I should not have liked the world’s first smart home.

0:00 I went as far north as I could go on my road trip,

0:02 at least not without crossing the border to Scotland.

0:04 Northumberland is rural and coastal,

0:07 and I was there to see the home of the Magician of the North,

0:10 a place far ahead of its time: the world’s first smart home.

0:16 It doesn’t look like a lot of the other country houses I’ve seen.

0:20 Like, there’s some detail that feels English in here.

0:24 But also, some of this feels like a German castle or a Swiss castle,

0:28 something like that.

0:29 Inside, I met the house’s curator, Clara.

0:32 So, welcome to Cragside.

0:33 We’re in the entrance hall here,

0:35 so this is where Lord and Lady Armstrong would have greeted their guests.

0:40 When you come in here,

0:41 one of the things that is most noticeable is our huge Dent clock.

0:46 So it’s incredibly accurate.

0:48 It’s the master clock for the whole estate.

0:50 Okay.

0:51 And one of the things that the first Lord Armstrong,

0:53 who created Cragside with his wife, Margaret,

0:55 was absolutely obsessed with was keeping time.

0:59 To the point that when guests came to Cragside,

1:02 they complained about how structured their days were.

1:05 Oh, wow, okay.

1:07 So, everything at Cragside was scheduled,

1:09 and this clock is the same as that used at Greenwich.

1:14 So it’s really extraordinary in terms of how well it keeps time.

1:18 To explain why I’m impressed there,

1:20 by Greenwich, Clara means the Royal Observatory.

1:24 The Dent company made clocks for the people who kept time for the country,

1:28 as well as the clock that still rings Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament.

1:31 They were the watchmaker to the Royal Family.

1:34 If you wanted the best clock possible in the late 19th century,

1:38 and you had a staggering amount of money, you talked to the Dent company.

1:42 There was also a very fancy, elaborate recording barometer for weather

1:46 records and perhaps even short-term forecasting.

1:49 Why does somebody need that?

1:51 He’s created this estate that relies on rainfall to fill up the lake.

1:57 So if you think about kind of control of when you need to raise and lower

2:01 dams to let water into different parts

2:03 to run the hydraulics and the hydroelectricity elements,

2:08 so it’s really important that he knows.

2:10 -Yeah.

2:11 -I think he’s also just interested.

2:13 (laughing) Right.

2:14 I’m recognising this guy in my head!

2:17 He’s just curious.

2:18 You know, he just wants to kind of...

2:20 understand the world around him and understand its potential

2:26 and that Victorian interest in, kind of, taking the natural world,

2:31 understanding it, recording it, controlling it.

2:34 Yep.

2:35 How do you bend it to your will?

2:37 The first step is understanding it, and that’s what he’s doing here in his home.

2:43 The man in question is William George Armstrong.

2:46 We’ll talk more about him later.

2:49 Now, in the videos I used to make, years ago,

2:51 I’d do huge amounts of research before visiting a place,

2:54 and I’d turn up with a script ready to go,

2:56 but for this road trip, I tried to learn things as I went along,

2:59 knowing I could always clean it up here in the studio later.

3:02 So at that point, all I knew was that Armstrong was a wealthy

3:06 and famous Victorian industrialist who had

3:08 commissioned the world’s first smart home.

3:10 Not that they called it that at the time.

3:12 So on that note, let’s go look at the kitchen,

3:15 because a wealthy Victorian industrialist and his family

3:18 would not be cooking for themselves.

3:19 Or doing any chores for themselves.

3:22 -Oh, this is colossal!

3:24 -Magnificent space, isn’t it?

3:26 This is enormous.

3:28 I have so many questions.

3:30 -Yeah.

3:31 I’m going to start with the rotating spits.

3:34 Yeah.

3:35 That’s a complicated set of gears and things.

3:39 What’s going on there?

3:40 So it’s using technology, again, that existed, so off-the-shelf parts.

