected to Star Carr skulls?

Could these be legendary devil priests?

[narrator] This 11,000-year-old dear skull headdress

is strikingly similar to ancient images found across the world.

What does it all mean?

The answer may lie in a more recent image of life on the Russian Steppes.

[MacDonald] Half a world away, in Siberia, an engraving from 1692

showing a man wearing a a similar set of antlers.

[narrator] This image comes with a caption in Dutch.

"Shaman, or devil-priest."

It leads archeologists to an extraordinary conclusion.

The current thinking for the headdresses is that they represent

one of the earliest examples we have in the archeological record for a shaman's costume,

which allows the wearer to transform their identity,

to become something which isn't, perhaps, all human,

something which blurs the characteristics of red deer

and people together in an unusual way,

and creates this cosmologically different kind of being.

[narrator] The presence of these skulls at Star Carr 11,000 years ago

suggests it's a center of shamanic religious worship.

And they appear connected with other similar images

scattered across Europe and Siberia.

But Siberia and Yorkshire are separated by over two and a half thousand miles

of land and sea.

Is a connection even possible,

or is this just a figment of over active archeological imagination?

In 1931, a crew of English trawlermen land an unexpected catch,

a huge lump of what's known as morlog.

[Elliott] So it's this big lump of wood

that's been trawled from the bottom of the North Sea,

and it gets mud and got these stuff stuck to it.

And one of the things that comes off

is this artifact.

This... spearpoint

made from red deer antler,

which is remarkably similar to

many of the spearpoint we found at Star Carr.

But is it just coincidental?

It's over 60 years before the apparent link

between the morlog,

the strange images scattered across the world,

and the skull headdress becomes clear.

[Seagull squawks]

It's only with the discovery of oil

and the use of sonar mapping

to really generate a high resolution understanding

of what the bottom of the North Sea actually looks like,

that we suddenly realize archeologists that there is

this completely lost landscape there.

Archeologists discover a lost world.

A rural Atlantis connecting Britain to continental Europe,

now submerged beneath the North Sea.

[Birds chirping]

This European Atlantis is named Doggerland

after a famous seafloor amount.

We suddenly have this

which is giving us an impression of this lost landscape,

so valleys, riverbeds, estuaries

and miles and miles and miles

of land, which is populated by hunters and gatherers

during the mesolithic or Stone Age.

How does this spectacular landscape

end up at the bottom of the sea?

During the Ice Age period

when the ice is trapped in the caps

the level of the sea is lowered,

and the shallow pieces of land

that are just beneath the sea today

are actually the exposed on the surface.

They become vegetative,

they get eroded by rain water into rivers,

and they become areas for settlement.

This lost land bridge between Britain and Europe

finally connects the deer-people images

across the globe

with the headdress at Star Carr.

The large expanse of Doggerland

allowed people to move around the water European landscape,

and if people are moving around,

so our ideas.

So there is very little reason

that the concept of Schamanism,

those kinds of ideas and those kinds of beliefs

could have traveled with people across the land

and made their way to what we know as Britain today.

Inaudible

The Star Carr skulls

are not only proofs

of the astonishingly

religious practices,

they are also evidence

that this 11,000-year-old

spiritual culture

is far more complex and widespread

than we could ever have imagine.

In the German Museum,

sits a priceless and unique object.

It looks like a modern emoticon,

but it's actually an ancient artifact.

Now, using the latest techology,

we can reveal it in all its glory,

the Nebra sky disk

It's made out of gold and bronze.

It's relatively heavy,

and it's very, very beautiful artifact.

Really beautiful.

Measuring 12 inches in diameter,

it's believed to be more than three and a half thousand years old.

And on it,

is a series of what looks like

astronomical objects.

Possibly the sun, the moon,

cluster of stars,

and it has some gold arcs.

But could it be more than a piece of elaborate decoration?

Does it mean something?

Do the markings on the disk

actually represent something?

What looked like the sun, moon, and stars

might make it one of the most ancient images

of the cosmos ever.

Nobody, not one archeologist

woould have expect it, such an...

find.

Not in Egypt, not in Mesopotamia,

and absolutely, not in the heart of Europe.

Is this the work of an advanced culture

in the center of Bronze Age era?

What are these symbols mean?

