The BEST episodes of Modern Marvels
Every episode of Modern Marvels ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Modern Marvels!
Celebrating ingenuity, invention and imagination brought to life on a grand scale, MODERN MARVELS tells the fascinating stories of the doers, dreamers and sometime-schemers who created everyday items, technological breakthroughs and man-made wonders.
#1 - Carbon
Season 15 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/14/2008
Carbon is the chemical basis of all known life and yet this simple element is also the foundation of modern technology. Carbon burns hotter, cuts deeper, insulates more thoroughly and absorbs more fully than any other material. See why carbon is the key both in heavy-duty industries, as well as in tools like the graphite pencil, the charcoal water filter, and the diamond saw blade.
Watch Now:Amazon
#3 - World's Strongest (3)
Season 15 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/6/2008
Witness some mind-blowing feats of strength starting with the world's most powerful elevators. Discover the world's strongest tire, the strongest mountain bike, the world's strongest land transport vehicle that carries the Space Shuttle & strongest home blender.
Watch Now:Amazon
#5 - Oakland Bay Bridge
Season 6 - Episode 27 - Aired 7/20/1999
The great bridge of San Francisco, not the Golden Gate, this one: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Over 500 feet above the water, more than 8 miles long. One of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the modern world.
#6 - Winter Tech
Season 16 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/11/2010
From building cutting-edge competition venues to the latest sports science training, winter sports use more technology than ever. This episode takes you behind the scenes of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter games. Olympic organizers race against the clock to build venues, expand transportation and security, and add futuristic touches to the ultimate Olympic icon--the Olympic torch. Meanwhile, US Olympic hopefuls use high-tech training tools to gain a competitive edge. Take in breathtaking views from the world's highest unsupported gondola and rocket down a bobsled track at 80 miles per hour, as we show you winter sports like you've never seen them before.
Watch Now:Amazon
#7 - Steam
Season 16 - Episode 16 - Aired 5/27/2010
It's full steam ahead when we drop in at Jay Leno's garage as Jay fires up two of his classic steam cars and takes viewers for a couple of rides. Jay also shows off his 11-ton steam engine built in 1860, back when pigs had to be slaughtered to keep it lubricated. In northern Nevada, fire up a coal burning boiler and get a 100-year-old steam locomotive chugging across the rugged landscape. In New Orleans, board an authentic paddlewheel steamboat. Trek to the Southern California desert where geothermal steam rushes up from the ground and drives electricity producing turbines, powering over 300,000 homes. In New York City, find out why manmade steam surges into some of the world's most famous skyscrapers. Steam clean some very dirty machines, and do a little laundry, too. And ride a steam-driven carousel and play with some strange, steam-powered robots that are part of a movement called--what else--"steampunk."
Watch Now:Amazon
#8 - Power Plants
Season 7 - Episode 38 - Aired 12/5/2000
Mankind controls the environment in a variety of ways, whether by capturing the force of a river, harnessing the power in coal or oil, controlling a nuclear reaction, or transforming the light of the sun into electricity. From Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla to Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein, the world's greatest minds have enabled us to acquire our light, heat, and power with a simple flip of the switch. Join us for an electrifying hour as we review the foundation for all of this--power plants.
#9 - Tennessee Valley Authority
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 9/2/1996
During the depths of the Great Depression, it was FDR's greatest triumph: A massive public works project that took a 40,000 square mile, disaster-prone river basin, and turned it into a model of industrial progress.
#10 - Eiffel Tower
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/22/1995
This episode of Modern Marvels provides an historical tour of Paris's Eiffel Tower. Completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower remains a symbolic icon of France's history and the industrial age. Modern Marvels takes you on a tour of this world famous monument from its inception to the present day.
Watch Now:Amazon
#11 - Emergency Room
Season 6 - Episode 35 - Aired 10/25/1999
Emergency room medicine has only been a recognized specialty since 1989, and it took close to two millennia to get to this point. Advancements that led to the modern emergency rooms are highlighted as well as emergency/trauma medicine.