3:46 But it’s being powered, instead of by something like a clockwork

3:49 jack that would have been more conventional,

3:52 it’s being powered by a water turbine.

3:55 (laughs) So it’s all about efficiency.

3:58 So everything Armstrong does is about making everything run better.

4:04 To make what is essentially...

4:06 I mean, I imagine the word kebab had not made it to...

4:09 It’s essentially a kebab, yeah.

4:11 Not made it to Cragside in Victorian times.

4:13 That is essentially a kebab rotator.

4:17 The word I was looking for there was “rotisserie”,

4:19 but sure, let’s go with “kebab rotator”.

4:22 Also, technically, the word “kebab” had reached England by Victorian times,

4:26 but it wouldn’t have been in common use.

4:28 So there’s like a take-off from the river that’s running through?

4:31 So it’s pumped.

4:33 It’s pumped!

4:34 Our hydraulic engine that is down in the pump

4:36 house that was built at Armstrong’s works,

4:40 that is pumping spring water that’s collected in a tank

4:44 at the pump house up to a basin tank behind the house,

4:48 and that gravity-fed system is what’s

4:51 feeding this, the central heating, the plumbing.

4:54 -(laughs) -The cascades in the rock garden.

4:58 -It’s all coming from one spot?

5:00 -Yeah.

5:00 We went downstairs to see the water turbine.

5:03 It’s tiny and doesn’t show up well on camera,

5:05 but it’s basically like this simple garden sprinkler,

5:07 water jets out of the side of the turbine,

5:10 that spins the whole thing, and that’s what powers the...

5:13 kebab rotators.

5:15 You can follow the chain of gears from the meat hooks,

5:17 all the way across, down, under the floor and down again to the turbine.

5:22 I’m just standing here, slightly gobsmacked,

5:25 because I thought about filming Cragside for a long time, -Yeah.

5:30 -I was like, “It’s just an old house...” What the?!

5:34 Yeah!

5:37 Hydraulic lift?

5:40 The house had a domestic passenger lift in the 19th century in rural England!

5:45 It’s no longer working, and it’s also not particularly well documented,

5:48 because why would you keep precise details about changes to a private home?

5:53 Very few people keep a formal record and plans when they remodel their bathroom.

5:58 This was just his house.

5:59 Most of what we know comes from visitors,

6:02 so from people recording how amazing this house was.

6:06 But one of the things he makes is hydraulic machinery.

6:10 So he makes hydraulic cranes, he makes accumulators,

6:13 so the mechanism that opens and closes Tower Bridge in London,

6:17 those are Armstrong accumulators.

6:19 Oh.

6:20 Oh!

6:20 -So he’s an expert in using water power.

6:25 Hydraulic accumulators are sort of water-based batteries.

6:29 They can be as simple as a water tower: use energy to pump the water up,

6:33 store it there, and then use the potential

6:35 energy in that water when it falls back down.

6:37 Armstrong’s invention was basically putting a huge

6:40 heavy weight on top of that water, like a giant plunger.

6:44 So the water pressure is higher,

6:45 you can store more potential energy per litre of water,

6:48 ’cos it’s taken more to lift that weight up,

6:50 and on its way out it stays a lot closer to constant

6:53 pressure because you’ve always got that heavy weight on it too.

6:56 And while the story of any invention is complicated,

6:59 it is fair to say that Armstrong invented them,

7:01 kept improving them, and made a lot of money from them.

7:06 Anyway, we headed back upstairs.

7:08 The family’s part of the house is all traditional,

7:10 but behind the scenes for the servants,

7:11 there’s a lot of industrial iron girders on show.

7:14 Because of course there are,

7:16 that’s what Armstrong’s companies were using and building elsewhere.

7:19 The stone comes from the site.

7:21 So we have quarries on site that again are using Armstrong’s hydraulic cranes.

7:26 Of course they are.

7:27 And his, kind of, massive workforce.

