I was a graduate student at her Fairbanks University of Alaska back in 1965-7 studying the basalts in the central Alaska region. On area of my studies found a mixture of basalts, prettified wood, deep sea shells, all mixed together. When I wrote my thesis I stated that this could be a area of collision between an island arc and the Brooks Range. The department professors found my ideas as crazy. I was not allowed to put my speculation in my thesis. Now we know that Alaska is made up of a number of land units that have collided against the Brooks range to make much of the land mass of Alaska. At the time plate tectonics was not believed by many of the professors and the definitive proof was a few years later provided that revolutionized the field of geology. This video summarizes our knowledge as of the period around 1970. It is an old video but still quite accurate. We now have an even more detailed understanding of plate tectonics. Much of the information provided here was collected to support the “Cold War”. The knowledge of the earth’s surface was critical at the time.
Actually, this was a film. Probably you don't know the difference between film and video. I can't really explain what film is right now, but it's easy to look up if you want to know.
I did my undergrad in Geology with a specialization in glacial hydrology from the late 1990s. I can't find half of the stuff I was taught today. Plate movement is "real" but they were making this stuff up back then. A whole bunch of land units colliding against the Brooks Range doesn't really fit plate tectonics. We would be taught that kind of stuff only happens with glacial retreats (McMaster University) which I am also starting to doubt makes total sense either. Sea shells is Alaska is pretty cool though - your idea could actually be the right answer and be a completely different geological mechanism.
This documentary is now an important scientific historical document. For younger people learning about "continental drift", now called plate tectonics it is an ideal introduction to the topic. As a 76 year old interested person I have lived through all this changing perspective, from a puzzle to a fact. Such scientists as feature in this documentary will all be dead by now, I assume, but they should honoured as heroes in scientific history. Also educative to our youngsters that you don't need super-computers or video screens to accomplish scientific investigation, just an open mind and a willingness to think outside the box and a lot of tracing paper. Also loved the wobbly sound track - Stravinsky's Firebird Suite never sounded more mysterious. Christopher Chataway, narrator, another blast from the past, world class runner, who paced Roger Bannister for the first sub-four minute mile, later Tory minister, business man and TV announcer. As was said, all the geology books needed total rewriting.
I can remember watching just such documentaries on various scientific topic. My Dad should have been a scientist, instead he raised 5 of us, working as an electronic engineer. Later in life and right up to the time he died, we loved to watch these scientific documentaries. This one took me back to the 70's when we watched films in our classroom. What I didn't understand, he usually did, plate tectonics being just such a one. He was ahead of his time, as far as the general population goes. Like these men, brilliant young men, long gone now like my old man.
Dr Maurice Brown from the 40:00 minutes mark, it's fascinating to hear him describe in 1970 more or less what would happen at Mt St Helens a mere ten years later.
Oh wow! Yeah, that's chilling. Helps me to understand why people didn't want to leave My St Helens. That most Americans thought the Cascades volcanoes were going to ooze out slow lava like Hawaii. Helps me appreciate just how much of a maverick this guy, and David Johnston were. I hate it when a community of so-called scientists get dogmatic, and refuse to give up their old beliefs in the face of new evidence. However, the evidence that Mt Saint Helens could explosively erupt - was everywhere. Lewis and Clark described Mt Hood (shown in video) erupting in 1803 or so. Indians told them about it, and the land/ruined forest was still smoking by the Sandy river. Around 1918, Mt Lassen in California corrupted violently for months until it blew the side out. A nuclear bomb-esque mushroom cloud could be seen from Red Bluff. (Google the photos, they are wow.) The public should have been given presentations by the USGS about how it could explode. Instead, they were timid. RIP all the victims were never warned about the worst case scenario. RIP, the victims who believed Washington's governor... that it was safe to come near it. Edit: Also chilling, the Loma Prieta quake essentialy being predicted here.
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking. WOW, the pictures on Google of Mt Lassen from Red Bluff CA is amazing and terrifying! Now I want to read all about it. Where have I been for last 55 years? So much info different than when I was in HS in 65-70!
Thank you for reviving this wonderfully informative educational movie. EVERYONE needs to see it! I learned about plate tectonics and continental drift in 1972 as I started my career in geology. Very cool stuff then and now. It's very sad that 50 years later I am still seeing (and hearing) people talk about things like dinosaurs and palm trees in far northern latitudes as if they are examples of past global climate change without ever considering the fact that the continents themselves have moved in the last 200 million years. People, please always consider the 4th Dimension (Time) when thinking or talking about planet Earth. Yes, palm trees may have grown on the land we now call Alaska, BUT that land was not at the same latitude then as it is today. In fact, just yesterday (Dec 27, 2023) I heard well-meaning people on a podcast falling all over themselves to explain how T-Rex could have survived in the low sunlight near the Arctic Circle (because that's where their fossil bones were found). Yikes! My ears nearly melted! 😜
Besides time and continental drift, you also have to consider how dinosaurs’ coldbloodedness fit very well into the then very greenhousy climate filled with co2
Simple lo tech teaching with very good diction, no histrionics or gasping of breath in anticipation. A pleasant way to learn.....as I at 75 remember it. And most important, no recap of the last section every 10 minutes to allow for adverts insertion and visiting channel surfers.....well done finding this excellent footage.
I must say that I liked the series "How the Earth Was Made", because at the end of each segment, they did a brief recap of what had been discussed in that segment. For me it was helpful.
The accents, the crackle in the audio from the old microphones, the retro synth music, the genuinely interesting earth history, everything about this video is so soothing to my soul
Not sure how many people are aware that the narrator, Chris Chataway, was a world class athlete and in 1954 held the world record for the 5000m. He was also, along with Chris Brasher, one of the pacemakers when Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile. When I first attended grammar school in 1963 he was one of the school governors and spoke at that years Founders Day.
Vintage documentaries are something else ❤ true passion for the topics, simple words, no special effects of the images, calm and clarity in speaking. What emerges is just the will of sharing knowledge, to build a better humankind, and not the will to impress people for getting attention and money, like it's now.
It breaks my heart that 'Horizon' faded into irrelevance when it went all 'green' and 'touchy-feely'. This was an awesome program which showed the BBC and public service broadcasting at its very best. The episodes on Silicon-chips in the early 70s, and the one about computers and the prospect for home computers were the harbingers of a technological and societal tsunami. Horizon's programs on High energy Physics, Astronomy and most memorably 'vision and colour perception' were the reason I took sciences at VIth Form - a decision that I have never regretted for an instant. Please accept my lifetime of thanks, anyone who was involved in the 1970s/1980s Horizon.
I remember finding an old geology book at school that had 'land bridges' connecting the continents to explain how similar animals and plants were found in different places. These land bridges had then disappeared - perhaps taking Atlantis with them. Then we heard about continental drift ...
I’m at retirement age now. Couple of decades ago, I overheard a little girl talking to her dad about Plate tectonics. I’d never heard the phrase before, and looked it up when I got home. I still remember my amazement that such a thing existed, that I’d somehow missed knowing about it, and that a little child could know so much more than what I had always imagined was a well read adult, lol.
It's incredible how our knowledge of the earth and its processes has increased in my lifetime of 70 years so far. I can remember when plate tectonics was a relatively new science I became aware of plate tectonics in the mid-to-late 70s. Since then, the theory has become ever more fascinating for me. I can remember bringing home stacks of geology books that had been published before the plate tectonics revolution and they are quite different.
@@harrietharlow9929 I feel exactly same. At 71 I’m constantly amazed at what we knew then regarding our planet and the info now! I hadn’t even thought to update my knowledge on these sciences till recently! I would love to see a comparison documentary on where science stands now. Anyone have any suggestions? I am obviously not scientifically trained so I wouldn’t even know where to start researching.
@@kathyeyesopen4078 I would say to watch "Planet Earth", with Richard Kiley, it was made in the late 80s, so it is decently updated from the 60s and before (it is here on RUclips) and contains much of the modern knowledge of geology. In addition, I would out anything by Nick Zentner and and Myron Cook. Good luck and may you find the journey rewarding!
SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS! As a young girl growing up in the hills of western Oregon in 1959, I attended what became my final year at an 8-grades, 2-room, country school. (We were "consolidated into the city schools" after that year.) I was 8.5 years old, then, and just starting 4th grade. (I had skipped 2nd grade, so was young for the grade.) While I was idly looking at the classroom's World Globe, rotating it slowly, I noticed that the continents and large islands of the world globe _MIGHT_ be able to do something mighty peculiar... _IF!!!_ *_IF_* you were able to "magically" slide the continents & large islands around, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, they would pretty much all fit back together into a much larger land mass. *HOW **_WONDERFUL,_** & what a **_MARVELOUS REVELATION_* to my young mind - *_THIS_** WAS **_EXCITING!_* I very quickly told my teacher, Mrs. Hassler, trying to _SHOW_ her what I'd discovered, but she not only didn't agree with my "findings," not one little bit, *SHE **_WOULDN'T EVEN LOOK!_* Mrs. Hassler insisted that *"GOD* made the world - *_EXACTLY AS IT IS,_* - AND *IT HASN'T CHANGED **_ANY_** IN OVER THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED YEARS - **_NOT ONE LITTLE BIT_** - SINCE IT WAS MADE!"* *_WHOA,_*_ THAT_ was rather surprising. Up until that moment, I'd had quite a lot of respect for my teacher, but _THAT RESPECT_ melted away very fast! She had always come across as sensible & level-headed, but her "knee-jerk" (and _VERY_ religious) reaction to a little girl's "world view enthusiasm" was startling! She wouldn't even look... 😕 I'm glad my "childish observations" were proven correct, and in not too many more years, either. It had appeared so very, _VERY,_ obvious to my young brain that those "jigsaw puzzle pieces" could be fitted back together - NEATLY! - and that was *FULLY AS OBVIOUS* _AS THAT_ *THE EARTH IS A GLOBE!* (But that's a different issue, now, *isn't it?!)* 👍😊👋 Edit x2: punctuation, only
I'm about your age, and at a similar age I realized the same thing. I'm glad that when I told my dad he didn't disagree. I too found it very interesting and exiting! I still like geology. I also want to tell you that you don't need to say what you editted. Nobody even notices if a comment was editted or not. In fact, if more people editted their comments for readability, we'd all be better off!
The Bible says the earth is 6 thousand years old and was created in 6 days with god taking the 7th day off for rest. You can read about it Genesis chapters 1 and 2. I am amazed that people believe in the Bible but people are taught to believe at an early age.
@@Randy58-zn4ez I dare to say, Miss/Mr that the Bible is in that regard scientifically INcorrect. We are speaking of BILLIONS OF YEARS.. Will you not wake up.. 😊🤔
Meanwhile, over in Portland.. Around the same time, my teacher, Mrs. Powell, told us she “Wasn't allowed to teach us about Continental Drift.” But no doubt, due to the (even then) progressive leanings of ‘The Willamette Valley,’ she gave a very accurate description of ‘the Theory!’ She retired that year, and I remain impressed by her willingness to describe, in tantalizing detail, what was “Only a Theory” 😉
I’m a 71 yr old American woman, Midwest. Our teacher talked about “continental drift” in grade school, so it had to be 1962 or earlier. We all looked at the globe and it certainly looked possible to us kids that our hemisphere and Africa/Europe could have fit together at some point.
When I was in grade school in the late 60s, our teachers thought it was an interesting idea. By the time I got to high school in the mid 70s, the science had developed to provide ample support for plate tectonics.