Are they proof of some kind of secret knowledge?

Or is this all just in elaborate hoax

conjured up by Luthers?

Because the discovery of the disk

is a genuine, true crime story.

The Nebra sky disk.

How does this strange artifact

wind up at the center of a major police operation?

[Suspenseful music playing]

May 2001,

archeologist Harold Meller

is shown a photograph of a bronze age hoard

It includes chisels, swords,

jewelery, and something he's never seen before.

A strange disk decorated with gold.

[In foreign language]

The sun, crescent moon,

a series of crescents,

and then a series of stars

all [inaudible] out in really vibrant gold work.

It's...

completely unique

in terms of the European Bronze Age.

It almost defies beliefs as a find.

It's really remarkable,

and it's really, really striking.

On closer inspection,

it seems to be more than just a pretty picture of the night sky.

If you just have a general look at the disk,

you see all these different symbols,

but something stood out.

It's a cluster of seven stars.

Comparing the arrangement of these stars against known constellations

suggests one strong candidate.

Just thought the seven stars

represent an actual star const the sky called the planetis.

Nalurv realizes

that if it's genuine,

the disk represents one of the oldest images of the cosmos ever discovered,

an ancient star chart.

It was absolutely clear that

this item,

if it's really in the Bronze Age,

this would be one of the most important finds of the world.

But in 2001, when Meller has shown the photo of this unique object,

it isn't in a museum,

it's for sale on the black market.

I was truly shocked.

This crucial find was in the hand of Luthas.

Shocked and angry

we can't touch it,

we can't to research on it.

If it goes to a private buyer,

it could be lost forever.

Believing it could be genuine,

Meller tracks the store of artifacts for months.

In February 2002, posting as a buyer,

he arranges a meet in a Swiss hotel.

The man who had the disk had it in a towel

under his shirt.

So he open the shirt,

and showed, and showed me the disk.

But Meller hasn't come alone.

As soon as the disk exchange his hand,

the Swiss police passed.

The police do a very, very good job,

and this was a really, really exciting

Holistic like in a TV thriller.

Afterwards, the archeologist and the police

trace back the disk to two treasure hunters.

They claimed to found the disk

in the zegal road of forest in Germany,

near the tiny settlement of Nebra,

and sold the hoard to a dealer in Ireland.

For sixteen and a half thousand dollars.

They have no idea that the disk alone

could be worth almost 700 times that amount.

Eleven million dollars.

But it's unique appearance

and criminal origins

makes its authenticity questionable.

Any such object that comes out of

an elicit operation,

sting operation,

also the art market...

It is something that is very hard to determine if it is

fake object, if it is a hoax,

or if it's real thing.

This is a fundamental problem

that confronts Meller.

So, is the Nebra sky disk

an ancient artifact

that can revolutionize our understanding of a lost culture

or is it a fraud

cooked up by the criminal underworld?

Now, he's got his hand on the hoard.

Meller can finally try to get to the truth

by figuring out how old the disk really is,

but that's a tough ask.

We can't carbon date it,

because it doesn't have anything organic

to it, to date from.

So we beed to date it

by association with the other objects

that it is found with.

It's not so easy to date

the chisel and not so easy date the arm rings,

but it is really easy for the archeologist to date the swords.

The style and how they were made

points it to a particular culture

the Unetice culture.

And they were one of the first

people in Europe

to use bronze.

From around 2300 to 1600 BCE,

the Unetice culture occupies much of the Central Europe.

This gives Meller a 700-year window for the age of the swords.

And closer examination narrows the timeline further.

He finds minute traces of wood.

In one of them, we found pieces of birch,

and it was able to take a radio come date for it.

So we know that the hoard

was deposited around 1600s.

1600 BCE is a perfect match to the Unetice culture.

If it really is 3,600 years old,

the sky disk is one of the most ancient representations of the night sky

ever discovered,

even older than any known Egyptian star chart.

So the archeological stakes are high.

But the only proof that the disk and swords belong together

is the word of criminals.

Can Miller prove it's really the sword,

or will it turn out to be a sophisticated fake?

The Nebra sky disk,

an ancient relic that could send shockwaves

to our understanding of the Bronze Age world

but only if its real.

Sword said to have been found with it

are dated to 1600 BCE.

