Among many enduring Tudor inventions were the pencil, enabled by the discovery in Wales of what for the long time would be the only graphite pit in Britain, the telescope, perspective and oil paints, applied to create pictures of unprecedented realism using the camera obscura.

During this era there were the most striking transformations of our understanding of our place in the Universe. Adam explains how Tudor ides of astronomy were revolutionsed by the discovery of a "new star" or "nova" in 1572, and how the dubious practice of alchemy gradually gave place to chemistry, alongside the discovery of many new substances.

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Adam looks at the development of Tudor weapons of war, taking in unpleasant implements of torture, cryptography, and casts his own cannon out of pure iron and test fires it!