@@bp-ob8ic I remember in the 70's showing my dad on a globe that the continents lined up, he seemed pretty intrigued. I also remember pointing out the natural skin color differences from north, to equator, to south Africa, clearly related to the angle of the sun. He was impressed :) And when during a visit to Yellowstone National Park, I concluded the entire area was a large dormant/extinct volcano, so obvious from the chemical-laden hydrothermal springs, he was riveted :) By the way, at the time, I was a grade schooler and his only daughter. I sure miss my dad :)
@@vicwaberub5297 Hypothesis by Alfred Wegener. Theory requires a substantial body of evidence that explains all the facts and contradicts none. Once maps were drawn and globes were created, people easily saw the continents fit together. But there was no known mechanism for it in 1911.
@@kelliepatrick519 I noticed the fit at about age six, so, not possessing a large vocabulary yet, I showed my father the globe and said, "South America goes out where Africa goes in", then I pointed to the point where South America protrudes the most into the Atlantic, then to the area of the African Bight and the coast to the west and south . My father said it was just a coincidence, but I wondered anyhow. Nice to know I was right not to take it for granted.
Seventeenth century Danish Catholic bishop (he converted to Catholicism and moved to Italy) Nicholas Steno should be given a lot of credit for being one of the quite early scientists that realized that the earth had been subject to a lot of movements and cataclysms - the fossil of a fish was discovered in the mountains of Tuscany and from the dentition Steno was able to demonstrate that this was the same species of fish being caught on the Tuscan coast by local fishermen -he then concluded that the Tuscan mountains had once been under the sea and some sort of cataclysmic event had raised the sea bed up. He was an absolute pioneer in the development of the science of stratigraphy which examines the different layers of the earth - a discovery that was an essential prelude to the formulation of the theory of continental drift.
This brings back memories of O’ Level Geography in Coventry, UK way back in 1983. I remember the teacher telling us that Plate Tectonics had moved on since this recording had been made, but it was a good introduction to the theory of the subject.
Two of the young researchers in the film I found, Dan McKenzie these days emeritus in Cambridge, and Terry Tullis, then UCLA, now emeritus at Brown. It must put your professional life in an interesting perspective being able to see a young version of yourself in a prgram like this.
I watched an old documentary on the Santa Susanna nuclear incident and there was a young Michio Kaku. It was interesting to see him back then. I just got to see J. Tuzo Wilson and Chris Goldfinger on a couple of docs a bit back--it was nice to put face to the names.
It's absolute nonsense, even more so because people pat themselves on the back putting letters after their names for it. Plate Tectonics is akin to expecting a thin sheet of ice floating on boiling water to subduct into it at one end and refreeze on the other. It's impossible. A child could tell you this.
I was in the second grade in 1970. Throughout the years I remember how excited my geography teachers were about the evidence of plate tectonics. I always liked geography and did well in it, I think, due to the exuberance of curious teachers.
@@RissaFirecat I'm what I guess you could call an educated amateur and I've been studying the subject as time allows for nearly 60 years and I'm blown away by how the science has evolved over the decades. Realy, a whole paradigm shift.
@@flagmichael Yep. It most definitely was not mainstream. My ex-husband. knowing I was a geology buff got me a coupe of books on the history of plate tectonics in the 70s and in the 0s . He liked to joke that I was seduced by subduction Zones. lol
The follow-up will for sure be a Must See and will have Stunned Scientists and be made by top Social Influencers, possibly even Kim Kardashian herself !
I'm very interested in geology and have studied the subject a lot, and still stayed glued to the screen the whole time. This is the kind of excellent documentary I love to watch - focusing on facts and explaining in creative and pedagogic ways. And now I want a globe where the continents can be moved around. 😊
I did some safety inspections onboard the Glomar Challenger (minute 21 of video) around 1984. What an amazing drill-ship! I loved seeing that. -project MOHOLE made history! - Ash
Hearing the projector music lag and stretch takes me way back to elementary school. Sitting in a semi-dark room with the sounds humming and clicking of the projector singing its own hypnotic lullaby.
This is such a good movie, giving a perfect illustration of a scientific revolution, all in Terribly Poshe British style! It also shows some things that seem to have been forgotten. I've had arguments about how Africa used to be at the South Pole with people online, but this takes it for granted.
I like the unhyped documentary style compared to how a doco is made today. Today there would be hype. The first 5 minutes would be spent telling us what is going to be in the doco, as a tease. Then there would be a beautiful telegenic presenter who is not a scientist together with audio and visual special effects. Then will come the selling of the value of science and how it can benefit us. There might be a bio of one of the researchers and how he/she got involved after being curious as a child. Then the potential for discovering new minerals and improve our glorious way of life for an expanding population. There would be some virtue signalling with female and racial minority involvement and science is no longer dominated by old white males to tick that box. Less substance and more style.
@@coweatsman unfortunately my friend you’ve just described the BBC, since their agenda has moved from education to indoctrination; political posturing, diversity ideology and social engineering - definitely not what the British people want!
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I was a kid when this concept first came out. Neat idea to present to kids at the time. Now, it is funny how everyone looks at tectonics as known fact. Hat's off to the researchers!
We actually watched this film in fall of 1980 in my igneous petrology class at the university of Texas at Austin. Dr. Dan Barker was the professor. PS - the sound track was in much better shape back then!😊
This is so much better than a heavy cgi explanation. Of course it has the benefit of interviewing the scientists that actually made the discoveries, but still, so well done.
That’s what I love about old documentaries. No hollywood production, no dramatic music, no going off on tangents about climate change. Just straight information about the subject at hand.
These documentaries, also, contain erroneous, long corrected information, like "the current continents formed a supercontinent when the Earth was much smaller"!
What a wonderful historical document recording the development of our knowledge of late tectonics. I've never seen such a cogent description. I remember learning about it in school when it was still a recently-developed theory.
@@richardfarenas458 Wegner's HYPOTHESIS. A Theory is a well-supported explanation for all the known facts, and contradicts none of them. In his time, there was no known mechanism for continental drift.
I am so excited by seeing this documentary! At 71 years of age, I realize how much I’ve missed in the changes of our world. Now, retired and with limited mobility (due to MS) I have decided to spend my time on learning all I can in these fields. I subscribed to this channel & others recommended and am so thrilled to find my interest here. See, there really are good things on the internet.😊
I'm 35 and I've been doing the same. I would say 75% of what I watch here on youtube, and probably 50% of what I watch on streaming services, is some sort of educational thing. I wish I had paid more attention in school.. or they taught us more about some of these things. If it's about human history/ancient civilizations, history of Earth / geology, history of life on earth, space/the universe, etc, I can't get enough of it! . I've learned more about all those things in the 5 years or so than I did in all my years of schooling. I feel like such a fool for not being more interested in any of these things when I was younger. Guess it's never too late, though..
@@ldawg7117 Never too late to learn and keep learning, especially about things you find interesting. No you weren’t a fool for not being interested when younger or in school. I think you are like probably 80% of young students that were too busy being young to see what really interested you till later. You’re still young enough to even gO back to school and maybe get a degree if you wanted to! Or just read and learn for your own joy. Good luck on your journey.
@@kathyeyesopen4078 thanks for all the kind words, you seem like a really awesome, lovely woman! And yeah, we can all be pretty arrogant when we were young.. interested in other things, rather than learning. It's so crazy though, the massive contrast between how little I cared for history, geology, learning in general, when I was younger and how it's one of the things that brings me the most joy in life, now. Like you said though, never too late to start! Glad you're learning new things, too! There are a heck of a lot of things I find horrible about social media /the internet in general...certain aspects of it I genuinely believe are messing up society / people .. but the instant access to vast amounts,..basically infinite information, virtually anything you want to learn about, is truly amazing..Well, if used properly. The things I find interesting and want to learn about now, are things I would have called "lame and boring" when I was younger haha. Even though, ask your right, it's never too late, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around how little I was interested in much of the stuff, when I was younger . I want to go back and yell at younger me,.. "how the heck are you not interested in this stuff? It's absolutely fascinating! You're an idiot* lol. Anyway, hope all is well with you, have a great day... evening, night, morning, afternoon, depending on wherever you are in the world.
As a film student I gotta say this documentary is put together in an amazing fashion. So cool how the science is still accurate today yet was groundbreaking when this work was produced.
How refreshing to see back in history to a time when Horizon was worth watching. During my junior school education I was thrashed by a woman teacher who took exception to me talking to my neighbour rather than paying attention to her - the subject of my absorbing conversation was how Africa looked to fit together with South America. Most of the class laughed and joined in with my teacher's ridicule. Later, I cut up a school atlas and played about with the continental shapes and stuck them on a small ball which was handily the right size - I left the finished result on my teacher's chair. Her expression on discovery has stayed with me over the intervening seventy years. Pure joy.
As a total lay person I found this a great documentary. What is outlines, for the Earth Sciences, was nothing less than a scientific revolution on a scale equivalent to that which General Relatively was for Physics. A truly profound breakthrough well described in this excellent film.
when this first hit the fore , i was a young man fresh out of high school in the 1970s . this was featured in magazines of the day like pop science and so fourth. huge debate and heated controversies abounded . even my late dad refused to believe in it considering that this theory was around since the 1950s or earlier ,
When I took geology in 1960 at the University of Texas I recall asking the professor about the apparent fit of the continents that implied they drifted apart. He explained that had often been posited in the past but had been disproven by more modern scientific analysis. A few years later things changed...... a lot.
I just rewatched this and love that I've actually been able to put faces and voices to those who were once just names in books. I learned about plate tectonics about 50 years ago and am still fascinated by the forces that shape our planet.
