The vanishing inventor

As King John was poised to press his seal into the wax of a document whose impact would reverberate for centuries, did he understand the ramifications it would have? And what were the chances he would keep his word? In this penultimate episode of HistoryExtra's Sunday Series on M ...  Show more

The Victorian period was a time of great economic, cultural and technological change. But what was it like to actually live through it? Speaking to Isabel King, author Jamie Camplin – whose latest book is Being Victorian – charts the highs and lows of the era, from the lasting le ...  Show more

In 1888 Louis Le Prince shot the world’s first motion picture in Leeds, England. In 1890, weeks before the public unveiling of his camera and projector – a year before Thomas Edison announced that he had invented a motion picture camera – Le Prince stepped on a train in France ...

Thomas Edison was one of history’s greatest inventors, who gave the world not only electric light but other landmark innovations in sound recording and moving pictures. He accumulated more patents in his lifetime than any other, and filled over 4000 notebooks with his work. So, h ...  Show more

In 1854, the twenty-five year old aristocrat Roger Tichborne, heir to an impressive fortune, died in a shipwreck ....Or did he? His mother, certain of her son’s survival, advertised extensively with a tantalising reward for her son’s return. Twenty years later a rough, corpulent ...  Show more

In the late 17th century, during the glorious reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, France was at its apogee, with royal absolutism at its zenith. But, beneath the gold and glamour of Louis’ reign, there lay a terrifying darkness: a prison system into which people could be disappeare ...  Show more