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00:01Around the world, the race to win wars and explore the universe has created some of the most incredible products ever designed.
00:09And we use them every day, unaware of their amazing origins.
00:13On Incredible Inventions.
00:16The Bicycle, the secret wartime past of a two-wheeled wonder.
00:24World War II encoding techniques that are keeping your emails safe today.
00:30Energy bars. Military food technology providing energy for our busy working day.
00:37We reveal the amazing history and engineering behind these incredible inventions.
01:00The Bicycle, an invention that today we take for granted.
01:06Because from country lanes to inner cities, mud tracks to racetracks, they're everywhere.
01:14Since they were invented in the 19th century, the Humble Bike has become a familiar sight in our everyday lives.
01:20Its first incarnation is called the Dandy Horse, and it has a wooden frame, solid rubber tires, and no pedals.
01:29After more than 40 years of improvements in design, in the 1860s, the Velocipede is born.
01:35This is not only a redesign, but it changes the entire way that bikes are now used.
01:39The Frenchmen Pierre Marchaud and Pierre Lallemand equip the traditional bike with a pedal in the front wheel.
01:47With its elevated saddle and giant wheel, the Velocipede becomes famously known as the Penny Farthing.
01:54The huge success of this new model means that the bicycle becomes one of the main means of transportation.
01:58It also becomes a symbol of progress and growth and is soon synonymous with Victorian gentry.
02:05As the bicycle evolves, it catches the eye of the military and is adopted as an easy and speedy form of transportation.
02:16If you go back over a hundred years ago, go back before the First World War,
02:19an officer perhaps would have seen the use of a bike within barracks.
02:25Cheaper than a horse, easier to use, all you've got to do is repair the punctures.
02:30By the end of the century, all European armies and the U.S. Armed Forces had bicycle infantry.
02:37When World War I breaks out, all sides give bicycles to scouts, messengers, and ambulance carriers.
02:42They're such a huge success that they're even an integral part of the Japanese victory in Singapore during World War II.
02:52Their tires had gone. They were on the rims of their bikes, but they were still cycling hell for leather towards Singapore.
03:00And the British forces believed that there were tanks coming because of the rattle of these bikes.
03:05Big mistake. It was the Japanese on push bikes. A unique use of the push bike.
03:10At Enigma Bikes in the United Kingdom, they produce custom-built, handmade titanium bicycles for cyclists all over the world.
03:24After carefully hand-selecting the best tubes and parts for each bike,
03:29the first step is to set up the jig with the precise measurements specified by the customer.
03:34A jig is a device that holds the frame and guides the tool that is to be used.
03:40Next, the tubes are measured and cut to size before miter joints are formed in the tubes by cutting bevels of equal angles at the end of each piece
03:49to ensure that the main triangular frame of the bicycle fits snugly together.
03:53The rear drop axle and the head tube are then placed onto the jig, ready for the welding process.
04:03The tubes are first tack welded into place.
04:06Tack welds are smaller welds that hold the frame together, ready for the main welding.
04:10Before this is done though, the frame is lifted from the jig and placed onto the alignment table, ready to be tracked and checked.
04:19The down tube is checked first, followed by the seat tube.
04:23It is important to do this through the stages of the bike building process.
04:28With the frame aligned, the main welding process can begin.
04:32This hand welding is done with expert precision and forms an entirely sturdy and durable frame for the bike.
04:38Facing cuts the outside of the tube and reaming opens up the hole to a slightly bigger size.
04:46This process corrects any distortions inside the tube that could have been caused in the welding process.
04:51Now it's time to give the frame some TLC.
04:56As much care is put into the bike's appearance as with the building process.
05:00The frame is scrubbed to give it a neat finish before the brand decals are applied by hand.
05:06These are specific to the model of each bike.
05:09The frame is then ready to be passed on to the mechanic to be built up.
05:13To begin the build, the front fork of the bike is added to the frame.
05:16The mechanic measures the steering tube of the fork and cuts it to size so that the headset and handlebar stem can be fitted.
05:24The bottom bracket of the bike is prepared in order for the chain ring and pedal crank arm to be secured into place.