This is an important time capsule of vintage geological and palaeontological sciences and nicely summarised quite a lot of concepts. It's a charming one, with plenty of too-the-point explanations. It is indeed, as the video description reads, a historically significant documentary. From the perspective of a palaeontologist with a lot of interest in the history of the subject, and it's numerous related fields, the documentary touches upon and mentions quite a lot of aspects of how the science was done. Having grown up in the 1990's with documentaries and books heavily influenced by the stratified legacies of the geoscience and palaeontology of the 1950's to 1980's prior, especially, there is a lot of nostalgia in this. Things you pick up in terms of noticing the changing nature of the subjects, the old ideas, the past generations pushing things forward at the forefront of their eras. It's nice to see. They were ahead of their time in a lot of ways and it's a style of documentary which I have always preferred to the often more sensationalist offerings of the 2000's to 2020's. Horizon began to become a lot more sensationalist in the last couple of decades, and it had a habit of leaning into the loud music. There is something refreshing about the old school documentary style. There is an honesty and sincerity to it which isn't always seen in more recent documentaries. Don't get me wrong, plenty of modern ones are fine. It's just a matter of finding the ones that don't just happen to have about 15 minutes of content uncharitably spread over 60 minutes. The begging the question stuff and drawing out pretty basic revelations to the general audience, happen in favour, more often, to treating the audience like it has the literacy and educational standards to handle things without hand holding. Modern television executives would probably look down their noses at this style of documentary, basically dismiss it as being (allegedly) too boring or stilted for the general audience and it's attention span. And these days, they might have a vague sort of point due to the way things have changed. All the same, it's all subjective. If you know what you're looking for in the quality of an old documentary like this, there is so much to appreciate from this. It has so much of the old nostalgia, while preserving what was an up and coming new wave of how science was presented on television (and the new and exciting work being done in geology at the time) The 1970's in general are so special in terms of the development of modern science communication in Geology and Palaeontology. Decades and in some cases, centuries of changing principles, reaching this uncanny crossroads in 20th century science and scientific communication. It is before my time but just because I consider the documentary old now, doesn't mean I miss the fact that it was a very cutting edge way of looking at things in it's day. They were really changing things up. It looks retro now as all things do when they age. Again, though, if you know what you're looking for in how things changed in documentaries and scientific presentations, the charm of this one is unmistakeable. It reminds me strongly of a Dinosaur book I was given as a child during the 1990's, which was absolutely packed to the rafters with what was then, the most up to date palaeontology regarding Dinosaurs and the Mesozoic Era in general. The exhaustive photographs, the many questions and answers pages, the high quality prints of what was then very high quality photography and stills of fossil specimens, gathered at some great difficulty by the makers of the book. So much of a range of 1970's vintage to the then more modern early 1990's palaeontology. Some of the art was inspired by 1960's reconstructions. Some looked distinctly 1970's or 1980's. The sheer amount of it mixed together was a bit wild. Even as a kid you could tell that a lot of the art was more or less retro stuff padding out the pages because it would have been a challenge to fill so many hundreds and hundreds of pages. Some of the reconstructions were right up to date as of the 1990's. I still have that book to this day. It gives me the same feeling that this documentary does. Not just that the past met the future, but that the process of the geological and palaeontological sciences had really come of age by the 1970's and that it could record itself and it's methods more meticulously than ever before, in printed form and documentary form. There were photos of people in white lab coats working in the 1970's and 1980's, making museum exhibits and preparing fossils for study, with large text boxes explaining what they were doing. You could see their methods and so much of the science had come a long way. There'd be comparisons of Ankylosaurs like _Euoplocephalus tutus_ to battle tanks and _Triceratops horridus_ to charging knights. There'd be charts showing paintings of different Dinosaur teeth and diagrams of the serrations and which food they'd eat. There'd film reels with panels of Dinosaur palaeoart and textboxes next to them explaining what each panel is showing, winding across double pages. There'd be purple 3D photo prints and red and blue 3D art prints which stood out a bit with the _Tyrannosaurus rex_ shaped red and blue 3D lens, cardboard glasses, that came with the book. It was the big book compendium of a similar series which was collected as a magazine, with species fact files and lots of 'behind the scenes' double spreads on different aspects of geoscience and palaeontology. It is one of the things that inspired me to become a palaeontologist (that book, not this documentary) Dinosaur related palaeomedia was mostly responsible for the rest (e.g. Walking With Dinosaurs, 1999) The book shows it's age now in spite of my best efforts to look after it. But it was used so much and moved around so often, it was worn out a bit as a kid, before I learnt how to look after books properly. This documentary really does feel like a multidisciplinary time capsule. The book did too. A sincere combination of dozens and dozens of people's contributions and achievements, with a lot of them having been the result of some very new lines of thinking. For instance, the inimitable Dr Robert Bakker had been changing the ways we think about some Dinosaurs, especially the Theropods, with his 'Dinosaur Heresies' observations. Of course, slightly older work by his own mentor had played into this massively as well (Ostrom) This is just one of many examples. What I am getting at, in the palaeontological world, is what Bakker himself dubbed, 'the Dinosaur Renaissance'. In geological terms, there was broader shift in how plate tectonics and crustal geology was being educated to the public and arguably in how widely it was being accepted. The Cold War had inevitably given a basis to many changing perceptions of the oceanic basins of the world. Sea floor mapping, done at some frantic pace for good (albeit macabre) reason, between the Cold War superpowers, causing a surge in discoveries and implications regarding how the continental and oceanic crust was being formed. Theories became better understood and the pioneers, as shown in this documentary, were at the forefront of changing how this would be communicated to the general public. Old theories still lingered and new ones blossomed in what may only be considered to be a flowering of the garden of geoscience. The 1970's were an undeniably special time in this historical record; and it should importantly inform how we should remember the entire process. While it is very true that earlier decades had seen major step changes and leaps forward in our understanding of geology and palaeontology, amongst other fields related to this, and that they had their own part in the story just as important, there was something particularly, transitional, about the 1970's. I feel I could say the same about the 1990's and 2000's, thanks to the rise of the internet in how it was beginning to be a massive contribution to how science was done and how publications were more widely distributed. More and more things were going digital. But still. Even in a time (1970's) when computing power was so relatively low, the landmark achievements they were making had really, begun to turn the tide. It feels like decades of planning and discovery had begun to amass into something more wizened by it's own age. It's easy to forget that as a science, palaeontology was still young at only about a century old in the early 20th century. Proto-palaeontology fields were a thing of course. But in terms of the formal stuff, it's not that old. Geology more broadly has had a longer history, though again, it's not _that_ old and in terms of the televised history of geology, that's of course just as limited historically as anything else. One of things I love about this documentary is that you can still see the earnest practical models and creative ways of conveying information that would probably be rendered in cheap and cheerful cgi or more expensive software today. And I like a blend of both worlds in that regard. It has it's place. It'd be interesting to see how many could even make some of these practical models now off the cuff. They had to get their hands dirty and go out and make stuff back then and I really like it. It should be a skill a lot of geoscientists and evolutionary scientists can still do, if nothing else, for lecture purposes. There is something in it. Obviously, when this documentary came out, it was at the dawn of a new age of discoveries and the coming of age of a lot of much older achievements which had provided it's deep foundations.
I learned this from exactly this kind of documentaries when I was a teenager! For me it seemed so natural logical that I could not understand why it was even thought controversial at the time...❤😊
Historically significant indeed. I lived through the great changing of perspective, then an unthinkable fringe idea, now an explanation solved pretty much to its bottom rung. We knew nothing of black holes either. Loved the drunken orchestra. That sounded like a merry recording session!
I'm 45 and because I grew up after this discovery, the obviousness of plate tectonics seems to me as obvious as what clouds are made of. To think that it was unknown until just shortly before I was born is mind blowing.
@@Prototheria I was in my mid-teens at the time, and to be honest, it wasn't something people generally thought about. The continents seemed solid, immutable, eternal and that argument about how the continents could cross the oceanic mountain ridges (which we now know they didn't) was powerful. Because one side seemed to have the logic of mountains on its side and the other was saying but what about these fuzzy charts of magnetic pole-switching (which was also quite fringe-ish). It was the global seismic audit initially set up to detect a-bomb tests that sealed the deal with its mapping of earthquakes. But I do recall that, as the realisation that this was all true dawned, there was a lot of astonished conversation about the USA, say, creeping away from the UK by whatever centimetres every year ("The speed your fingernails grow" was a common way to put it). I don't think it was so much disbelief as the unexpectedness of it. There wasn't really an organised resistance to the idea.
53 years ago they were able to put together such a good description of a key geological principle that some religious fundamentalists still manage to deny.
@@alistairthow1384"Thankfully most people want to postulate, understand and learn", in some societies; the more attached to religion/religious a society is, the less that statement is accurate/true!
@@mariusmatei2946No that’s just your biased view of it. There are many religious people, in science, that went against the majority point of view. Many of the ideas we have today came from religious people. So yeah, it’s just you wanting to rag on religion but the reality is, that religious people have both stunted scientific growth and caused it to propel forward. Quite neutral if anything at all.
Loved every second of this. I remember being about 8 or 9 years old (1989) and learning about plate tectonics. It was basically a brand new science at that time.
I was a student at Newcastle University (UK) in the 70's and occasionally Prof Runcorn lectured but mainly we got a stand-in. It was a great time. We had a display of moon rocks in the foyer of the Physics building and an electro-mechanical device that demonstrated the principle by which the earth's magnetic field flipped. Sadly I learned a few years ago he died after being attacked while returning to his apartment in Manchester.
@@lesatkins42 The life of an academic can be very unglamorous. I was once booked into an 'hotel-de-passe' in Geneva by mistake. Turned out that the same thing had once happened to Richard Feynman: same hotel!
Another important note: this video is _extremely_ North American-centric. In continental Europe, the idea of continental drift was already mainstream by the end of the 1920s, and in the UK by the end of 1950s. North American (and to a lesser extent, English) geologists were very much against the hypothesis on largely ideological grounds (American scientists in particular were very vocal about opposing "Continental science", (oversimplifying) in this case represented by the idea that the Earth is mostly unchanging, itself coming from opposition to Christian accounts of "the Flood" which was _mostly_ taken as mainstream geology before the geological revolution).
Very Interesting. I have been learning the history of America recently and I'm not surprised at all. A lot of decisions are made in the USA based on Religious/political/business reasons, not sciences. Part of American wants to silence climate change data.
You make a good point, Wegener's idea of continental drift took many years to be accepted, not always because people couldn't see the evidence for it, it was impressive, but there was no obvious mechanism as to how it was accomplished. I think your idea that this was related to a biblical ideology is not true however, maybe a hundred and fifty years earlier perhaps, but most geologists had long accepted a vast age for the planet earth from the time of James Hutton in the eighteenth century, for instance. For a long time, it was assumed the ocean basins were ancient, and the land was new. For instance, the Pacific Ocean might have been the remains of a great basin caused by the separation of the moon from the Earth. It is also true that geologists and palaeontologists in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia were rather more willing to accept the ideas of Wegener, because the evidence was just so strong, if you added the geology of South America. The very fauna and flora of those areas corresponded. But again, how? People had all sorts of ideas of land bridges or continents and sea floors rising and sinking, which they do in a way, but nothing seemed to make sense. A bit like Einstein's blinding revelations in regard to the paradox of the unchanging speed of light.
@@jockmoron As I said, the pushback came from _opposition_ to the old Biblical accounts; as geologists fully accepted that there just isn't any evidence for a Biblical flood, there was also a bit of an overreach in switching to a "no big changes ever" in some places (catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism). Catastrophism certainly wasn't dead after Hutton, though - there was a lot of back and forth... and even nationalism played its role (including the disturbing USA and to a lesser extent UK reluctance to take Wegener's ideas seriously).
I have watched this to its end. Very polite, took time to explain, and understood the folks watching where interested. Today a film like this would be lost, other to a group of the nation, plan for survival. Note the date of the film. This film was great. I support anyone that feels this will happen soon, you should get goods in.
I just happened upon this video and found it quite a fascinating historical document, having forgotten that plate tectonics was such a new idea in the '60s and '70s when I was in college and then grad school. Also a good reminder that a lot of research was done the hard way even then with chart recorders and hand plotting of data on tracing paper. Interestingly, the new Indiana Jones movie, which is set in 1969 uses 'continental drift' as a plot device. Prof Jones proves to be very knowledgeable, 'Indeed'. By the way, the distorted music is probably due to the original film having been transferred to video tape early on and the tape itself getting stretched out of shape on the reel with age (tape tectonics, if you will)--I don't think it was the director's attempt to sound doomy and gloomy like they do on modern Discovery Channel shows, as others have suggested.
It is indeed a great thing that you listed other people who should also be remembered - this happens all too often unfortunately - really incredible to watch this as I grew up in a world where plate tectonics was already established.
I am no scientist. However, my natural curiosity of matters geographical, has given to observable phenomena interest in the explanation for these events (tectonics/tsunami factors
@@iainprendergast8311 The energy required for the physical mechanism to expand the Earth in that proposed manner must be astronomically greater than anything that could have been sustained inside a planet.
I didn't notice credit given to Canadian geophysicist J Tuzo Wilson. He co-authored the paper explaining Juan de Fuca Ridge, explained San Andreas as a transform fault, and explained the Hawaiian Island chain as the ocean floor moving over a hot spot.
Absolutely agree! J. T. Wilson’s book about the IGY - 1957-58? - was instrumental in my decision to major in Earth Science in the early to mid 70’s. I consider him to be the father of the acceptance of the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift in North America.
The thing about Plate Tectonics is that it was known for hundreds of years. Its just no one really had the means to explain it to other people or was just laughed at and thrown out. It was out of the reach of the human mind as to what kind of force could move land masses. In modern terms it would be like trying to think about the scale of the universe.
