Simply A Masterpiece

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Little good it will do posting here, but History Channel has obscured any feedback paths to their programming department.I really would like to watch this show. I managed to get through to the first commercial. But it's the sound. Rather, the NOISE. Their sound editor seems compelled to pull out all the sound effects he can find and throw it into the program at an unreasonably high volume. I have to crank up the volume to hear the narrator, which causes others in the room not interested in the show to scream to turn it down. It's very annoying to me too, especially that sound of someone dragging sheet metal off a truck. Really.

Be sure not to miss "Panama Canal Supersized" that premieres Saturday evening, April 11 at 9 pm. The special reveals for the first time the 5.5 billion expansion project of the Panama Canal.Radiant Features filmmakers Dylan Robertson and Bill Ferehawk seamlessly integrate time lapse, drone and regular photography with full immersive sound in a fast-paced, one-hour narrative.Memorable sequences include a tour through the underground channels while water rushes in, a concrete pour ten stories high, and the fabrication of the jumbo gates in Italy. The expansion project itself started in 2007 and is projected to be finished around early 2016.

Modern Marvels' episode takes a look at the history of mobile robots in the United States. The show begins with the original Shaky and Stanford Cart, all the way up to the massive field robots developed by Red Whittaker at Carnegie Mellon to deal with nuclear accidents. It's particularly interesting because there really weren't any machines (robots or otherwise) capable of dealing with these sorts of disasters before Whittaker and his team began developing them.While some have criticized Japan for failing to build practical robots capable of dealing with situations like the Fukushima plant, the United States was in the same position when the meltdown occurred at the Three Mile Island reactor. Whittaker jokes that the start-up he founded was the robotics equivalent of an ambulance chaser, making bank on the backs of disasters as they happened. It then goes into some of the early legged robots and autonomous vehicles.Though it does touch very lightly on humanoids, it almost goes out of its way to tiptoe around Japan's dominance in that area (perhaps not to upset WW2 buffs, the History Channel's target demographic). Instead of Japanese humanoids (of which only familiar clips of Honda's P2 are shown despite the episode airing in 2004!), it focuses on the comparably simplistic animatronics for entertainment and Nolan Bushnell's failed household robotics venture Androbot. Even though our beloved humanoids are not the focus of the episode, it's still a history lesson worth taking, though its American bias is slightly annoying.Modern Marvels also did a couple of episodes with robotic tangents ("Super Human" has a short segment on Raytheon SARCOS's exoskeleton).

I gotta say I love this show. It really indulges your inner curiosities about a WIDE range of subject matter. What on the surface would sound like some documentary on a lackluster topic you'd watch in grade school, Modern Marvels makes fascinating.Whether it's guns, engines, shipping, mining, plastics, or something as seemingly mundane as plumbing, Modern Marvels presents an entertaining and well-organized program taking you from the subject's origins to where it's likely headed in the future. This insightful program is highly recommended for those who have even the slightest curiosity, and who desire an understanding of the things that create our society.