Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention (2010)

Directed by: Merlin Crossingham | 150 minutes | animation, comedy | Starring: Jem Stansfield, Ashley Jensen | Original voice cast: Peter Sallis, John Sparks

Who better to present a British TV program about bizarre but fascinating inventions than England’s famous inventor Wallace? The beloved clay animation figure that was conceived by Studio Aardman, and who has the best adventures together with his loyal, and actually much smarter four-legged friend Gromit, is also known for his ingenious, but not always successful inventions. ‘Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention’ is a six-episode BBC series that examines recent as well as ancient science in a fun and educational way.

In the first episode, ‘Nature Knows Best’, we look at the wonders of nature and how Mother Nature inspired science to make fantastic inventions. The German company Festo was inspired by, among other things, the beautiful giant manta rays. The graceful way in which these beautiful sea creatures move led the company to design an air ray, a remote-controlled hybrid construction, which is filled with helium and can ‘swim’ through the airspace. They also made a kind of robot arm that is so flexible that even fragile fruit, such as tomatoes, can be picked up without breaking it. There is still a lot to learn from termites. Their impressive constructions provide an always-cooled living environment, something that architects would like to apply to man-made buildings. We also get to see an interesting report about how the construction of a termite mound in Malawi is being mapped and how this can be translated into the houses of the future. ‘Nature Knows Best’ also has a Dutch touch. Scheveningen-born Theo Jansen shows his creation, a beach animal made of PVC pipes (and later also plastic bottles and other plastic materials), which has increasingly ‘evolved’ over the years (Jansen has been working on it since 1990). and can walk almost independently on the beach.

In the second episode, ‘Reach for the Sky’, the BBC program takes a closer look at man’s longstanding fascination with the art of flying. Hilarious are sometimes the – life-threatening – inventions of people who do everything they can to feel like a bird for just a few seconds, such as Stuart Ross, the man who made a jetpack, which is so expensive in terms of fuel that it actually takes years. must save for a few seconds in the air. The tenacity of the inventors is without exception admirable, such as Steve Bennett, who has been making his own rocket from an early age. Another revolutionary invention is that of Dava Newman (one of the few female inventors in the series!), who invented a lightweight astronaut suit, which gives astronauts much more freedom of movement. Longtime ‘World of Invention’ collaborator Jem Stansfield visits Fred Ferguson, who knows how to make the most of the Magnus effect with his invention. Very comical is also the top six planes that never took off. Think of “On land, at sea and in the air” and you have an idea of ​​what you will see. Very interesting is the introduction to the phenomenon Gustav Mesmer, whose eccentric inventions made him a beloved character (but whose life story was actually very tragic).

In ‘Home Sweet Home’, the third episode of ‘Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention’, the duo looks at the inventions made over the years to make housework easier. Although, easier…? Of course, countless devices have also been invented, which have hardly any right to exist. But Tony Sale’s house robot is very cute. A big pat on the back is due to William Kamkomstba, who started building a windmill in his village of Wimbe, Malawi, at the age of fourteen, which provided electricity in his parental home. The special thing about this is that he figured it out all by himself, by reading a book about wind energy in the library. He collected the materials from the garbage dump. Another eye opener is the item about the tea maker (teasmades), with which Britons in the last century were woken up in the morning by an alarm clock, which immediately had a nice cup of hot tea ready for them. Jem Stansfield explains to viewers how Albert Einstein’s never-before-market refrigerator works, and visits a young inventor Emily Cummins, who invented a mobile refrigerator that can be used for festivals and concerts, but – even better – for people in areas where there is no electricity. Her fridge can be made from waste materials. Trevor Baylis shows us how his wind-up radio came to be.