The big issue was that nobody was aware that the earth is billions of years old and a slow and subtle process had more than enough time move continents around, push up mountain chains etc. Once the geologists established deep time by puzzling together the same sequence of rock layers with samples from all over the planet, the other scientific disciplines had to trash both their static and their moving-in-10-million-years theories, and come up with moving-but-much-slower theories.
@@kelliepatrick519 yep, the scoffing is motivation for the intrepid minds seeking new knowledge, reputation & professional opportunity; & the schadenfreud of the scoffers pain as they swallowed their serving of humble pie!
Plate Tectonics is dismissible, and I mean that with all due respect and earnestness. To begin with, at least according to some scientists, because magma is compressible, it expands when created near the surface and compresses where external pressure is greater; a particular depth (Crossover Depth) exists at which point (around 200 miles under the surface) compression increases magma's density so that it no longer floats, but instead sinks downward towards the earth's core. This eliminates the possibility of magma convection, ending Plate Tectonics as a viable theory. Further observations and consideration relegate Plate Tectonics to a set of glorified misapprehensions, including the concept of plate subduction, which defies the laws of physics.
Still Pertinent and well thought out. I could still use this in class. The students may have fun with the campy presentation but it’s still accurate and a discussion will be easy for updates and test preparation.
Yes I read about it in National Geographic magazine as a boy and loved to listen to this presentation once again. Our beautiful planet is very old indeed.
I tried to explain this very theory to my third-grade teacher in 1965 and was beaten with a club for "disrupting the class". I couldn't see very well and edges seemed to blur together but I could see on a map that the continents would fit perfectly together if they were moved in obvious directions.
We live on a molten ball of rock, churning with heat from the collision 4 billion years ago that gave us the moon. The crust is like a sheet of paper wrapping a basketball, floating on a sea of magma. The Pacific Ocean is empty of land because the Farallon plate carried all the microcontinents and island chains into the western boundary of the North American craton. Everything West of Utah owes its statehood to the subduction of Pacific crustal plates. If you've ever flown across the country and noticed the dramatic upheaval of land West of the great plains, now you know why. I took a geology class in high school in 1979, just a few years after plate tectonics was proven. I never knew that rocks could be so exciting!
Actually, the majority of the Earth is not molten (only the inner core and the relatively rare magma pockets and plumes). We know this from seismographic data, since liquids do not transfer shear waves for obvious reasons. However, the hot, solid rock does flow over large timescales under the massive pressures involved. There is still a very real way in which the continents "float" on something plastic underneath. And of course, Wegener started seriously arguing for continental drift in 1912. Most of the observations and arguments well pretty much fully formed by 1929. The huge time gap is actually only in the English-speaking world - for one, Americans absolutely _hated_ the idea of something like continental drift (at that point, they were firmly in the camp of "the Earth doesn't actually change at all apart from some flooding and draining of land"), and second... the English translation of that 1929 work was only published in _1962_ . In continental Europe, by the 1920s, most scientists were already on board. It was mainly in the USA (~70s) and UK (~50s) that the idea was ridiculed - and it's very likely that the main breakthrough wasn't the continually incoming better and better evidence, but simply the fact that the old geologists retired. Sometimes science gets stuck for a few decades on big egos :)
@@LuaanTi You are correct, I was using the word molten with poetic license for the sake of aesthetics. When rock is hot enough to behave like plastic, it's fairly molten. When convection drives seafloor creation at the ridge and subduction at continental boundaries, I think it's fair to describe the crust as floating on the currents of the mantle. Anyway, I appreciate the critique and thank you for reading my post. Go science!
@@nickcarter5672 Plastic and molten are not synonymous. Ice at the poles and in glaciers flows without melting, glass in very old windows droops under gravity as there is an absence of crystalline structure in all three examples.
About 3 sheets on an exercise ball as I recall. The crust is elusively thin. When you realize it is that thin, it starts to become easier to understand how these "massive" continents can shift around.
My college education in Geology taught me that Wallace discovered Plate Techtonics. My Grand Father the head of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden Colorado talked to many times of Continental Drift. He to was very interested in Wallace's observation. In my youth I became useful to my Grandfathers field studies with his students. Partly due t9 what he taught me in Geology. Partly due to my ability to scrabble up cliff faces. My Father was a Petrolium Geologist in Thermopolis, Wyoming. Through this 20 mile canyon. One can find in Rock the entire life cycle of the earth. From Permian all the way to today. It was the playground for my Grandfather. My Grandfather then combined Chemestry to determine the chemical makeup of the earths minerals. As such my Grandfather is now known as the Father of Geological Engineering.
I remember in the seventh grade science class in the late 70's, a student stated that some continents looked like they fit together. Our science teacher said it was a coincidence.
Very impressed that this documentary takes the concept of expanding Earth seriously, as did most of these scientists at the time. I think the evidence for expansion tectonics is even greater today.
I have not watched the video yet, but it looks very interesting. I took my first year of geology in my freshman year 1969-1970. My professor, Dr. James Walls, discussed plate tectonics but the text book did not. The text book mentioned continental drift as a as yet not generally accepted concept that had not been proven, nor had the mechanism been explained. Dr. Walls (the best lecturer I ever had) explained plate tectonics , the mechanism, mountain building, earthquakes, etc. but pointed out that the theory was not yet fully accepted. Ever since I've always wanted to go back and repeat the course to see the topics with all the new knowledge integrated. By the way, back then birds were not dinosaurs even though it seemed to me that that might be logical. That thought was confirmed in my mind when I read Dinosaur Heresies by Bakker back in the (I think) 1980s. Paleontology was what I was interested in but I was lousy at it. Lucky for me I was good at writing computer software.
I loved this video. It shows a very important part of earth science during it's infancy. I also remember back when this was made, that science was telling us if something isn't done & quickly, that by 1985, we'd be in a new ice age with mile thick glaciers again. It goes to show us that we can't ever buy into different theories at face value.
Imagine if they actually made documentaries like this instead of just having one presenter pontificating like they do now or even worse ones on ancient aliens, real life mermaids and still alive Megalodons?
Hi All.. the guy at 41:00 mins , with the nice wooly hat, was not far from telling the futor with Mt St Helens going boom about 10 plus years later.... Great Vid cheers to the up loader. Davey P UK
When my late mother (b. 1927, d. 2023) was in high school she openly spoke in class that the continents could almost fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The teacher and other students said that was wrong, how could they move? This would have been the early 40s. She was delighted when continental drift started showing up n our textbooks.
I was told about it in school in the middle of the 1950s. It all made perfect sense, and I was astonished to learn later that it wasn't an accepted theory until quite a few years later.
I think it used to be better understood that language was a thinking tool. Furthermore, many people realised that clear diction (as well as, more obviously, clear arrangement and clear exposition of content) helped to facilitate and promote clear thinking, in a collaborative context.
This is relatively standardised English for TV broadcasting; walking through the streets of random UK/US cities back then would expose you to similar variety of English dialects :)
Because this is a scientific documentary not casual conversation. Have you listened to people who are 20 years younger than you in a scientific documentary?
Thousand million as it should be, not calling it a billion as it is today. I love these old documentaries; sometimes slightly dated, but always interesting.
Imagine at that time with minimal computing tools, they were able to come up with ground breaking discovery with manual computing and a lot of mental visualization of how things might have happened. Did they use more of their mental capacity then compared to their modern day equivalents.
Interesting to watch a film on this subject, speaking about the type and likelihood of future eruptions and earthquakes. Mt St-Helens, Loma Prieta etc were hinted at, but years away from happening.
I was a graduate student at her Fairbanks University of Alaska back in 1965-7 studying the basalts in the central Alaska region. On area of my studies found a mixture of basalts, prettified wood, deep sea shells, all mixed together. When I wrote my thesis I stated that this could be a area of collision between an island arc and the Brooks Range. The department professors found my ideas as crazy. I was not allowed to put my speculation in my thesis. Now we know that Alaska is made up of a number of land units that have collided against the Brooks range to make much of the land mass of Alaska. At the time plate tectonics was not believed by many of the professors and the definitive proof was a few years later provided that revolutionized the field of geology. This video summarizes our knowledge as of the period around 1970. It is an old video but still quite accurate. We now have an even more detailed understanding of plate tectonics. Much of the information provided here was collected to support the “Cold War”. The knowledge of the earth’s surface was critical at the time.
Did you grow up to join those professors who rejected knowledge? Poor quality school.
So what became of you and your thesis? And the people who scoffed at your thesis?
Actually, this was a film. Probably you don't know the difference between film and video. I can't really explain what film is right now, but it's easy to look up if you want to know.
I did my undergrad in Geology with a specialization in glacial hydrology from the late 1990s. I can't find half of the stuff I was taught today. Plate movement is "real" but they were making this stuff up back then. A whole bunch of land units colliding against the Brooks Range doesn't really fit plate tectonics. We would be taught that kind of stuff only happens with glacial retreats (McMaster University) which I am also starting to doubt makes total sense either. Sea shells is Alaska is pretty cool though - your idea could actually be the right answer and be a completely different geological mechanism.
@@garryferrington811 What a arrogant comment!
This documentary is now an important scientific historical document. For younger people learning about "continental drift", now called plate tectonics it is an ideal introduction to the topic. As a 76 year old interested person I have lived through all this changing perspective, from a puzzle to a fact. Such scientists as feature in this documentary will all be dead by now, I assume, but they should honoured as heroes in scientific history. Also educative to our youngsters that you don't need super-computers or video screens to accomplish scientific investigation, just an open mind and a willingness to think outside the box and a lot of tracing paper. Also loved the wobbly sound track - Stravinsky's Firebird Suite never sounded more mysterious. Christopher Chataway, narrator, another blast from the past, world class runner, who paced Roger Bannister for the first sub-four minute mile, later Tory minister, business man and TV announcer. As was said, all the geology books needed total rewriting.
Thanks for the name of the narrator.
Nothing is ever fact in science.
Cheers
.丨
@@earthlymatters888 Thats always what my dad said.
I can remember watching just such documentaries on various scientific topic. My Dad should have been a scientist, instead he raised 5 of us, working as an electronic engineer. Later in life and right up to the time he died, we loved to watch these scientific documentaries. This one took me back to the 70's when we watched films in our classroom. What I didn't understand, he usually did, plate tectonics being just such a one. He was ahead of his time, as far as the general population goes. Like these men, brilliant young men, long gone now like my old man.
Dr Maurice Brown from the 40:00 minutes mark, it's fascinating to hear him describe in 1970 more or less what would happen at Mt St Helens a mere ten years later.
Oh wow! Yeah, that's chilling. Helps me to understand why people didn't want to leave My St Helens. That most Americans thought the Cascades volcanoes were going to ooze out slow lava like Hawaii. Helps me appreciate just how much of a maverick this guy, and David Johnston were.
I hate it when a community of so-called scientists get dogmatic, and refuse to give up their old beliefs in the face of new evidence. However, the evidence that Mt Saint Helens could explosively erupt - was everywhere.
Lewis and Clark described Mt Hood (shown in video) erupting in 1803 or so. Indians told them about it, and the land/ruined forest was still smoking by the Sandy river. Around 1918, Mt Lassen in California corrupted violently for months until it blew the side out.
A nuclear bomb-esque mushroom cloud could be seen from Red Bluff. (Google the photos, they are wow.) The public should have been given presentations by the USGS about how it could explode. Instead, they were timid. RIP all the victims were never warned about the worst case scenario. RIP, the victims who believed Washington's governor... that it was safe to come near it.
Edit: Also chilling, the Loma Prieta quake essentialy being predicted here.