But the only proof that they belong together is the word of criminals.

The swords were real,

but the question is,

was the disk really found next to the swords?

How do we know that it's not something that just been added,

something modern to our date that's been added to

an authentic collection of swords?

One of the things that make the sword looks old

is the green corrosion covering it.

This green corrosion is called verdigris,

and it's formed from copper,

which is the principle component of Bronze,

and it is formed when the copper reacts with

water and the atmosphere to create

copper-carbonate hues of beautiful blue-green crystals on the surface

of bronze.

You see this greening on statues, like the Statue of Liberty

is green for the same reason.

A prominent German archeologist suggests

that this verdigris could have been faked using urine.

To find the truth,

scientist examine the disk

electron microscope

to measure the size of the disk's verdisgris crystals.

In a geniune artifact, what you see

is smaller number of very large crystals

of how that time to grow.

Whereas in a fake artifact,

you see much larger number of very, very small crystals.

The verdigris crystals on the sky disk

are smaller number and and large in size.

And over this consistent with an artifact

that is been lying around for, around three and a half thousand years.

So we know from this crystals that this isn't a fake.

The science suggests that the disk is so old,

it predates the reign of Tutankhamun.

But is it just ancient decoration

or is it meant to do something more practical?

What is it for?

One clue may lie in the decorative blue patterns.

Experts suspect this cluster of stars are depiction

of a real constellation,

the Pleiades.

This might be significant

'cause the Pleiades are one of the constellations

that we don't see thoughout the year in the northern hemisphere.

They appear at around

autumn time, around harvest time,

and they disappear from here at around spring.

It might be showing when to plant crops

showing when to harvest crops.

And the Pleiades might not be the only astronomical reference

on the sky disk.

Along one edge is a gold arc

and it's clear that there was once an identical arc

on the opposite edge.

If you take the location where the disk is found,

they seem to match up

with the position of the summer solstice

and the winter solstice,

so a difference of about 82 degrees.

The stone of this arcs is a kind of measurement device

with are you to work out what time of the year was

based on the position that the sun rises on the horizon.

The angles of the gold arcs can be coincidence

except for one

rather incredible discovery.

Goseck henge.

In 1991, a huge archeological find just made 50 miles away

from where the disk has been found,

and is a giant and pre-historic earth work.

It is a structure that was probably used to some kind

of astronomical calendar.

Archeologists uncover the remains of a wooden circular structure.

Roughly 240 feet in diameter.

Comprised of four eccentric circles.

A particularly important feature of Goseck henge

is two gates

that are same angle apart

as those arcs on the sky disk.

Goseck henge is believed today

back to 4900 BCE

over 3,000 years before the sky disk is created.

It suggests that this is genuine astronomical knowledge,

and it has been passed down for countless generations.

And of course, it's not the only henge in existence

Tops the most famous henge in the world

is stone henge in UK,

and it's most famous function

is summer and winter solstices.

The sun rises in a very particular position between the stones.

Could all these similarities

provide a clue to the sky disk's true purpose?

Obviously, something like Stonehenge

is not portable

like you gonna slip it in your pocket and make a few calculations about your crops.

So, perhaps the Nebra sky disk

serves as a more portable functional version of these giant prehistoric structure.

What we see is a scientist of these times.

People want to know something about universe.

The celestial calendar makes perfect sense,

but it doesn't explain everything about the disk

because there's a third golden arc

and it, sometime, after the disk was made

and this can't be explained by an astronomical theory

So what is it?

Two gold arcs on either side

suggests the Nebra sky disk is a portable cosmic calendar,

but the strange third arc below can't be explained

by astronomy.

One particular theory of this is possibly a submerge.

The idea of the sun traveling across the sky are God's moving the sun

across the sky is one that's common to a number of civilizations.

For the ancient Greece, Helios, the sun God who travel across the sky

in a horse-drawn chariot.

For the ancient Egyptians, the Bark of Ra is a vessel,

which sails across the sky

carrying the sun god, Ra.

The similarities with the disk seem clear.

Experts believe this is the best explanation we have

for the strange third arc.

But could religious ideas from such distant cultures

really have reached as far as the Central European Bronze Age?

The answer may lie within the disk itself.

