Naked Science Season 8

Engineers wondered if a plane that operated solely on solar power could be built. Their efforts over a decade result in the Solar Impulse HB-SIA, the plane that triumphantly takes to the air. Making a 26-hour nonstop day-night-day flight climaxes the success of the Solar Impulse.

Over a century ago, sponge divers recovered an extremely complex mechanical device from a shipwreck. It was decades before they determined it's purpose, to accurately track the movement of the stars in the night sky. Dubbed the Antikythera mechanism (for the location of the shipwreck from which it came), the device is considered the world's first computer, developed by the Greeks around the 1st century B.C. Scientists continue to marvel at its intricate system of gears which rival that of the most complex Swiss watch.