Ronald Top discovers how technology opened up the Alps to Europe’s first tourists. He goes on board the early paddle steamers that took them across the lakes, the ingenious funiculars that carried them up the lower slopes and the cog and rack railways that transported them up to the mountain peaks.

How did the production of food become industrialized in order to keep up with an ever expanding urban population? Ronald Top investigates. Industrialization leads to more mouths to feed and fewer people to work the land, causing food-production complications.

Examining historical attempts to build motor cars, and revealing the stories behind several plans to construct steam-powered road vehicles, he also investigates one of the world’s first oil fields in Poland.

Top visits Berlin and Prague and explores how cities coped with rapid population growth once society entered the railway age. His journey also takes him into the subterranean world of sewers hidden beneath the city.

Ronald Top finds out how paper, fire, a cockerel, a duck and a sheep helped man learn how to fly.

Built in 1889, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was the tallest building in the world. Since then it’s had 200 million visitors, Ronald Top reveals the link between the Towers construction and the making of the humble cooking pot in England.

Ronald Top discovers what happened when machines took over from manual labour in the creation of clothes, and what the effects were on rope making.

Top goes in search of how many Europeans learned the ancient Chinese secret of porcelain manufacture. His journey takes him from the mysterious “Cornish Alps” to his native Holland, were he makes some unusual pancakes.