So when they look at the lead isotopes in the copper,

just the main constituents of the bronze,

The lead isotopes' fingerprint

match the site on the far east of the alps.

The decorative metals are even more surprising

The gold on the arc on the side of the disk

is traced on the Carpathian Basin in Romania.

But the gold and the sun, moon, and stars

proves harder to pin down.

Dr. Gregor Borg samples and compares deposits from across Europe.

Of something like 270 locations all over Europe

that we have to exclude as a source

Komol is the only region until now that we have found

whether the composition of the gold matches the composition

of the gold of the sky disk of Nebra.

It's a remarkable discovery.

The distance between the Cornwall and the eastern alps

where the copper sourced,

is almost a thousand miles.

The sky disk of Nebra

is showing us that the Bronze Age people were traveling across Europe at that time.

They have trade connections.

There was a united Europe already 1600 years BCE.

Isn't that amazing?

So the idea that religious beliefs about the sun

could've been exchanged with Unetice from widely separated cultures.

Does it seem quite so hard to swallow?

We may never know the full story of the Nebra sky disk.

Is it a spiritual symbol,

a cosmic calendar,

or, perhaps, both?

What the disk does show us

is that ancient cultures that could easily be dismissed as primitive

were, in fact, far more sophisticated than we have ever realized.

What's actually incredible about this tiny object

whatever really represents

is that it actually show us the people even thousands of years ago

were practicing astronomy.

They were looking to the skies.

They were understanding the movement of the sun and the stars,

and how will they define the phenomena that were happening down here on earth.

It really was one of the earliest true sciences.

In the depths of London Science Museum,

is a bizarre contraption

from the late 1800s.

It looks like a school science project gone wrong,

but nothing could be further from the truth.

This strange thing everything around us.

This almost nothing

you see, hear, or touch

that hasn't been affected by the development of this device.

Now, we can bring this antique to life

once again.

This is Fleming's diode.

Standing just 9 inches tall,

it is a spidery gadget of glass and wire.

I can see a wire filament

and plate embedded within a glass tube,

and it's a combination of metals and glass

that actually creates the very beautiful physical structure.

When you turn it on, it seems to come to life.

It has a beautiful property where it glows like an incandescent lamp.

But it looks more like Dr. Frankenstein's idea of a light bulb.

A contact pierces that glass's bubble

connecting to a thin sheet of metal close to the glowing filament.

It's designed simply to improve primitive radio,

but it accidentally starts a world-changing technological revolution

that's still going on today.

Why is it created?

How does it work?

How does it end up transforming everything?

Fleming's diode.

This strange device is a worldwide game changer

but that is almost an accident

because it isn't created to do that.

In the second half of the nineteenth century,

the first transatlantic telegraph cables

connect North America and Europe.

For the first time,

nations can talk to each other instantaneously

across thousands of miles of ocean.

But this revolution has a weakness,

it must be hardwired.

Cables are expensive, prone to failure,

and messages can only be sent between fixed points.

Ships at sea, for example,

are completely deaf and dumb.

But in a German laboratory,

a scientific experiment is about to spark a sea change.

[Electrical buzzing]

In 1887,

physicist Heinrich Hertz uses a spark to generate

electromagnetic waves

what would come to be called radiowaves.

This create another spark in a receiver several feet away.

There's nothing in between but thin air.

It's like magic.

The thought was an electricity require a flow through a wire.

So this notion that we could actually have electricity flow

without the wire

is a concluding concept.

It opens up a seemingly possible idea

communication without wires

But Hertz's scientific experiment only works over distances of a few feet.

On its own, it will never change the world.

One man more than any other transforms the dream

of wireless communication into a reality.

A young Italian engineer called Guglielmo Marconi

Over the next decade, he makes huge leaps in the evolution of radio.

In 1899, Marconi his radio saves its first lives.

A lightship, in the English Channel transmits the world's first distress signal.

Alerting Coast Guard's to a stricken vessel.

But Marcone is thinking big. He wants radio to cross the Atlantic and his receiver

cannot detect radio over that distance. So he devises a more sensitive detector,

but it has its own issues.

[Dr. Anna] It still wasn't quite perfec because it was basically

built on clockwork.

[narrator] Which means it has to be wound up by hand.

[Prof. Tim] And if the radio operator forgot to wind it up,

of course, the system wouldn't work anymore.