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking. WOW, the pictures on Google of Mt Lassen from Red Bluff CA is amazing and terrifying! Now I want to read all about it. Where have I been for last 55 years? So much info different than when I was in HS in 65-70!
Wow I just commented the same thing lol!
Thank you for reviving this wonderfully informative educational movie. EVERYONE needs to see it! I learned about plate tectonics and continental drift in 1972 as I started my career in geology. Very cool stuff then and now. It's very sad that 50 years later I am still seeing (and hearing) people talk about things like dinosaurs and palm trees in far northern latitudes as if they are examples of past global climate change without ever considering the fact that the continents themselves have moved in the last 200 million years. People, please always consider the 4th Dimension (Time) when thinking or talking about planet Earth. Yes, palm trees may have grown on the land we now call Alaska, BUT that land was not at the same latitude then as it is today. In fact, just yesterday (Dec 27, 2023) I heard well-meaning people on a podcast falling all over themselves to explain how T-Rex could have survived in the low sunlight near the Arctic Circle (because that's where their fossil bones were found). Yikes! My ears nearly melted! 😜
It's typical of the "dumbing down of Americans," and it's very sad.
Besides time and continental drift, you also have to consider how dinosaurs’ coldbloodedness fit very well into the then very greenhousy climate filled with co2
Simple lo tech teaching with very good diction, no histrionics or gasping of breath in anticipation. A pleasant way to learn.....as I at 75 remember it. And most important, no recap of the last section every 10 minutes to allow for adverts insertion and visiting channel surfers.....well done finding this excellent footage.
I must say that I liked the series "How the Earth Was Made", because at the end of each segment, they did a brief recap of what had been discussed in that segment. For me it was helpful.
@@harrietharlow9929 where could I find this documentary? Is it available to lay people?
@@harrietharlow9929not to mention that the newer the documentaries are, the more accurate scientifically they are!
@@kathyeyesopen4078yes, you can find them right here, on RUclips!
@@mariusmatei2946 Very true!
The accents, the crackle in the audio from the old microphones, the retro synth music, the genuinely interesting earth history, everything about this video is so soothing to my soul
Not sure how many people are aware that the narrator, Chris Chataway, was a world class athlete and in 1954 held the world record for the 5000m. He was also, along with Chris Brasher, one of the pacemakers when Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile. When I first attended grammar school in 1963 he was one of the school governors and spoke at that years Founders Day.
Interesting. He was clearly a high achiever in multiple areas.
5000m swim?
That's really great.
@@NoNameAtAll2 5000m underwater swim. His lungs were legendary. Well, just listen to him talking in video.
He was a track athlete. I remember watching him break the record on a cinder track in Oxford on TV@@NoNameAtAll2
Vintage documentaries are something else ❤
true passion for the topics, simple words, no special effects of the images, calm and clarity in speaking.
What emerges is just the will of sharing knowledge, to build a better humankind, and not the will to impress people for getting attention and money, like it's now.
a more intelligent time
Yes, really genuine.
It breaks my heart that 'Horizon' faded into irrelevance when it went all 'green' and 'touchy-feely'.
This was an awesome program which showed the BBC and public service broadcasting at its very best. The episodes on Silicon-chips in the early 70s, and the one about computers and the prospect for home computers were the harbingers of a technological and societal tsunami. Horizon's programs on High energy Physics, Astronomy and most memorably 'vision and colour perception' were the reason I took sciences at VIth Form - a decision that I have never regretted for an instant. Please accept my lifetime of thanks, anyone who was involved in the 1970s/1980s Horizon.
I remember finding an old geology book at school that had 'land bridges' connecting the continents to explain how similar animals and plants were found in different places. These land bridges had then disappeared - perhaps taking Atlantis with them.
Then we heard about continental drift ...
I’m at retirement age now. Couple of decades ago, I overheard a little girl talking to her dad about Plate tectonics. I’d never heard the phrase before, and looked it up when I got home. I still remember my amazement that such a thing existed, that I’d somehow missed knowing about it, and that a little child could know so much more than what I had always imagined was a well read adult, lol.
It's incredible how our knowledge of the earth and its processes has increased in my lifetime of 70 years so far. I can remember when plate tectonics was a relatively new science I became aware of plate tectonics in the mid-to-late 70s. Since then, the theory has become ever more fascinating for me. I can remember bringing home stacks of geology books that had been published before the plate tectonics revolution and they are quite different.
@@harrietharlow9929 I feel exactly same. At 71 I’m constantly amazed at what we knew then regarding our planet and the info now! I hadn’t even thought to update my knowledge on these sciences till recently! I would love to see a comparison documentary on where science stands now. Anyone have any suggestions? I am obviously not scientifically trained so I wouldn’t even know where to start researching.
@@kathyeyesopen4078 I would say to watch "Planet Earth", with Richard Kiley, it was made in the late 80s, so it is decently updated from the 60s and before (it is here on RUclips) and contains much of the modern knowledge of geology. In addition, I would out anything by Nick Zentner and and Myron Cook. Good luck and may you find the journey rewarding!
@@harrietharlow9929 Is that the series by the BBC, an updating of the David Attenborough series?
SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS! As a young girl growing up in the hills of western Oregon in 1959, I attended what became my final year at an 8-grades, 2-room, country school. (We were "consolidated into the city schools" after that year.)
I was 8.5 years old, then, and just starting 4th grade. (I had skipped 2nd grade, so was young for the grade.) While I was idly looking at the classroom's World Globe, rotating it slowly, I noticed that the continents and large islands of the world globe _MIGHT_ be able to do something mighty peculiar... _IF!!!_ *_IF_* you were able to "magically" slide the continents & large islands around, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, they would pretty much all fit back together into a much larger land mass. *HOW **_WONDERFUL,_** & what a **_MARVELOUS REVELATION_* to my young mind - *_THIS_** WAS **_EXCITING!_*
I very quickly told my teacher, Mrs. Hassler, trying to _SHOW_ her what I'd discovered, but she not only didn't agree with my "findings," not one little bit, *SHE **_WOULDN'T EVEN LOOK!_* Mrs. Hassler insisted that *"GOD* made the world - *_EXACTLY AS IT IS,_* - AND *IT HASN'T CHANGED **_ANY_** IN OVER THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED YEARS - **_NOT ONE LITTLE BIT_** - SINCE IT WAS MADE!"*
*_WHOA,_*_ THAT_ was rather surprising. Up until that moment, I'd had quite a lot of respect for my teacher, but _THAT RESPECT_ melted away very fast! She had always come across as sensible & level-headed, but her "knee-jerk" (and _VERY_ religious) reaction to a little girl's "world view enthusiasm" was startling! She wouldn't even look... 😕
I'm glad my "childish observations" were proven correct, and in not too many more years, either. It had appeared so very, _VERY,_ obvious to my young brain that those "jigsaw puzzle pieces" could be fitted back together - NEATLY! - and that was *FULLY AS OBVIOUS* _AS THAT_ *THE EARTH IS A GLOBE!* (But that's a different issue, now, *isn't it?!)* 👍😊👋
Edit x2: punctuation, only
I'm about your age, and at a similar age I realized the same thing. I'm glad that when I told my dad he didn't disagree. I too found it very interesting and exiting! I still like geology. I also want to tell you that you don't need to say what you editted. Nobody even notices if a comment was editted or not. In fact, if more people editted their comments for readability, we'd all be better off!
Are you maybe 78 now..😊
The Bible says the earth is 6 thousand years old and was created in 6 days with god taking the 7th day off for rest. You can read about it Genesis chapters 1 and 2. I am amazed that people believe in the Bible but people are taught to believe at an early age.
@@Randy58-zn4ez I dare to say, Miss/Mr that the Bible is in that regard scientifically INcorrect.
We are speaking of BILLIONS OF YEARS..
Will you not wake up.. 😊🤔
Meanwhile, over in Portland.. Around the same time, my teacher, Mrs. Powell, told us she “Wasn't allowed to teach us about Continental Drift.” But no doubt, due to the (even then) progressive leanings of ‘The Willamette Valley,’ she gave a very accurate description of ‘the Theory!’ She retired that year, and I remain impressed by her willingness to describe, in tantalizing detail, what was “Only a Theory” 😉
I’m a 71 yr old American woman, Midwest. Our teacher talked about “continental drift” in grade school, so it had to be 1962 or earlier. We all looked at the globe and it certainly looked possible to us kids that our hemisphere and Africa/Europe could have fit together at some point.
Theory by Alfred Wegener 1911.
When I was in grade school in the late 60s, our teachers thought it was an interesting idea. By the time I got to high school in the mid 70s, the science had developed to provide ample support for plate tectonics.
@@bp-ob8ic I remember in the 70's showing my dad on a globe that the continents lined up, he seemed pretty intrigued. I also remember pointing out the natural skin color differences from north, to equator, to south Africa, clearly related to the angle of the sun. He was impressed :)
And when during a visit to Yellowstone National Park, I concluded the entire area was a large dormant/extinct volcano, so obvious from the chemical-laden hydrothermal springs, he was riveted :)
By the way, at the time, I was a grade schooler and his only daughter. I sure miss my dad :)
@@vicwaberub5297 Hypothesis by Alfred Wegener.
Theory requires a substantial body of evidence that explains all the facts and contradicts none.
Once maps were drawn and globes were created, people easily saw the continents fit together. But there was no known mechanism for it in 1911.
@@kelliepatrick519 I noticed the fit at about age six, so, not possessing a large vocabulary yet, I showed my father the globe and said, "South America goes out where Africa goes in", then I pointed to the point where South America protrudes the most into the Atlantic, then to the area of the African Bight and the coast to the west and south . My father said it was just a coincidence, but I wondered anyhow. Nice to know I was right not to take it for granted.
Seventeenth century Danish Catholic bishop (he converted to Catholicism and moved to Italy) Nicholas Steno should be given a lot of credit for being one of the quite early scientists that realized that the earth had been subject to a lot of movements and cataclysms - the fossil of a fish was discovered in the mountains of Tuscany and from the dentition Steno was able to demonstrate that this was the same species of fish being caught on the Tuscan coast by local fishermen -he then concluded that the Tuscan mountains had once been under the sea and some sort of cataclysmic event had raised the sea bed up. He was an absolute pioneer in the development of the science of stratigraphy which examines the different layers of the earth - a discovery that was an essential prelude to the formulation of the theory of continental drift.
Yeah sure
Tell Ham and Hovind and their slathering sycophants... 'course, THEY would say... "THE flood did it."
VERY DIM!@@HalfEatenDimSim
This brings back memories of O’ Level Geography in Coventry, UK way back in 1983. I remember the teacher telling us that Plate Tectonics had moved on since this recording had been made, but it was a good introduction to the theory of the subject.
Two of the young researchers in the film I found, Dan McKenzie these days emeritus in Cambridge, and Terry Tullis, then UCLA, now emeritus at Brown.
It must put your professional life in an interesting perspective being able to see a young version of yourself in a prgram like this.
I watched an old documentary on the Santa Susanna nuclear incident and there was a young Michio Kaku. It was interesting to see him back then. I just got to see J. Tuzo Wilson and Chris Goldfinger on a couple of docs a bit back--it was nice to put face to the names.
It's absolute nonsense, even more so because people pat themselves on the back putting letters after their names for it. Plate Tectonics is akin to expecting a thin sheet of ice floating on boiling water to subduct into it at one end and refreeze on the other. It's impossible. A child could tell you this.
I was in the second grade in 1970. Throughout the years I remember how excited my geography teachers were about the evidence of plate tectonics. I always liked geography and did well in it, I think, due to the exuberance of curious teachers.
