description About

Hart-Davis's journey around the country takes him to Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. En route he re-creates a treadmill invented by William Hase for the punishment of prisoners, and makes a simple contraption that helps artists with limited skills create beautiful sketches. He relates how William Harvey discovered how blood circulates throughout the body, and he tells how William Gilbert determined that the earth is a magnet. Plus the story of ship's captain Robert Fitzroy whose weather warnings were published in The Times in the mid-19th century and led to the modern forecast, but who committed suicide after his accuracy was questioned in the House of Commons.