The fourth episode is ‘Come to Your Senses’, and is all about senses. Sir John Pendry shows how his cloak of invisibility works, something that will appeal to Harry Potter fans. Unfortunately, that might raise the wrong expectations, because his invention, which doesn’t even look like a cloak, makes the object invisible to radar, not to the eye. What is funny is the report about the first mobile phone, invented by Nathan Stubblefield, which was quite successful in rural Kentucky (but later failed miserably in New York). The story of the determined Mark Lesek is very impressive. He lost his right arm in an accident. Dissatisfied with the available artificial arms, he made a better, stronger prosthesis himself, so that he could continue his work as a mechanic. He based his arm on the 1902 Carnes arm and perfected the design. Very special (no pun intended) is also the part about honeybees, which are trained in such a way that they can smell explosives.

Better Safe Than Sorry, the fifth and penultimate episode of Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention, is about safety. Wallace tries to get through the broadcast unscathed in the studio, but it’s not easy. The first item, about the ejection seat, is very interesting. Not only do we see the invention in action and its history is explained, Craig Penrice, whose life was saved twice thanks to an ejection seat, also speaks. Funny is the part about drones, in which the German propaganda fable about photographing pigeons from the First and Second World War is disproved. Jem elaborates on the inventions of The Most Beautiful Woman In Films, Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr, who devised a method to make radio communications insensitive to outside interference, also known as frequency hopping. At the time, she was not taken seriously, but today we can thank her with our dependence on mobile telephony. It’s hard to suppress a smile at the Arthur Pedrick item. The British inventor regularly attracted attention by applying for 162 patents between 1962 and 1976, for the most absurd inventions, none of which were actually executable. The space suit piece, in which Bill Ayrey talks about the astronaut safety suits made by ILC Dover, might undermine the previous item on the same subject from Episode 2 a bit. Finally, the top six inventions that turn out to be very bad for your health are funny, but far-fetched because of the differences between them.

‘Getting from A to B’, the sixth and final episode, is about means of transport. The Russian Mikhail Puchkov tells animatedly about his submarine that he designed. His story is extra special because of the political history in his country. The eccentric inventor Cedric Lynch (would it be the last name?) shows his self-invented clean engine, which should make it possible to make electric cars accessible to everyone soon. On the Isle of Man, Lynch even takes part in the electric TT race, proving that his idea is quite feasible. It must have been very easy to put together the top six of this episode, because bizarre means of transport abound. The flying saucer powered by a laser beam was invented by Charles Osmond Frederick. And although his invention proved unsuccessful, in Brazil Leik N. Myrabo is currently working on a renewed concept, the Lightcraft, which closely resembles the old British design. A revolution in aviation? If it’s up to Myrabo, because if he’s right, you’ll be anywhere on earth with his invention within fifteen years with his invention… Inventor Clive Sinclair has already meant a lot to the world. His pocket calculator was also revolutionary, as was the digital watch he invented. Sinclair was also at the forefront of home PC use, but his inventions in the field of transportation were less successful. His Sinclair C5, an electric tricycle, was a commercial disaster, but the Briton does not know anything about giving up. With the Sinclair X-1 – which should be introduced in 2012 (according to this series) – he hopes to change the streetscape. Finally, Jem heads to the Didcot Railway Centre, which pays tribute to one of the failures of Brunel, a great engineer who created groundbreaking designs for Britain’s infrastructure. With his atmospheric railway, he hoped to allow trains to move through a vacuum in a tunnel between the rails. Jem replicates his invention and proves that it really should work.

‘Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention’ has English spoken and Dutch subtitles, so it will not be easy for young Aardman fans to follow the series. The series is also full of language jokes, not all of which can be translated, so it is more enjoyable if you are proficient in the English language. The lion’s share of the running time of the episodes is spent on reportage-like films, in which a certain invention is in the spotlight. You don’t see Wallace and Gromit very often. They are always present at the beginning and end of the episode and they often form a humorous bridge to a new item, but if you are only interested in the animation duo and you don’t like science, ‘Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention’ not a must. If you are curious about what science has to offer, this fast-paced series can certainly be a good introduction. But whether you will put it in your player more than once is just the question.