Episode 5 – The 1940’s Synopsis:
War is the driving force behind much of the innovation in the 1940s. In a desperate attempt to secure aerial supremacy, the British win the race to develop the jet engine.
Under the Reich, a German engineer builds what is now recognized as the world’s first true computer. In the United States, the microwave is born after a self-taught inventor realizes that military equipment is responsible for melting a chocolate bar in his pocket.
A U.S. Air Force doctor is ordered to stop experimenting on himself, and so he duplicates himself, giving us the first crash test dummy.