How Do They Do It? - Harp Strings, Roof Windows, Belgian Waffles

(2015)

Available Now

Synopsis

Every week for more than 100 years, the Bow Brand Factory in Kings Lynn, England, has taken delivery of a consignment of carefully sealed barrels. Fresh from the abattoir, inside each barrel are thousands of strands of salted cow’s intestines. They may smell foul, but in just over a month these old guts could be gracing a classical harp, producing beautiful music in one of the world’s great concert halls. Bow Brand is one of the world’s leading makers of catgut strings for musical instruments. Back in 1942 Danish engineer Villum Kann Rasmussen came up with a new way to open up unused attic space - a pivoting window that could easily be installed in almost any sloping roof. Combining the words Ventilation and Lux, he called his new design the Velux, and began producing the windows from a small shed in the town of Østbirk. Now there are millions of his windows in use all over the world, and the Østbirk factory produces more than one every minute. The 1964 New York World’s Fair is famous for celebrating the dawn of the space age, the arrival of mainframe computers, and for introducing the Belgian waffle to America. In 50 years, America’s version of the Belgian waffle has become a nationwide favourite, but it’s evolved a long way from the waffles familiar to Belgians. They’ve been eating waffles in the Low Countries for over 600 years and in that time different cities have evolved their own styles.

Cast

Chris Broyles