Geography was a class I really enjoyed.
I did too, but I graduated in 1968, before we heard about plate tectonics. It was definitely not mainstream. I am fascinated by geology
In 7th grade science (1963) our science book - published in the late 50s - warned of the hoax of continental drift.
@@RissaFirecat I'm what I guess you could call an educated amateur and I've been studying the subject as time allows for nearly 60 years and I'm blown away by how the science has evolved over the decades. Realy, a whole paradigm shift.
@@flagmichael Yep. It most definitely was not mainstream. My ex-husband. knowing I was a geology buff got me a coupe of books on the history of plate tectonics in the 70s and in the 0s . He liked to joke that I was seduced by subduction Zones. lol
Excellent documentary. So well explained. Now I want to see the follow-up 50 years later.
The follow-up will for sure be a Must See and will have Stunned Scientists and be made by top Social Influencers, possibly even Kim Kardashian herself !
That closing monologue will never cease to give me chills. Powerful stuff!
I'm very interested in geology and have studied the subject a lot, and still stayed glued to the screen the whole time. This is the kind of excellent documentary I love to watch - focusing on facts and explaining in creative and pedagogic ways. And now I want a globe where the continents can be moved around. 😊
I did some safety inspections onboard the Glomar Challenger (minute 21 of video) around 1984. What an amazing drill-ship!
I loved seeing that. -project MOHOLE made history!
- Ash
Hearing the projector music lag and stretch takes me way back to elementary school. Sitting in a semi-dark room with the sounds humming and clicking of the projector singing its own hypnotic lullaby.
This is such a good movie, giving a perfect illustration of a scientific revolution, all in Terribly Poshe British style!
It also shows some things that seem to have been forgotten. I've had arguments about how Africa used to be at the South Pole with people online, but this takes it for granted.
There’s no need to argue with anyone. Simply tell them to look up plate tectonics and come back with questions.
Good clear English diction spoken by people who originated the language long before the Spaniard Columbus bumped into amerika by chance
@@Pacdoc-oz Now, now...eurocentrism aside, Americans actually speak more like the original English than modern Brits do.
I like the unhyped documentary style compared to how a doco is made today. Today there would be hype. The first 5 minutes would be spent telling us what is going to be in the doco, as a tease. Then there would be a beautiful telegenic presenter who is not a scientist together with audio and visual special effects. Then will come the selling of the value of science and how it can benefit us. There might be a bio of one of the researchers and how he/she got involved after being curious as a child. Then the potential for discovering new minerals and improve our glorious way of life for an expanding population. There would be some virtue signalling with female and racial minority involvement and science is no longer dominated by old white males to tick that box. Less substance and more style.
@@coweatsman unfortunately my friend you’ve just described the BBC, since their agenda has moved from education to indoctrination; political posturing, diversity ideology and social engineering - definitely not what the British people want!
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I was a kid when this concept first came out. Neat idea to present to kids at the time. Now, it is funny how everyone looks at tectonics as known fact. Hat's off to the researchers!
We actually watched this film in fall of 1980 in my igneous petrology class at the university of Texas at Austin. Dr. Dan Barker was the professor. PS - the sound track was in much better shape back then!😊
This is so much better than a heavy cgi explanation. Of course it has the benefit of interviewing the scientists that actually made the discoveries, but still, so well done.
That’s what I love about old documentaries. No hollywood production, no dramatic music, no going off on tangents about climate change. Just straight information about the subject at hand.
These documentaries, also, contain erroneous, long corrected information, like "the current continents formed a supercontinent when the Earth was much smaller"!
@@Tyler_Owen23documentaries with Geology as their subject matter/topic are not Hollywood productions!
@@mariusmatei2946 this history channel begs to differ. Lmao that channel is was passed for “documentaries” these days. It’s all garbage
What a wonderful historical document recording the development of our knowledge of late tectonics. I've never seen such a cogent description. I remember learning about it in school when it was still a recently-developed theory.
They perfected the wegner's theory.
The mechanical teaching tools they made were ingenious, showing on a physical globe how it all worked. Now all done on computers, of course.
@@richardfarenas458 Wegner's HYPOTHESIS.
A Theory is a well-supported explanation for all the known facts, and contradicts none of them.
In his time, there was no known mechanism for continental drift.
And no "maybe aliens caused it" conspiracies. Right...these days it's "Democrats/Republicans caused it!"
@matiasd.c9949The vast majority of us still do as for the mentally challenged .....
I am so excited by seeing this documentary! At 71 years of age, I realize how much I’ve missed in the changes of our world. Now, retired and with limited mobility (due to MS) I have decided to spend my time on learning all I can in these fields. I subscribed to this channel & others recommended and am so thrilled to find my interest here. See, there really are good things on the internet.😊
Lots older, rheumatoid arthritis. Same. I'm getting an education I missed because of going to work at 17.
Best wishes to you and all.
I'm 35 and I've been doing the same. I would say 75% of what I watch here on youtube, and probably 50% of what I watch on streaming services, is some sort of educational thing. I wish I had paid more attention in school.. or they taught us more about some of these things. If it's about human history/ancient civilizations, history of Earth / geology, history of life on earth, space/the universe, etc, I can't get enough of it! . I've learned more about all those things in the 5 years or so than I did in all my years of schooling. I feel like such a fool for not being more interested in any of these things when I was younger. Guess it's never too late, though..
@@ldawg7117 Never too late to learn and keep learning, especially about things you find interesting. No you weren’t a fool for not being interested when younger or in school. I think you are like probably 80% of young students that were too busy being young to see what really interested you till later. You’re still young enough to even gO back to school and maybe get a degree if you wanted to! Or just read and learn for your own joy. Good luck on your journey.
@@kathyeyesopen4078 thanks for all the kind words, you seem like a really awesome, lovely woman! And yeah, we can all be pretty arrogant when we were young.. interested in other things, rather than learning. It's so crazy though, the massive contrast between how little I cared for history, geology, learning in general, when I was younger and how it's one of the things that brings me the most joy in life, now. Like you said though, never too late to start! Glad you're learning new things, too! There are a heck of a lot of things I find horrible about social media /the internet in general...certain aspects of it I genuinely believe are messing up society / people .. but the instant access to vast amounts,..basically infinite information, virtually anything you want to learn about, is truly amazing..Well, if used properly. The things I find interesting and want to learn about now, are things I would have called "lame and boring" when I was younger haha. Even though, ask your right, it's never too late, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around how little I was interested in much of the stuff, when I was younger . I want to go back and yell at younger me,.. "how the heck are you not interested in this stuff? It's absolutely fascinating! You're an idiot* lol. Anyway, hope all is well with you, have a great day... evening, night, morning, afternoon, depending on wherever you are in the world.
Look up Marie Tharp, her work was the main reason Continental drift as proposed by Wegner in 1911 was accepted in the 60s.
As a film student I gotta say this documentary is put together in an amazing fashion. So cool how the science is still accurate today yet was groundbreaking when this work was produced.
How refreshing to see back in history to a time when Horizon was worth watching.
During my junior school education I was thrashed by a woman teacher who took exception to me talking to my neighbour rather than paying attention to her - the subject of my absorbing conversation was how Africa looked to fit together with South America. Most of the class laughed and joined in with my teacher's ridicule.
Later, I cut up a school atlas and played about with the continental shapes and stuck them on a small ball which was handily the right size - I left the finished result on my teacher's chair. Her expression on discovery has stayed with me over the intervening seventy years. Pure joy.
From the mouths of babes. Like the boy who deciphered a language on a carved tablet. Life is wonderful✨
An outstanding documentary from the pre-hype era - thank you
Dr Bill Williamson was my professor at the University of Arizona. What an exciting time that was to be starting a career in geology.
As a total lay person I found this a great documentary. What is outlines, for the Earth Sciences, was nothing less than a scientific revolution on a scale equivalent to that which General Relatively was for Physics. A truly profound breakthrough well described in this excellent film.
when this first hit the fore , i was a young man fresh out of high school in the 1970s . this was featured in magazines of the day like pop science and so fourth. huge debate and heated controversies abounded . even my late dad refused to believe in it considering that this theory was around since the 1950s or earlier ,
Your dad was smart.
When I took geology in 1960 at the University of Texas I recall asking the professor about the apparent fit of the continents that implied they drifted apart. He explained that had often been posited in the past but had been disproven by more modern scientific analysis. A few years later things changed...... a lot.
Wow , it must be really exciting and challenging for these scientists and engineers to discover such phenomenons at that time with limited resources.
Surprisingly well put together, consider the time when it was filmed
I just rewatched this and love that I've actually been able to put faces and voices to those who were once just names in books.
I learned about plate tectonics about 50 years ago and am still fascinated by the forces that shape our planet.
This is an important time capsule of vintage geological and palaeontological sciences and nicely summarised quite a lot of concepts. It's a charming one, with plenty of too-the-point explanations. It is indeed, as the video description reads, a historically significant documentary. From the perspective of a palaeontologist with a lot of interest in the history of the subject, and it's numerous related fields, the documentary touches upon and mentions quite a lot of aspects of how the science was done.
Having grown up in the 1990's with documentaries and books heavily influenced by the stratified legacies of the geoscience and palaeontology of the 1950's to 1980's prior, especially, there is a lot of nostalgia in this. Things you pick up in terms of noticing the changing nature of the subjects, the old ideas, the past generations pushing things forward at the forefront of their eras. It's nice to see. They were ahead of their time in a lot of ways and it's a style of documentary which I have always preferred to the often more sensationalist offerings of the 2000's to 2020's. Horizon began to become a lot more sensationalist in the last couple of decades, and it had a habit of leaning into the loud music.
There is something refreshing about the old school documentary style. There is an honesty and sincerity to it which isn't always seen in more recent documentaries. Don't get me wrong, plenty of modern ones are fine. It's just a matter of finding the ones that don't just happen to have about 15 minutes of content uncharitably spread over 60 minutes. The begging the question stuff and drawing out pretty basic revelations to the general audience, happen in favour, more often, to treating the audience like it has the literacy and educational standards to handle things without hand holding.
Modern television executives would probably look down their noses at this style of documentary, basically dismiss it as being (allegedly) too boring or stilted for the general audience and it's attention span. And these days, they might have a vague sort of point due to the way things have changed. All the same, it's all subjective. If you know what you're looking for in the quality of an old documentary like this, there is so much to appreciate from this. It has so much of the old nostalgia, while preserving what was an up and coming new wave of how science was presented on television (and the new and exciting work being done in geology at the time)
The 1970's in general are so special in terms of the development of modern science communication in Geology and Palaeontology. Decades and in some cases, centuries of changing principles, reaching this uncanny crossroads in 20th century science and scientific communication. It is before my time but just because I consider the documentary old now, doesn't mean I miss the fact that it was a very cutting edge way of looking at things in it's day. They were really changing things up. It looks retro now as all things do when they age. Again, though, if you know what you're looking for in how things changed in documentaries and scientific presentations, the charm of this one is unmistakeable.
It reminds me strongly of a Dinosaur book I was given as a child during the 1990's, which was absolutely packed to the rafters with what was then, the most up to date palaeontology regarding Dinosaurs and the Mesozoic Era in general. The exhaustive photographs, the many questions and answers pages, the high quality prints of what was then very high quality photography and stills of fossil specimens, gathered at some great difficulty by the makers of the book. So much of a range of 1970's vintage to the then more modern early 1990's palaeontology. Some of the art was inspired by 1960's reconstructions. Some looked distinctly 1970's or 1980's.