[narrator] Marconi wants to eliminate the mechanical element and critically improve

sensitivity even further because more sensitivity

equals more reliable reception and a bigger range.

Enter john Ambrose Fleming, a scientist working for Marconi

This spider like object is what he comes up with

But how does this weird little contraption get the whole world talking?

Fleming takes an entirely novel approach to detecting radio.

His device doesn't just sense the radio signal, it manipulates it.

[Dr. Daniel] So the way it works in a radio,

when you receive a radio signal,

the radio signals going backwards and forwards positive,

negative positive negative very, very, very, very rapidly

1000s 10s of 1000s hundreds of 1000s of times a second.

[narrator] This makes it impossible to directly measure the electrical signal

from the area.

Because the change of direction is so rapid that the needle

of any meter measuring it doesn't even begin to move before the current reverses.

The needle appears stationary.

So you cannot tell that there is a radio signal at all.

Fleming's device, also known as a thermionic diode solves the problem by chopping

the radio signal into,

[Prof. Tim] a thermionic diod allows current to flow in one direction,

but not to flow in the opposite direction.

[narrator] When Fleming's device is fitted into the radio receiver,

only the electricity flowing in one direction gets through,

the needle doesn't get pulled back to zero by the reversing current.

So the detector can register the signal and a message sent from 1000s of miles away

can be received.

But how does it pull off this strange trick with the current

the secret to the thermionic diode lies within the glass shell.

Sitting in the vacuum is a thin filament that glows red hot.

Close to it is a thin metal plate.

The magic happens in the space between them.

And it's all based on one of Sciences biggest or rather smallest discoveries

of all time.

1897, Cambridge, the world of science is awash with new rays,

not just radio and X-rays. But a mysterious new one called the cathode ray,

[Dr. Anna] a physicist called JJ Thompson was studying cathode rays.

And what he discovered was that these weren't actually rays

a tool but they were tiny, tiny particles.

[narrator] At the time, scientists believe there is nothing

in the universe smaller than a hydrogen atom.

But what Thomson finds is much, much smaller.

[Dr. Anna] These particles had a mass about a 1,000th of a hydrogen atom.

[narrator] It's a scientific revolution.

Atoms are no longer the smallest objects in the universe.

And these newly discovered and mind bogglingly small particles

named electrons are the key to Fleming's device.

It begins with the red hot filament

[Dr. Anna] when it heats up the metal,

the electrons effectively start boiling off the surface.

[narrator] Electrons are negatively charged.

And Fleming's gadget relies on the fact that opposite charges attract.

[Dr. Daniel] If you put a metal plate near it that's positively charged,

those electrons are drawn off to it quite effectively.

So you get current flow because electrons carry current,

and they're all rushing at this metal plate.

[narrator] But the current cannot flow the other way.

[Dr. Anna] If you swap the charges round and make the plate negative,

the electrons wouldn't flow because they're negatively charged so they will be

repelled from the plate.

[narrator] And that is how the Fleming valve works.

[Dr. Anna] What you end up with is a device that only allows electricity to flow

in one direction.

[narrator] By the early 20th century, the radio signal that 25 years earlier

left just a few feet now crosses oceans and continents.

That's the problem Flemming strange looking glass spider helped solve.

It was never intended to shape so much of the world we know today.

Why was its impact so accidentally profound.

[Dr. Daniel] It's the first electronic device, it's the beginning

of the electronic revolution.

Before that, we've got motors, we've got lights, got lightbulbs,

you've got switches, essentially, you can turn things on and off.

We can't really manipulate the way the current behaves in a complicated way.

[narrator] During the next decade, diodes grow a third wire.

Now tiny changes in the voltage of this third connection can change

a large current flowing inside the device.

It transforms these glass spiders.

[Dr. Daniel] And what that is, is an amplifier.

You think about what you can do with an amplifier.

Before everything is dots and dashes in Morse code.

Now I can send speech, I can send music,

I can make talking pictures.

It has a profound impact

[narrator] It becomes the foundation of much of the modern world around us

[Dr. Daniel] Television, computers, radios, mobile phones, the internet.

It's all built on electronics.

None of it could exist without electronics.

The creation of this diode starts this electronics

revolution and that's a revolution that's still going on today.