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#12 - Inventions of War
Season 7 - Episode 39 - Aired 12/12/2000
Arising from the horrible carnage, deprivation, and suffering caused by war is a countless array of everyday items--from hairbrushes to microwaves--that directly descend from wartime innovations. Wartime research and development have revolutionized communication, transportation, and medicine. From Spam to nuclear power to hairspray and cell phones, life as we know it ironically owes a lot to war. We'll follow the day-to-day life of an ordinary woman and see the influence of war on her life.
Watch Now:Amazon
#14 - Locomotives Plus
Season 23 - Episode 8 - Aired 7/18/2022
All aboard! Modern Marvels takes a ride on the fastest and most powerful locomotives from around the globe. From France’s 300 MPH speed train to future trains that glide on cushions of air to mining locomotives that traverse tunnels 700 feet underground, we’ll catch a ride on the little-and big-engines that can.
Watch Now:Amazon
#15 - Tech Treasures
Season 23 - Episode 11 - Aired 8/1/2022
Better be kind and rewind because we're diving into some blasts from technology's past! From unwieldy television sets and vintage record-making to evolving Mustang motors, join Modern Marvels as we rediscover some of the most beloved retro devices that built the tech-driven world we live in today.
Watch Now:Amazon
#16 - The Future of Food
Season 20 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/28/2021
Adam Richman travels through time to uncover: the Future of Food! With special security clearance to a U.S. Army lab we get a glimpse into the cutting-edge food research that's taking a quantum leap into the future. At Impossible Foods, we make a delicious discovery and learn why it's not impossible for plants to look, taste and even bleed like meat. Plus, science fiction becomes fact when we see food grilled and served by robots, food made to last for years, and food made to be eaten in Earth's upper atmosphere. The future of food is here and it's tasty!
Watch Now:Amazon
#18 - Engineering Disasters of the 70's
Season 14 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/30/2007
To error is human, but when it results in the loss of life, it's a disaster. Learn about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Buffalo Creek Dam disaster, and the explosion of a tanker in Los Angeles harbor.
Watch Now:Amazon#19 - Extreme Aircraft (2)
Season 14 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/20/2007
Take a supersonic flight through a world of flying machines that are redefining our skies. Pull serious G’s in the U.S. military’s latest fighter jet: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Riding shotgun in the lethal B-1B Lancer, and look close or you’ll miss the swarm of MAV’s (Micro Air Vehicles)–so small they are launched out of a backpack. The “vertical takeoff and landing” capable PAV’s (Personal Aerial Vehicles) may be the answer to the commuting needs of tired travelers. Then, discover how a commercial jetliner has been retrofitted into the biggest flying fire truck the world has ever seen.
Watch Now:Amazon
#22 - Weird Machines
Season 18 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/28/2011
It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention--but that is not always the case. Some strange machines are built for sheer spectacle, some a glimpse into the future or even the past, while others are just plain...Weird.
Watch Now:AmazoniTunes
#23 - Television: Window to the World
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/20/1996
At the 1939 World's Fair, NBC announced the arrival of scheduled, broadcast television, a development the public was initially slow to accept. But in the following years, TV revolutionized entertainment and modern culture. This program charts the history of the small screen, from the early pioneers in the field to today's technological advances. Interviews with media figures offer an insider's insight into the industry that changed the world.
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#24 - Creation of the Computer
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/24/1996
They are the machines at the center of the information age. They have revolutionized our lives and our world, making previously unthinkable tasks automatic and linking people together around the planet. Join MODERN MARVELS® for a fascinating look at the history of the computer. See Charles Babbage's Victorian "counting machine," a mechanical computer that produced perfect results for any mathematical problem of six figures or less. Discover how IBM was launched with a punch-card counting machine built to speed the 1890 census. Trace the technological advancements that led to the first true modern "computers" and the rapid progress that saw computers shrink from room-sized monsters to the desktop units that are revolutionizing life in the '90s.
Watch Now:iTunes
#25 - Milk
Season 15 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/7/2008
Got milk? Billions of pounds of milk are consumed worldwide on a daily basis. Milk is the basis for its own food group, and has been around since the dawn of mammals. Visit a farm with a milking parlor that looks more like a cow merry-go-round. Learn what pasteurization is really all about, and even milk a yak. Find out what those active cultures in yogurt are and discover if milk truly makes the body good. Wait until you discover just how many types of cows there truly are.
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