Sir Anthony Robinson is an English actor, author, broadcaster, comedian, presenter, and political activist. He played Baldrick in the BBC television series Blackadder and has presented many historical documentaries, including the Channel 4 series Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History. He has written 16 children's books.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also operates a museum in Alexandria, Virginia, sponsors educational programs, and a collegiate competition.
Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. As of June 2012, Discovery Channel was the third most widely distributed subscription channel in the United States, behind now-sibling channel TBS and The Weather Channel; it is available in 409 million households worldwide, through its U.S. flagship channel and its various owned or licensed television channels internationally.
Experimental archaeology is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological hypotheses, usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing various tasks or feats. It employs a number of methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches, based upon archaeological source material such as ancient structures or artifacts.
National Geographic is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney Entertainment and National Geographic Partners, a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (73%) and the National Geographic Society (27%), with the operational management handled by Disney Entertainment.
Destination America is an American cable television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. The network carries programming focused on the culture of the United States—including food, lifestyles, and travel. The network first launched in 1996 as Discovery Travel & Living Network, as part of a suite of four digital cable networks the company launched that year. From its launch until 2008, the network primarily focused upon home improvement, cooking, and leisure-themed programs.
How It's Made was a Canadian documentary television series that premiered on January 6, 2001, on the Discovery Channel in Canada and the Science Channel in the United States. The program was produced in Quebec by Productions MAJ, Inc. and Productions MAJ 2. The final episode aired on March 24, 2019.
Planet Earth is a 2006 British television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.
Man vs. Wild, also called Born Survivor: Bear Grylls, Ultimate Survival, Survival Game, or colloquially as simply Bear Grylls in the United Kingdom, is a survival television series hosted by Bear Grylls on the Discovery Channel. In the United Kingdom, the series was originally shown on Channel 4, but the show's later seasons were broadcast on Discovery Channel U.K. The series was produced by British television production company Diverse Bristol. The show was premiered on November 10, 2006, after airing a pilot episode titled "The Rockies" on March 10, 2006.
Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.
Raging Planet is an American documentary television series that originally aired in 1997 and 2009 on the Discovery Channel. The program focuses on natural disasters. It currently airs periodically on the Science Channel.
Frozen Planet is a 2011 British nature documentary series, co-produced by the BBC ZDF and The Open University. It was filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit. The production team, which includes executive producer Alastair Fothergill and series producer Vanessa Berlowitz, were previously responsible for the award-winning series The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006), and Frozen Planet is billed as a sequel of sorts. David Attenborough returns as narrator. It is distributed under licence by the BBC in other countries, Discovery Channel for North America, ZDF for Germany, Antena 3 for Spain and Skai TV for Greece.
Life is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC in association with The Open University. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.
Ghost Adventures is an American paranormal and reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2008, on the Travel Channel before moving to Discovery+ in 2021. An independent film of the same name originally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel on July 25, 2007. The program follows ghost hunters Zak Bagans, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they investigate locations that are reported to be haunted.
The Re-Inventors is a Canadian TV show based around exploring historic inventions and testing them. The show follows the hosts, Matt Hunter and Jeremy MacPherson, as they discover and reconstruct inventions to see how ideas from the past hold up in the present world. In each episode, the hosts choose a historic invention and attempt to rebuild it. The hosts would examine the original patent information, including blueprints, then, along with additional tradesmen as needed, build the prototypes, and test each of these, often strange, inventions to see if any could actually succeed. Often, a few related inventions would be tested in the same episode. Each invention was given a set of evaluation criteria before being tested. At the end of the episode, the invention was graded and if the invention was considered to have met the evaluation criteria, it was granted the title of 'Patent Approved'. If the invention proved to be less than effective, it was granted the title 'Patent Denied'.
PitchMen is a docudrama television program produced for the Discovery Channel in the United States. The show followed infomercial producers and talent Billy Mays and Anthony "Sully" Sullivan as they attempted to sell various inventions through direct-response marketing, mainly through Telebrands, one of the largest direct response/infomercial companies. The series was narrated by Thom Beers. Each episode typically focused on two different products.
Doing DaVinci is a popular science television program originally aired on the Discovery Channel in which the hosts attempted to create many of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions. The show aired on a weekly schedule with the first episode broadcast on April 13, 2009.
That's Impossible is a television series on the History Channel that examines seemingly impossible technologies based upon stories and inventions in history, and details exactly what is needed to turn them into reality. The show premiered on July 7, 2009 and was narrated by Jonathan Frakes.
Electric Dreams is a BBC television documentary series, co-produced with The Open University, that places a family of two parents and four children in their home with only the amenities available during each of the previous three decades, and recording their responses to the changing pace of technological change. The intent of the series was to be "much more than a technology show … it is contemporary social history and asks big moral questions about life in the modern world". Narrated by actor and comedian Robert Llewellyn, the series first aired on the UK digital terrestrial channel BBC Four in September and October 2009. It was later sold for international broadcast in 2010 and 2011.
