The Genius of Invention

The UK's leading inventors create ingenious new solutions to every-day problems and build life-changing solutions for people in desperate need.

Frank Lloyd Wright tells the story of the greatest of all American architects. Wright was an authentic American genius, a man who believed he was destined to redesign the world, creating everything anew. Over the course of his long career, he designed over eight hundred buildings, including such revolutionary structures as the Guggenheim Museum, the Johnson Wax Building, Fallingwater, Unity Temple and Taliesin. His buildings and his ideas changed the way we live, work and see the world around us. Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural achievements were often overshadowed by the turbulence of his melodramatic life. In ninety-two tempestuous years, he fathered seven children, married three times, and was almost constantly embroiled in scandal. Some hated him, some loved him, and in the end, few could deny that he was the one of the most important architects in the world.

HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.

The three-part series tells the story of British architects Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins and Terry Farrell.

Climate change is real. It’s happening now. Big policy, implemented properly and urgently, is needed to change our world … but some people are quietly doing amazing things to make our island a better place. Heated tells their stories. Heated is a new 6-part series on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player dealing with climate change.

Evan Davis looks at the British economy and asks what our country is good at and how it can pay its way in the world,

Japanese inventions are used and loved around the world. Through interviews and reenactments, go behind the scenes and discover how Japanese craftsmanship brought these top inventions into being.

A look back over the highs and lows experienced by the hundreds of entrepreneurs who have entered the Den over the last nine series, examining the key ingredients required for a successful pitch.

The Dragons tour the UK to find out what happened next to their investments

Dom Byrne presents the underground version of the hit BBC Two show that has been operating exclusively online

Series revealing the lives of the Dragons' Den Dragons

The Secret Life of Machines is an educational television series presented by Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod, in which the two explain the inner workings and history of common household and office machinery. According to Hunkin, the show's creator, the programme was developed from his comic strip The Rudiments of Wisdom, which he researched and drew for the Observer newspaper over a period of 14 years. Three separate groupings of the broadcast were produced and originally shown between 1988 and 1993 on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, with the production subsequently airing on The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel.

In the series, "Wallace will take a light hearted and humorous look at the real-life inventors, contraptions, gadgets and inventions, with the silent help of Gromit. The series aims to inspire a whole new generation of innovative minds by showing them real, but mind-boggling, machines and inventions from around the world that have influenced his illustrious inventing career" (the BBC press statement). Peter Sallis reprised his role as the voice of Wallace. The filmed inserts are mostly narrated by Ashley Jensen, with one in each episode presented in-vision by Jem Stansfield. John Sparkes also voices a portion in the unseen character of archivist Goronwy.

James May takes a look at some of the greatest developments of the 20th century.

A 3-chapter documentary about the stories we tell ourselves around creativity. Using a plethora of studies from anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, the film tries to demystify the way we use our brains to create, to make art and science. The products of our minds are extraordinary, but the process in which they are brought about are in fact, quite ordinary. Shakespeare copied. Mozart copied. Picasso copied too. But we're still obsessed with originality. We're living in the most creative time in humanity's existence, so maybe it's time to rethink our preconceptions about creativity.

Smartest Guy in the Room pits geniuses with 140+ IQs against one another as they compete in challenges involving feats of skill across a variety of topics.

Behind every great genius was a great rival - an unstoppable adversary whose incredible vision, determination, and ambition is their match. Out of their struggles came the world's most brilliant inventions, the spoils of the heated battle between competitors.

This three-part documentary tells Bill Gates’ life story, in-depth and unfiltered, as he pursues unique solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems.

Follow Matt Hunter and Jeremy MacPherson as they dig up original patent designs from history’s lost inventions and build them, test them, and try to make them work. From a snow annihilator from the 1930s to a Chinese dragon rocket over 600 years old to a solar powered crematorium, Matt and Jeremy take us through the strange and entertaining world of invention.

Take a mind-blowing journey through human history, told through six iconic objects that modern people take for granted, and see how science, invention and technology built on one another to change everything.