05:31Rear derailleur gears are fitted to the frame along with the brakes before the handlebars are slid into the stem.
05:39The rear cogs, or cassette, are carefully placed onto the rear wheel of the bike, tightened, and then it's all fitted to the frame.
05:49The mechanic adjusts and tightens the rear brakes before adding the front wheel and also adjusting the front brakes.
05:57The brake and shift levers slipped into the handlebars and fixed into place.
06:01He then measures the chain by hand and cuts it using a chain splitter.
06:05This is linked to create a seamlessly joined bike chain.
06:12Here, the rear derailleur can now be lined up with the cogs.
06:16Brake cables are measured and cut before being fitted to the bike.
06:21The mechanic then adds cable stops to the ends of each cable to prevent them from slipping out of place.
06:25After fixing the cables neatly to the handlebars, handlebar tape that has been specially designed for the perfect combination of comfort and endurance is wound around the bars.
06:37With this done, the mechanic runs through the gear changes of the bike, ensuring no problems such as a slipping chain.
06:43He unboxes and fits the pedals, and then attaches the saddle to the seat post before this is slipped into place.
06:54And that's it. A perfectly engineered, handmade bike from start to finish, ready to hit the streets.
07:00From a two-wheeled wonder to the secrets of the internet, coming up next on Incredible Inventions.
07:09The internet has given us enormous freedom. We can browse, watch, buy and share almost anything.
07:28But, with so much information being passed around the globe, growing concerns about data and privacy protection have led the best minds in the world to come up with ways to protect our information.
07:41And their solution? Encryption.
07:44Encryption is really taking any readable message and transforming it so that it becomes impossible to understand or read it if you don't have the secret key.
07:52And this allows you to take a message and send it without anybody else being able to read or understand it.
08:00Although we think of encryption as a thoroughly modern concept, it has been used, studied and refined for thousands of years through the science of cryptography,
08:08which literally means secret writing in ancient Greek.
08:12It is actually the ancient Greeks who create some of the earliest ways to baffle snooping eyes.
08:16The ancient Greeks used to write messages on pieces of letter that were strung around a wooden stick.
08:25And then if you take the letter off the stick, it kind of unfolds and it becomes impossible to read the message unless you have the right type of stick to put the letter around again and recompose the message.
08:37So people have been doing encryption and finding ways of hiding their messages for a very long time really.
08:45The first known use of cryptography dates back to ancient Egyptian times in the form of hieroglyphics that were carved into monuments.
08:53Since then, generals, monarchs and lovers use cryptography to send encrypted messages.
08:58Wars are won or lost with the help of cryptography, either because one side successfully hides their communications through encryption or by the other side breaking their enemies' codes and decrypting their messages.
09:11Encryption that was used in World War II by the Germans in particular went back to the last days of the First World War, really, where the original Enigma machines were being developed as a means of taking a message
09:25taking a message and using substitution to replace the characters of the message by something else so that the information becomes unreadable or secretive.
09:34So much of what went on in places like Bletchley Park was really about trying to understand what happened in those Enigma machines and how the code worked,
09:44so that by knowing what the keys are and how the code logically works, you can then reverse engineer the plain text message from the encrypted message that you intercepted.
09:54With the invention of the Internet in the 20th century, scientists and technology experts began using encryption to secure data traffic traveling around the network.
10:03So, of course, today we rely on encryption to keep our communications on the Internet safe and secure and reliable.
10:10And in fact, without encryption, the Internet as we know it today would not exist.
10:14Digital encryption is produced by using complex mathematical algorithms to encrypt and decrypt the information that is being passed back and forth.
10:24An algorithm is nothing more than a series of steps you take, so you get some input, you perform a number of steps on it, and that generates some output.
10:32That's basically what an algorithm is, a recipe for a set of steps of things to do with a piece of information to produce output.
10:42Today, one of the most common forms of computer encryption is asymmetric key algorithms.
10:49How it works can be explained by this simplified scenario.
10:52Imagine Tina has a private message she wants to send to John.
10:55Tina and John have their own padlock boxes.
