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Episode details

Radio 4,21 Jan 2009,30 mins

Hole in the Wall - Victorian Light

Thinking Allowed

Available for over a year

HOLE IN THE WALL Vikras Swarup, the author of the novel which inspired the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, recently revealed he was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project in Delhi which installed a computer in a Delhi slum. The project leader behind that Hole in the Wall experiment, Sugata Mitra, who is currently Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, reveals how children teach themselves how to use digital technology. VICTORIAN LIGHT Imagine the impact of gaslight on the once dark nights of Victorian Britain..“As I walk about the streets by night, endless and always suggestive intercommunings take place between me and the trusty, silent, ever watchful gas. Gas to teach me; gas to counsel me; gas to guide my footsteps, not over London flags, but through the crooked ways of unseen life and death”, that was George Augustus Sala in 1859. Laurie Taylor is joined by Chris Otter, assistant professor of Modern European History at the Ohio State University, and Lynda Nead, Professor of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London, to discuss the political history of gas, how did people react? What affect did its yellowy hue have on the ambitions of police and government?

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