The sheer amount of it mixed together was a bit wild. Even as a kid you could tell that a lot of the art was more or less retro stuff padding out the pages because it would have been a challenge to fill so many hundreds and hundreds of pages. Some of the reconstructions were right up to date as of the 1990's. I still have that book to this day. It gives me the same feeling that this documentary does.
Not just that the past met the future, but that the process of the geological and palaeontological sciences had really come of age by the 1970's and that it could record itself and it's methods more meticulously than ever before, in printed form and documentary form. There were photos of people in white lab coats working in the 1970's and 1980's, making museum exhibits and preparing fossils for study, with large text boxes explaining what they were doing. You could see their methods and so much of the science had come a long way. There'd be comparisons of Ankylosaurs like _Euoplocephalus tutus_ to battle tanks and _Triceratops horridus_ to charging knights. There'd be charts showing paintings of different Dinosaur teeth and diagrams of the serrations and which food they'd eat.
There'd film reels with panels of Dinosaur palaeoart and textboxes next to them explaining what each panel is showing, winding across double pages. There'd be purple 3D photo prints and red and blue 3D art prints which stood out a bit with the _Tyrannosaurus rex_ shaped red and blue 3D lens, cardboard glasses, that came with the book. It was the big book compendium of a similar series which was collected as a magazine, with species fact files and lots of 'behind the scenes' double spreads on different aspects of geoscience and palaeontology. It is one of the things that inspired me to become a palaeontologist (that book, not this documentary)
Dinosaur related palaeomedia was mostly responsible for the rest (e.g. Walking With Dinosaurs, 1999) The book shows it's age now in spite of my best efforts to look after it. But it was used so much and moved around so often, it was worn out a bit as a kid, before I learnt how to look after books properly. This documentary really does feel like a multidisciplinary time capsule. The book did too. A sincere combination of dozens and dozens of people's contributions and achievements, with a lot of them having been the result of some very new lines of thinking. For instance, the inimitable Dr Robert Bakker had been changing the ways we think about some Dinosaurs, especially the Theropods, with his 'Dinosaur Heresies' observations. Of course, slightly older work by his own mentor had played into this massively as well (Ostrom) This is just one of many examples.
What I am getting at, in the palaeontological world, is what Bakker himself dubbed, 'the Dinosaur Renaissance'. In geological terms, there was broader shift in how plate tectonics and crustal geology was being educated to the public and arguably in how widely it was being accepted. The Cold War had inevitably given a basis to many changing perceptions of the oceanic basins of the world. Sea floor mapping, done at some frantic pace for good (albeit macabre) reason, between the Cold War superpowers, causing a surge in discoveries and implications regarding how the continental and oceanic crust was being formed. Theories became better understood and the pioneers, as shown in this documentary, were at the forefront of changing how this would be communicated to the general public.
Old theories still lingered and new ones blossomed in what may only be considered to be a flowering of the garden of geoscience. The 1970's were an undeniably special time in this historical record; and it should importantly inform how we should remember the entire process. While it is very true that earlier decades had seen major step changes and leaps forward in our understanding of geology and palaeontology, amongst other fields related to this, and that they had their own part in the story just as important, there was something particularly, transitional, about the 1970's.
I feel I could say the same about the 1990's and 2000's, thanks to the rise of the internet in how it was beginning to be a massive contribution to how science was done and how publications were more widely distributed. More and more things were going digital. But still. Even in a time (1970's) when computing power was so relatively low, the landmark achievements they were making had really, begun to turn the tide. It feels like decades of planning and discovery had begun to amass into something more wizened by it's own age. It's easy to forget that as a science, palaeontology was still young at only about a century old in the early 20th century. Proto-palaeontology fields were a thing of course. But in terms of the formal stuff, it's not that old. Geology more broadly has had a longer history, though again, it's not _that_ old and in terms of the televised history of geology, that's of course just as limited historically as anything else.
One of things I love about this documentary is that you can still see the earnest practical models and creative ways of conveying information that would probably be rendered in cheap and cheerful cgi or more expensive software today. And I like a blend of both worlds in that regard. It has it's place. It'd be interesting to see how many could even make some of these practical models now off the cuff. They had to get their hands dirty and go out and make stuff back then and I really like it. It should be a skill a lot of geoscientists and evolutionary scientists can still do, if nothing else, for lecture purposes. There is something in it. Obviously, when this documentary came out, it was at the dawn of a new age of discoveries and the coming of age of a lot of much older achievements which had provided it's deep foundations.
I liked it a lot! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼Sixty years ago these scientists were very, very ahead of their times! 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
I learned this from exactly this kind of documentaries when I was a teenager! For me it seemed so natural logical that I could not understand why it was even thought controversial at the time...❤😊
Historically significant indeed. I lived through the great changing of perspective, then an unthinkable fringe idea, now an explanation solved pretty much to its bottom rung. We knew nothing of black holes either.
Loved the drunken orchestra. That sounded like a merry recording session!
I'm 45 and because I grew up after this discovery, the obviousness of plate tectonics seems to me as obvious as what clouds are made of. To think that it was unknown until just shortly before I was born is mind blowing.
@@Prototheria I was in my mid-teens at the time, and to be honest, it wasn't something people generally thought about. The continents seemed solid, immutable, eternal and that argument about how the continents could cross the oceanic mountain ridges (which we now know they didn't) was powerful. Because one side seemed to have the logic of mountains on its side and the other was saying but what about these fuzzy charts of magnetic pole-switching (which was also quite fringe-ish).
It was the global seismic audit initially set up to detect a-bomb tests that sealed the deal with its mapping of earthquakes.
But I do recall that, as the realisation that this was all true dawned, there was a lot of astonished conversation about the USA, say, creeping away from the UK by whatever centimetres every year ("The speed your fingernails grow" was a common way to put it). I don't think it was so much disbelief as the unexpectedness of it. There wasn't really an organised resistance to the idea.
@@Prototheria yes! I remember those days at school.lLike trying to imagine the world without smart phones and personal computers!
Just wow! And the scientists sounded so elegant! Lovely peak into history and hats off to those great men who worked hard to give us all the knowledge
53 years ago they were able to put together such a good description of a key geological principle that some religious fundamentalists still manage to deny.
Some people want to postulate, understand and learn.
Others deny, obfuscate and rant.
Thankfully most people are by nature the former.
@@alistairthow1384"Thankfully most people want to postulate, understand and learn", in some societies; the more attached to religion/religious a society is, the less that statement is accurate/true!
@@mariusmatei2946 The truth/facts will never be accepted by a closed mind.
@@alistairthow1384 well, that's an unfortunate side effect of the affliction with "god"/religion!
@@mariusmatei2946No that’s just your biased view of it.
There are many religious people, in science, that went against the majority point of view.
Many of the ideas we have today came from religious people.
So yeah, it’s just you wanting to rag on religion but the reality is, that religious people have both stunted scientific growth and caused it to propel forward. Quite neutral if anything at all.
I love the music in this video. So warped and wonderful!
I found a reference to plate Tectonics in 1960 from our 1950 encyclopedia.
Loved every second of this. I remember being about 8 or 9 years old (1989) and learning about plate tectonics. It was basically a brand new science at that time.
I was a student at Newcastle University (UK) in the 70's and occasionally Prof Runcorn lectured but mainly we got a stand-in. It was a great time. We had a display of moon rocks in the foyer of the Physics building and an electro-mechanical device that demonstrated the principle by which the earth's magnetic field flipped. Sadly I learned a few years ago he died after being attacked while returning to his apartment in Manchester.
He was strangled by a kick-boxer in a San Diego hotel room after being targeted as an elderly gay foreigner in 1995.
@@DJF1947 astonishing. I've just been reading his obituary and, while it doesn't mention a kick-boxer, it is as you say.
@@lesatkins42 The life of an academic can be very unglamorous. I was once booked into an 'hotel-de-passe' in Geneva by mistake. Turned out that the same thing had once happened to Richard Feynman: same hotel!
I asked my kindergarten teacher about south America and Africa fitting together like a puzzle. I was 4y old.
Another important note: this video is _extremely_ North American-centric. In continental Europe, the idea of continental drift was already mainstream by the end of the 1920s, and in the UK by the end of 1950s. North American (and to a lesser extent, English) geologists were very much against the hypothesis on largely ideological grounds (American scientists in particular were very vocal about opposing "Continental science", (oversimplifying) in this case represented by the idea that the Earth is mostly unchanging, itself coming from opposition to Christian accounts of "the Flood" which was _mostly_ taken as mainstream geology before the geological revolution).
Very Interesting. I have been learning the history of America recently and I'm not surprised at all. A lot of decisions are made in the USA based on Religious/political/business reasons, not sciences. Part of American wants to silence climate change data.
Funny how Christianity is being falsified over and over and over and over again....in every claim ever made.
You make a good point, Wegener's idea of continental drift took many years to be accepted, not always because people couldn't see the evidence for it, it was impressive, but there was no obvious mechanism as to how it was accomplished. I think your idea that this was related to a biblical ideology is not true however, maybe a hundred and fifty years earlier perhaps, but most geologists had long accepted a vast age for the planet earth from the time of James Hutton in the eighteenth century, for instance. For a long time, it was assumed the ocean basins were ancient, and the land was new. For instance, the Pacific Ocean might have been the remains of a great basin caused by the separation of the moon from the Earth. It is also true that geologists and palaeontologists in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia were rather more willing to accept the ideas of Wegener, because the evidence was just so strong, if you added the geology of South America. The very fauna and flora of those areas corresponded. But again, how? People had all sorts of ideas of land bridges or continents and sea floors rising and sinking, which they do in a way, but nothing seemed to make sense. A bit like Einstein's blinding revelations in regard to the paradox of the unchanging speed of light.
@@jockmoron As I said, the pushback came from _opposition_ to the old Biblical accounts; as geologists fully accepted that there just isn't any evidence for a Biblical flood, there was also a bit of an overreach in switching to a "no big changes ever" in some places (catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism). Catastrophism certainly wasn't dead after Hutton, though - there was a lot of back and forth... and even nationalism played its role (including the disturbing USA and to a lesser extent UK reluctance to take Wegener's ideas seriously).
Americans have a gene to resist change. Metric is another example 😏
I have watched this to its end. Very polite, took time to explain, and understood the folks watching where interested. Today a film like this would be lost, other to a group of the nation, plan for survival. Note the date of the film.
This film was great. I support anyone that feels this will happen soon, you should get goods in.
I just happened upon this video and found it quite a fascinating historical document, having forgotten that plate tectonics was such a new idea in the '60s and '70s when I was in college and then grad school. Also a good reminder that a lot of research was done the hard way even then with chart recorders and hand plotting of data on tracing paper. Interestingly, the new Indiana Jones movie, which is set in 1969 uses 'continental drift' as a plot device. Prof Jones proves to be very knowledgeable, 'Indeed'. By the way, the distorted music is probably due to the original film having been transferred to video tape early on and the tape itself getting stretched out of shape on the reel with age (tape tectonics, if you will)--I don't think it was the director's attempt to sound doomy and gloomy like they do on modern Discovery Channel shows, as others have suggested.
"tape tectonics" Well played !
It is indeed a great thing that you listed other people who should also be remembered - this happens all too often unfortunately - really incredible to watch this as I grew up in a world where plate tectonics was already established.
I am no scientist. However, my natural curiosity of matters geographical, has given to observable phenomena interest in the explanation for these events (tectonics/tsunami factors
Wonderful! So many great humans!
Very interesting, though I think the scientist who proposed the ‘shrinking earth’ theory felt a bit of a berk later on
Yes he must have felt bedazzled that it took only a few years to prove his theory wrong not a lifetime as he expected…
If anything, he was proposing an expanding Earth.