10:59If Tina wants to send a message to John, she asks for his unlocked padlock box.
11:04Once she receives it, Tina puts her message inside and sends it to John, who uses his own key to open it.
11:11If John wants to reply, he asks for Tina's open padlock box and pushes his message inside, locks it, and sends it to Tina, who then uses her own key to open the box and read the message.
11:22Nice and clear? Sounds very straightforward.
11:26But behind this simple explanation, there is complex mathematical work that goes into real-world computer encryption techniques.
11:33Encryption is used in all aspects of our modern-day life.
11:37We rely so much on technology that, without encryption, the details of our everyday lives would be exposed and open to abuse.
11:43Many commercial applications, things like online banking, but just also knowing that when you connect to a web server, you connect to the genuine web server and not some fake server that is trying to steal your details.
11:55Those sort of things rely very heavily on encryption in order to be able to work.
12:01In order to make our electronic world more secure, we have to rely on technology from the ancient military past.
12:07Thousands of years of encryption is certainly an incredible invention.
12:12So that's how it works. But how about an encryption cipher you can do yourself?
12:18We'll show you how, when we return.
12:20Encryption does seem complicated, but here's a cipher you can do yourself.
12:25The cipher we are going to use is based on binary XOR operation, where two inputs will create an output.
12:46The inputs can only be zero or one, and the result can only be zero or one, if you follow these rules.
12:52Two zeros inputted will result in a zero output. A zero and a one will give you a one. A one and a zero will lead to a one.
13:02And finally, a one and a one will leave you with a zero output.
13:07The letter A in binary code is written as 0100001.
13:13Our tester comes up with a key, which basically means he randomly attaches different values for each digit.
13:19In this example, he is using 11101010, but he could use any combinations of ones and zeros.
13:30He then adds each digit together to create the ciphertext.
13:34If we follow along the line, 0 plus 1 equals 1, 1 plus 1 equals 0, 0 plus 1 equals 1, 0 plus 0 equals 0, 0 plus 1 equals 1, and finally 1 plus 0 equals 1.
13:56This gives us the ciphertext 1010101011, which without the key is random gobbledygook.
14:06Now, if our tester's friend has the key, he can take that gobbledygook and apply the same XOR operation.
14:14So, 1 plus 1 equals 0, 0 plus 1 equals 1, 1 plus 1 equals 0, 0 plus 0 equals 0, 1 plus 1 equals 0, 0 plus 1 equals 0, 0 plus 0 equals 0, 0 plus 0 equals 0, 1 plus 0 equals 1, and there you go.
14:350, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1. Our original binary letter A.
14:42The secret? The reason this works is that if you apply an XOR operation twice, you can get the initial input again. Clever stuff.
14:50The key can literally be any combination of ones or zeros that you want to use.
14:55Just remember, you need the same key to unlock your super-secret cipher.
14:59Food and water are the two most basic human needs for survival.
15:06The average intake for a fully grown male is 2,500 calories and for a female about 2,000 calories.
15:14Of course, this completely changes and is dependent on your height, your build, your size.
15:21So, it really does depend on what you're doing because K-Cal, it's like what you put in is what you get out.
15:27So, your body needs these to kind of keep operating, keep going, and the more you're doing, the more food you need.
15:33With our busy lifestyles and exercise routines, sometimes you need to reach for a handy nutritional snack.
15:40And the energy bar seems to do the job perfectly.
15:43But did you know that it has military origins?
15:46Well, after the break, we'll explain why and explore how the military helped us better understand the food we eat.
15:51During World War II, authorities struggled to meet a soldier's recommended nutritional needs.
16:09Troops are still being supplied with hardtack biscuits, the same kind of food that had been supplied to the Roman armies 2,000 years earlier.
16:16In 1941, the U.S. War Department seeks to design a meal that is non-perishable, ready to eat, and will fit in a soldier's pocket.
16:25The result is the K-Ration.
16:28The K-Ration is the first pack to manage hunger and provide energy.
16:33We know them today as MREs.
16:36In total, three meals are provided, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
16:40Together, these give a soldier a calorie intake of 3,000 calories.
