What the Victorians Did for Us

Episodes

''Speed Merchants''

''Playing God''

''Rule Makers''

• Victorians standardised the rules for association football, or soccer, based on a range of games already played, such as the Eton wall game.
• Walter Clopton Wingfield invented the game of lawn tennis, which allowed young men and women to socialise together, and to get more exercise than by playing the sedate game of croquet.
• Victorians set down rules for formal dining, and invented the fish knife. Mrs Beeton documented recipes and how to run a household.
• Florence Nightingale recorded extensive details of wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and used these statistics to demonstrate to a Royal Commission the effectiveness of simple hygiene in reducing unnecessary deaths.
• In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table of the chemical elements, including gaps where as-yet undiscovered elements would fit.
• Joseph Whitworth devised a series of standards for engineering, and built a rifle with an accurately-rifled barrel.
• Greenwich Observatory was used to define the official time for the whole country, and the zero line of longitude.

  ''Crime and Punishment''

''Social Progress''

''Pleasure Seekers''

''Making It Big''

''Conquerors''