I should not have liked the world’s first smart home.

I've been to Cragside numerous times and it's honestly an amazing place- the house, gardens and grounds are all stunning. Very interesting to see Tom's reaction to learning about Cragside/ Armstrong because it honestly put into perspective how unusual and groundbreaking the things in Cragside were.

It's also crazy to think just how much of an impact Armstrong had on Newcastle and England/ the world. Like I pass by the Armstrong works every time I get the bus to Newcastle and occasionally I walk down Mossley Street, the main road of the business park nearby is called William Armstrong Drive and the Swing Bridge is an iconic bridge over the Tyne- a truly influential person Armstrong was.

This is the kind of house that exist in either horror or murder mystery movie

Got 8 minutes in and thought, "I wonder if this Armstrong guy built the Swing Bridge in central Newcastle"
He did; he demolished the old bridge and built the swing bridge specifically so ships could go to his own workshops.

Ah, an electrified bowl of mercury being handled by a 10-year-old child. Who then lived into his 70s...? William Armstrong, you... absolute madman.

The people you highlight in this video are the true stars - always so excited to share their knowledge.

Before hydraulics, and clockwork, kitchen spits were turned by dogs. There was a particular breed of dog for it.

After "it gets worse" I was expecting something to do with the slave trade, but I guess he was just too late for that!

I knew the twist because I visited a fort in Malta where they have one of Armstrong's inventions- the 100-ton gun. It's the biggest muzzle-loading cannon ever created and it's one of the most insanely steampunk things I've ever seen. It could fire a shell that weighed as much as a small car 6 kilometres. It was loaded with hydraulics and it's trajectories were calculated with slide rules. In the 1870's Armstrong offered it to the Royal Navy, but they turned it down. So he sold some to the Italian Navy. Then he went back to the British and pointed out that the Italians had a bigger gun than them now. So they had to buy some as well. There are two of them left- the one in Malta that I saw, and another one in Gibraltar.

Tom Scott posting regularly again feels like reconnecting with an old friend.

'The future is already here --it's just not evenly distributed' -
William Gibson

The Dent company was so good at timekeeping, but poor Arthur never could get the hang of Thursdays.

As far as the shady side of rich Victorians go, international arms dealing is relatively light.

I read something years ago that stuck with me - there was a point when the world's biggest ship passed the world's biggest swing bridge to deliver the world's biggest crane to the world's biggest factory… and all were owned by Armstrong (The Armstrong Works is still in Elswick today)

WIth all these mechanisms this could be the perfect location for a Resident Evil game in an old mansion with a lot of puzzles.

8:10 Why does it feel like if you rotate the vases in a certain sequence, an alcove will open in a wall and reveal Armstrong's secret last invention?

And they say there were no neurodivergent people in the past

I confess, I had a bad feeling about those lamps when you said they were made from copper wire. I was fully prepared for "live voltage at the surface". I was NOT expecting "sitting in a bowl of Thor's Mercury", though. That is, in fact, worse than I expected.

Electrified bowl of mercury is wild

R.I.P. armstrong. you would've loved factorio

Twice in this video, there's an "it gets worse", and both are justified. | 🌍 AD: Also, I talked to NordVPN's CTO in the ad read! Go get the best deal they're offering: hnordvpn.com/tomscott| And there's a map linked in the description.