16:43A year later, it is standard issue among U.S. forces, and it's taken up by their allies.
16:49Soldiers are kind of out in the field.
16:52Field rations at the moment by the U.S. military, the U.K. military.
16:55They set it around 4,500 calories, so double the average intake.
16:59And that really is seen as, you know, going on long slogs, marches, intense physical exercise.
17:05Energy bars today promise to replace meals by giving you nutrition in a handy snack-sized bar, ideal for our busy lifestyles.
17:14So the protein in the energy bars, they're used mainly, they can be used as energy, but actually mainly to use to help repair your muscle and to help build it back up again.
17:24Their constituents have a low amount of fat and fiber, and this is mainly that fiber can reduce the absorption.
17:33It slows down the release of sugars into your blood system, so hence keeping it as low as possible actually allows you to get a quick peak of sugar into your bloodstream when you need it.
17:44There are still some bars that stick to that military formula.
17:48Soldier Fuel is one such bar. Manufactured in Canada since 2004, it is specifically designed to meet the needs of the modern soldier.
18:01The story of the bar is basically the three brothers got together and we created an energy bar that was designed for special operations forces.
18:08It delivers steady energy, it gives you a fruit based sugar burst initially up, and then it gives you this protein modulated stream of steady energy for a steady energy burn, and the product took off.
18:24All the ingredients are added to a double sigma arm mixer. The double blades rotate and mix with constant torque to make a dough.
18:31Once the product has been mixed, the bowl is tilted forward and the dough is released into a stainless steel bin and taken to the slab former.
18:42The dough is drawn through a continuous feed slab former, which creates the base sheet of dough onto a line below.
18:50Then a topping layer is added to the new slab before it goes through cooling.
18:54It makes its way through a slitter called a solage that cuts the dough into long individual rows.
19:04The line then moves up to the guillotine, where the final shape of the product is determined and then cut.
19:10The fresh bars then travel along the lines individually, but they have to pass numerous weight and visual inspections.
19:23Once we blend all these ingredients together, we get a mixture that will look like this.
19:35And we need to make sure at this point in the lab when we work on the final product that the texture of it and the stickiness and the appearance also will be the one that we're looking for.
19:52Once the bars have passed their inspections, they're sent up to a doughboy machine, where they're individually wrapped and sealed in a special foil that gives a very long shelf life, making soldier fuel perfect for the military.
20:07They're fed into a machine, which very precisely seals them in their wrapper and cuts the wrapper just right.
20:16It crimps the ends just right and seals that energy bar.
20:19And that means it's now protected from moisture.
20:21That means it stays fresh for an extraordinarily long time.
20:25Now the freshly wrapped bars move further up the line, where they are boxed by machine and sent along the belts, gathered and made ready for distribution.
20:33SEALs use it, Special Operations Forces use it, foreign militaries now use it.
20:42But what became interesting to us was civilians and elite athletes like triathletes would say,
20:48wait a minute, if a Navy SEAL is eating this energy bar, then I'd like to eat this energy bar too.
20:52Let me give it a shot.
20:53It began as a product for elite Special Operations personnel, and then the civilian world took interest.
20:59So there you have it.
21:03A glance through the hidden history and super science of some amazing products we use every day.
21:11The bicycle, encryption, and energy bars.
21:15They may seem common and ordinary.
21:17However, these products help change the world one incredible invention at a time.
21:29The bicycle can be used by the electronic.
21:30The bicycle can be used by the Leslie Kingsman.
21:31The bicycle can be used by the Indian probably a travel space for the people in the modern.
21:32But they are constantly moving in.
21:34So in this ride, the bicycle can be used to run by, which it represents a lot of people in the world.
21:35The bicycle can be used by the Давай, which it is when a little back slope.
21:36And a lot of people will come in.
21:38And a lot of people are becoming very simple.
21:39It was called theyalgia.
21:40The bicycle can be used by the line.
21:41The bicycle can be used by the inside.
21:42The bicycle can be used by the bicycle.
21:43After one step right now.
21:45The bicycle can be used by the hip-eat- ajuds in the middle.