Impossible Engineering Series 1 Episode Guide

Each episode details how giant structures, record-beating buildings and the world's most cutting-edge ships, trains and planes are built

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Episode 1 - Aircraft Carrier

The HMS Queen Elizabeth is a ship of record breaking proportions with cutting edge naval and aerial engineering. Find out how pioneering historic designs made the seemingly impossible, possible.

The largest aircraft carrier in the history of the British Royal Navy, the Queen Elizabeth has a surface area bigger than two football pitches and carries the most advanced short take-off and vertical landing aircraft in history, the US Lockheed Martin F35 Bs. But building this colossal ship would have been impossible without the great engineering innovators of the past.

Experts explain some of the engineering principles and historic innovations from around the world including the first British shipboard aircraft take-offs in 1912 and the HMS Argus, the mother of all carriers, to one of the most revolutionary aircrafts of all time - the Harrier Jump Jet; all of which enabled engineers in the 21st century to make the record-breaking portions and innovative engineering of the Queen Elizabeth possible.
Episode 2 - Rion Antiron Bridge

Rion Antirion Bridge is awe-inspiring not only due to its record breaking dimensions, but also due to its location in one of Europe's most active seismic zones where winds regularly reach 70mph.

We'll see how engineers developed revolutionary designs from the past to make the impossible, possible. Spanning almost 3km across the Gulf of Corinth, the engineering colossus that is the Rion Antirion Bridge boasts the longest fully suspended deck, the deepest foundations and the largest supporting piers, of any bridge on earth.

To build this impressive structure the engineers first had to conquer seemingly insurmountable problems of deep water, high winds, earthquake risks and constant land mass movement.
Episode 3 - The Shanghai Tower

Soaring 632m into the sky, the Shanghai Tower is the second tallest building in the world. This monument to sheer engineering audacity is constructed within one of the most seismically active corners of the globe, and is built to withstand damaging winds of typhoon proportion.

Charting the revolutionary designs and ideas of the great innovators of the past, we discover how ambitious engineers built a 850,000 tonne skyscraper in one of the world's greatest megacities; a city that is slowly sinking into the soft soil below.
Episode 4 - Kansai Airport

The construction of Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay, Japan, on the largest man-made island in the world, was one of the most ambitious engineering projects of modern times.

Attempting to build an artificial island on top of a soft clay seabed in 20m of water and in an area exposed to typhoons and violent earthquakes, posed extraordinary challenges that needed revolutionary solutions.

Nevertheless, engineers decided to attempt this feat of impossible engineering all thanks to a cast of ingenious innovators from the past. As a result of the intelligent windmill drainage systems developed by Dutch engineers in the 17th century, large scale land reclamation projects were born.

Engineering genius Pierre Danel developed a system that would become one of the world's greatest defences against the pounding sea, while 19th century mechanic Richard Dudgeon would develop a jack that made light work of the heaviest of objects.
Episode 5 - Maglev Train

This episode explores the history of locomotives. Experts analyse the work of engineers including Sir Nigel Gresley who engineered the world’s fastest steam train in 1938 and Eric Laithwaite, whose linear motor made frictionless travel a real possibility.

These audacious innovators of the past influenced the engineering of The Shanghai Maglev, the fastest passenger train in operation on the planet. Held in place by a series of electromagnets, it levitates on an air gap of just ten millimetres and is able to reach a phenomenal top speed of 431 kilometres per hour.

Built to cut through a busy metropolis in one of the world’s most active seismic zones, the Shanghai Maglev was an ambitious project that broke engineering boundaries.
Episode 6 - Airbus

The concluding episode of Yesterday’s fascinating series examines the largest passenger plane ever built – the Airbus A380. It can carry over 850 people nonstop nearly half way around the world.

Boasting four specially developed mighty turbo jet engines, the A380 weighs a colossal 560 tonnes.

However getting a plane this size off the ground would not have been possible without the nifty innovators of the past: Sir George Cayley, whose ground-breaking work launched the world’s first glider and Frank Whittle, whose jet engine changed the aviation industry forever.

Key developments in aerospace engineering from Richard Whitcombe’s energy-efficient wing-tip designs, to NASA engineers’ cutting edge control system, Fly by Wire, helped bring the A380 to fruition.