But I've never heard anyone question its accuracy. (Over many years, for what that's worth.) Acknowledging my biases, I watched that show when I was young, and I'd really loved it.
There's no other show like it. The New York Times reports "It took more than two years to make, was filmed at 150 locations in 22 countries and cost 51.5 million."
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/21/archives/pbss-connections...
I found "Freeze-Drying of Pharmaceutical and Food Products" at https://books.google.com/books?id=WopwAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&ots=8... with "Brief history of freeze-drying technology".
> There were three events which had the milestone significance in the early development in freeze-drying technology:
> (1) Earl W. Flosdorf and Stuart Mudd from University of Pennsylvania successfully preserved the human serum by freeze-drying using glass apparatus in 1933
> (2) During World War II, the freeze-drying process was developed commercially when it was used to preserve blood plasma and penicillin. Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, the scientists who followed up most successfully on Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928, devised the method to store the penicillin by freeze-drying in 1938, and made great contribution to clinical application during World War II. The three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945. Several years later, Charles Merieux (French virologist) made the freeze drying as a regular technology for vaccine preservation.
> (3) In 1930, Nestlé's chairman was approached by the Brazilian Coffee Institute and asked to develop coffee that was soluble in hot water and retaining its flavor. At the time, Brazil had a huge coffee surplus. After seven years of painstaking research at the Nestlé research centre laboratory in Switzerland, scientist Max Mortgenthaler invented freeze-dried coffee and the powered coffee was first produced in 1938, which led to the development of powdered food products.
That last sounds close enough to your summary that I would have to know more exactly what Burke said.
It looks like it was from "Life is No Picnic" in Connections 3, available from https://archive.org/details/connections-1-04-faith-in-number... . It seems a decent match.
https://tomharperkelly.com/breakfastkration/ describes how US Army Rations had soluble coffee in the First World War, but it wasn't until "1940 [when] the Army adopted "Nescafe," a product of Nestle's Milk Products, Incorporated, for its C Ration. Nescafe combined soluble coffee with maltose, dextrine, and dextrole to improve the coffee's taste and aroma.", and coffee was later used in the K-rations, as Burke mentioned.
I haven't been able to find if "Nescafe" is indeed freeze-dried coffee, or something else. But my two-minute search suggests it is.
the point of the program is that inventions are a result of previous inventions and influenced buy the society in which they are developed. If you looks at any given invention you can trace the “ancestral” inventions back to further ancestral inventions and learn a lot about how the conditions around them affect the outcome. The program runs that tracing back from earlier to more recent to see the effects.
there is a lot of material in there and I would not be surprised if a few things turn out to either incorrect or incomplete in hind site.
The important word in my statements above is 'entertainment'.
He also had a monthly 'connections' series of articles in Scientific American for several years. They were very entertaining too.
I remember that show as a roaring river of information, all delivered with Burke's speedy narration. So if there's something that seems off after 40-plus years, I think I'd still be inclined to accept the larger context of information in which it appears.
> his claim that freeze drying was invented by the coffee industry in S. America because they had extra beans is easily proven false by 2 minutes of research
The show should be called "Associations" because that would be more accurate. He puts things together that have no connection beyond sharing one or two properties. I loved the show, don't get my wrong, but viewing it later in life showed me it wasn't what I thought it was
Starting at 1:49 at https://archive.org/details/connections-1-04-faith-in-number... he describes how Brazil has a coffee surplus, there's no way to sell it all, then Nestlé comes up with the answer.
I'm not saying not to do it mind, but it's easier to come forward with concrete examples. I see several others are already running things down, but in an environment where attention is the primary constraint, it is often considered polite to bring your citations with you. That way everyone can quickly home in on the relevant info.
I'm not going to get on the soapbox on what passes for fact-checking these days. Any college student in a history class probably knows why the contemporary notion is... less than ideal.