And why is that such a crazy idea don’t you feel a bit of a berk now?
@@iainprendergast8311 The energy required for the physical mechanism to expand the Earth in that proposed manner must be astronomically greater than anything that could have been sustained inside a planet.
I didn't notice credit given to Canadian geophysicist J Tuzo Wilson. He co-authored the paper explaining Juan de Fuca Ridge, explained San Andreas as a transform fault, and explained the Hawaiian Island chain as the ocean floor moving over a hot spot.
So the Gulf of Mexico was open to the Pacific Ocean in ancient times
I believe he also developed the hypothesis, now the theory, of the existence of hotspots.
Absolutely agree! J. T. Wilson’s book about the IGY - 1957-58? - was instrumental in my decision to major in Earth Science in the early to mid 70’s.
I consider him to be the father of the acceptance of the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift in North America.
@@JohnMBernard-cl8hf Yes. The connexion was severed by the closing of the Isthmus of Panama.
@@harrietharlow9929 I wonder what differences that would have made to the world's weather.
The thing about Plate Tectonics is that it was known for hundreds of years. Its just no one really had the means to explain it to other people or was just laughed at and thrown out. It was out of the reach of the human mind as to what kind of force could move land masses. In modern terms it would be like trying to think about the scale of the universe.
The big issue was that nobody was aware that the earth is billions of years old and a slow and subtle process had more than enough time move continents around, push up mountain chains etc. Once the geologists established deep time by puzzling together the same sequence of rock layers with samples from all over the planet, the other scientific disciplines had to trash both their static and their moving-in-10-million-years theories, and come up with moving-but-much-slower theories.
The Scab lands of Washington state are another example of the theory being worked out but, the American geology leaders scoffing at the result.
@@grahamkearnon6682 Scientists are supposed to 'scoff'....until there is sufficient evidence to warrant a change in theory.
@@kelliepatrick519 yep, the scoffing is motivation for the intrepid minds seeking new knowledge, reputation & professional opportunity; & the schadenfreud of the scoffers pain as they swallowed their serving of humble pie!
Plate Tectonics is dismissible, and I mean that with all due respect and earnestness. To begin with, at least according to some scientists, because magma is compressible, it expands when created near the surface and compresses where external pressure is greater; a particular depth (Crossover Depth) exists at which point (around 200 miles under the surface) compression increases magma's density so that it no longer floats, but instead sinks downward towards the earth's core. This eliminates the possibility of magma convection, ending Plate Tectonics as a viable theory. Further observations and consideration relegate Plate Tectonics to a set of glorified misapprehensions, including the concept of plate subduction, which defies the laws of physics.
What a great piece of science communication. That quote at the end is a real slam dunk.
Still Pertinent and well thought out. I could still use this in class. The students may have fun with the campy presentation but it’s still accurate and a discussion will be easy for updates and test preparation.
really great documentary!
Yes I read about it in National Geographic magazine as a boy and loved to listen to this presentation once again. Our beautiful planet is very old indeed.
What an amazing period of scientific history!
I tried to explain this very theory to my third-grade teacher in 1965 and was beaten with a club for "disrupting the class". I couldn't see very well and edges seemed to blur together but I could see on a map that the continents would fit perfectly together if they were moved in obvious directions.
We live on a molten ball of rock, churning with heat from the collision 4 billion years ago that gave us the moon. The crust is like a sheet of paper wrapping a basketball, floating on a sea of magma. The Pacific Ocean is empty of land because the Farallon plate carried all the microcontinents and island chains into the western boundary of the North American craton. Everything West of Utah owes its statehood to the subduction of Pacific crustal plates. If you've ever flown across the country and noticed the dramatic upheaval of land West of the great plains, now you know why. I took a geology class in high school in 1979, just a few years after plate tectonics was proven. I never knew that rocks could be so exciting!
Actually, the majority of the Earth is not molten (only the inner core and the relatively rare magma pockets and plumes). We know this from seismographic data, since liquids do not transfer shear waves for obvious reasons. However, the hot, solid rock does flow over large timescales under the massive pressures involved. There is still a very real way in which the continents "float" on something plastic underneath.
And of course, Wegener started seriously arguing for continental drift in 1912. Most of the observations and arguments well pretty much fully formed by 1929. The huge time gap is actually only in the English-speaking world - for one, Americans absolutely _hated_ the idea of something like continental drift (at that point, they were firmly in the camp of "the Earth doesn't actually change at all apart from some flooding and draining of land"), and second... the English translation of that 1929 work was only published in _1962_ . In continental Europe, by the 1920s, most scientists were already on board. It was mainly in the USA (~70s) and UK (~50s) that the idea was ridiculed - and it's very likely that the main breakthrough wasn't the continually incoming better and better evidence, but simply the fact that the old geologists retired. Sometimes science gets stuck for a few decades on big egos :)
@@LuaanTi You are correct, I was using the word molten with poetic license for the sake of aesthetics. When rock is hot enough to behave like plastic, it's fairly molten. When convection drives seafloor creation at the ridge and subduction at continental boundaries, I think it's fair to describe the crust as floating on the currents of the mantle. Anyway, I appreciate the critique and thank you for reading my post. Go science!
Sheldon Cooper just unfriended you, (big bang)
@@nickcarter5672 Plastic and molten are not synonymous. Ice at the poles and in glaciers flows without melting, glass in very old windows droops under gravity as there is an absence of crystalline structure in all three examples.
About 3 sheets on an exercise ball as I recall. The crust is elusively thin. When you realize it is that thin, it starts to become easier to understand how these "massive" continents can shift around.
Those globe models are fantastic, even the "tiny Earth" hypothesis one.
Nice to see Fred Vine again; he taught me in the School of Environmental Studies at UEA in the late 1970's.
My college education in Geology taught me that Wallace discovered Plate Techtonics. My Grand Father the head of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden Colorado talked to many times of Continental Drift. He to was very interested in Wallace's observation. In my youth I became useful to my Grandfathers field studies with his students. Partly due t9 what he taught me in Geology. Partly due to my ability to scrabble up cliff faces. My Father was a Petrolium Geologist in Thermopolis, Wyoming. Through this 20 mile canyon. One can find in Rock the entire life cycle of the earth. From Permian all the way to today. It was the playground for my Grandfather. My Grandfather then combined Chemestry to determine the chemical makeup of the earths minerals. As such my Grandfather is now known as the Father of Geological Engineering.
Świetny film👍 i nadal aktualny😮
I remember in the seventh grade science class in the late 70's, a student stated that some continents looked like they fit together. Our science teacher said it was a coincidence.
What a mediocre teacher wow.
Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
3:22 You know this documentaries old when to prove a point, the fellas would lift a leg and place it on whatever stand was nearby
I can remember reading an article in Scientific American, in 1964 about this. At the time, the theory of "Continental Drift" was just a strong theory.
Very impressed that this documentary takes the concept of expanding Earth seriously, as did most of these scientists at the time. I think the evidence for expansion tectonics is even greater today.
I love programs like this. I find it so interesting. Anything to do with understanding the planet. I guess it would be called geology.
I have not watched the video yet, but it looks very interesting. I took my first year of geology in my freshman year 1969-1970. My professor, Dr. James Walls, discussed plate tectonics but the text book did not. The text book mentioned continental drift as a as yet not generally accepted concept that had not been proven, nor had the mechanism been explained. Dr. Walls (the best lecturer I ever had) explained plate tectonics , the mechanism, mountain building, earthquakes, etc. but pointed out that the theory was not yet fully accepted. Ever since I've always wanted to go back and repeat the course to see the topics with all the new knowledge integrated. By the way, back then birds were not dinosaurs even though it seemed to me that that might be logical. That thought was confirmed in my mind when I read Dinosaur Heresies by Bakker back in the (I think) 1980s. Paleontology was what I was interested in but I was lousy at it. Lucky for me I was good at writing computer software.
I loved this video. It shows a very important part of earth science during it's infancy. I also remember back when this was made, that science was telling us if something isn't done & quickly, that by 1985, we'd be in a new ice age with mile thick glaciers again. It goes to show us that we can't ever buy into different theories at face value.
As a vintage chainsaw collector seeing them use that McCulloch drill made my day. I have a similar one on the shelf unfortunately no drill attachment
Are you from Texas? Just asking... 😜
@@vladimirarnost8020
Washington State
50 years ago and such great understanding of Earth science. 50 years later and we have people deigning scientific facts
Imagine if they actually made documentaries like this instead of just having one presenter pontificating like they do now or even worse ones on ancient aliens, real life mermaids and still alive Megalodons?
skill issue, stop absorbing yourself with idiotic content and look for something intelligent, you’ll find it if you look
Nice history of a documentary.
I wish I had found geology as interesting as a kid as I do now.
Fascinating! Marvelous detective work, wonderful teamwork! (Would that this astonishingly cooperative & illuminating paradigm extend to politics & international diplomacy! Thank you!
Hi All.. the guy at 41:00 mins , with the nice wooly hat, was not far from telling the futor with Mt St Helens going boom about 10 plus years later....
Great Vid cheers to the up loader.
Davey P UK
I had the same thought as he was talking. He knew what he was talking about.
When my late mother (b. 1927, d. 2023) was in high school she openly spoke in class that the continents could almost fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The teacher and other students said that was wrong, how could they move? This would have been the early 40s. She was delighted when continental drift started showing up n our textbooks.
I was told about it in school in the middle of the 1950s. It all made perfect sense, and I was astonished to learn later that it wasn't an accepted theory until quite a few years later.
why can I understand the speech and speaking patterns of people from over 50 years ago, better than people that are only 20 years younger than me? 🤔🤷
Because you're more similar to dead people than youth
I think it used to be better understood that language was a thinking tool. Furthermore, many people realised that clear diction (as well as, more obviously, clear arrangement and clear exposition of content) helped to facilitate and promote clear thinking, in a collaborative context.
This is relatively standardised English for TV broadcasting; walking through the streets of random UK/US cities back then would expose you to similar variety of English dialects :)
Because you've had up to 50 years of listening to them and significantly less of listening to people younger than you.
Because this is a scientific documentary not casual conversation.
Have you listened to people who are 20 years younger than you in a scientific documentary?
Nice eyeopening video on earth plates with clear information. Thanks a lot
Thousand million as it should be, not calling it a billion as it is today.
I love these old documentaries; sometimes slightly dated, but always interesting.
excellent documentary. modern docs are rarely this good.
Looking at the globe when I was in 4th grade, I discovered plate tectonics right then and there. The teacher basically told me I was nuts!
I discovered plate tectonics when I was in 5th or 6th grade in 1962, My teacher said the same thing. I wonder what he thought later
@@thesarge1969 wouldnt you have loved to say "neener neener"? The natural logic of kids gets very little notice.
40:00 The narrator just casually spoke of humanity colonising other planets, like we wouldn't notice! 👀
I didn’t notice 😓
Imagine at that time with minimal computing tools, they were able to come up with ground breaking discovery with manual computing and a lot of mental visualization of how things might have happened. Did they use more of their mental capacity then compared to their modern day equivalents.
Prff Tullis is a giant of earth sciences and still working at it .
what a wonderful combination of intuition and creativity
That was REALLY interesting and has filled a few of my gaps - I am from the 1960s. Interesting how right they have been reference Japan March 2011
Interesting to watch a film on this subject, speaking about the type and likelihood of future eruptions and earthquakes. Mt St-Helens, Loma Prieta etc were hinted at, but years away from happening.
A basic observation about continental drift is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary. It occurred during a conversation in a tavern.
The music for Australia's elephantine waltz with the south pole proper cracked me up
It’s interesting how so many disciplines came together to solve one common problem.