About this season
What the Tudors Did for Us is a 2002 BBC documentary series that examines the impact of the Tudor period on modern society.
Episodes (4)
1. The Good Lyfe
Aired 7 October 2002 • 23 min
2. War Machyne
Aired 14 October 2002 • 23 min
Adam looks at the development of Tudor weapons of war, taking in unpleasant implements of torture, cryptography, and casts his own cannon out of pure iron and test fires it!
3. Seeyng the Worlde
Aired 23 September 2002 • 23 min
Among many enduring Tudor inventions were the pencil, enabled by the discovery in Wales of what for the long time would be the only graphite pit in Britain, the telescope, perspective and oil paints, applied to create pictures of unprecedented realism using the camera obscura.
4. The Thinkynge Revolution
Aired 30 September 2002 • 23 min
During this era there were the most striking transformations of our understanding of our place in the Universe. Adam explains how Tudor ides of astronomy were revolutionsed by the discovery of a "new star" or "nova" in 1572, and how the dubious practice of alchemy gradually gave place to chemistry, alongside the discovery of many new substances.