7:30 So he’s got the ability to bring literally train loads of his staff

7:35 from the Elswick works in Newcastle to supply

7:39 enough manpower to create something like this.

7:42 What do you do if you have effectively unlimited money?

7:45 Yeah.

7:46 And want to build the future?

7:48 -Yeah.

7:49 -And it’s 1870-something.

7:50 Wow!

7:52 It’s, um, well, you do this, yeah.

7:54 You can go and look at the quarry if you follow the right trails.

7:56 And we haven’t even started talking about the electricity yet!

7:59 Our next stop is the library.

8:01 And I wouldn’t normally include a detail about the exact construction of a vase,

8:05 but it will be important shortly.

8:07 So there are four vases around the edge of the room,

8:11 and they’re not ceramic, they’re metal.

8:13 So they’re pieces of copper wire that form the outside of the pattern,

8:17 and then the lozenges that are created

8:19 by the copper wire are filled with coloured enamel,

8:23 and that’s what creates the effect.

8:25 So his friend Joseph Swan, who lived in Gateshead,

8:30 they were all part of the same circle of people.

8:34 He demonstrates his incandescent light bulb, and everyone’s amazed.

8:39 The incandescent light bulb is the inefficient,

8:42 slightly orange type of light bulb that was used

8:45 worldwide until about the end of the 20th century.

8:47 They were invented by many people, in many different ways,

8:50 but Swan was one of the most successful.

8:53 And he was also from up north.

8:55 Mosley Street in Newcastle was the first street

8:58 in the world to be lit by incandescent lamps.

9:01 And that makes sense if you’re in a city, but...

9:05 Armstrong suggests that they try it at his house.

9:08 Because of course he does,

9:09 ’cos he’s got this house with loads of experimental things.

9:13 And he’s got a source of electricity, which is,

9:16 of course, incredibly unusual in a private home.

9:19 By this point, Armstrong already has a hydroelectric system,

9:23 a turbine provided by the Siemens company.

9:26 The same company that is now a multi-billion-dollar worldwide conglomerate,

9:31 but was then just some guy’s company.

9:34 Wilhelm Siemens, who is a German industrialist and inventor,

9:39 who is living in Britain and is friends with Armstrong,

9:47 he uses one of his dynamos to hook it up to water power.

9:53 And he basically uses an artificial waterfall and the lake

9:58 to create enough power to generate electricity from this one dynamo.

10:02 -Wow.

10:03 That’s used to power arc lamps in the gallery.

10:06 I’ve filmed with arc lamps before,

10:07 and there aren’t many places in the world that still use

10:10 them ’cos you have to replace the carbon rods in there regularly.

10:14 They also let out a load of UV light.

10:16 They’re not safe to be around.

10:17 They’re not safe.

10:19 They’re messy.

10:20 They’re noisy.

10:21 They’re essentially an open current of electricity.

10:24 They’re not okay for a domestic space.

10:28 So they kind of work outdoors for street lights.

10:31 You wouldn’t want them in your home if you can avoid it.

10:33 I mean, it’s amazing that’s Armstrong’s like, “Well,

10:36 I’ll give it a go...” (laughing) And then he rapidly decides,

10:39 “No, we’re going to use these instead.” I mean,

10:42 I can imagine the reaction that his wife and...

10:45 -(clock chiming) -Oh, yeah, there you go.

10:47 Bang on, we’re still efficient.

10:49 (laughs) Sorry, it is exactly 10 o’clock on my phone, from...

10:55 Yeah, we’re efficient!

10:57 (laughter) I don’t know why you’re surprised, Tom!

11:00 Okay, Armstrong decided to have a go with his friend’s new invention,

11:04 so he just plugs it in, right?

11:06 Except there’s no standard wiring or sockets or anything, so...

11:09 remember those vases with the metal wire construction?

11:12 However you’re imagining that might work,

11:15 the reality was probably even more dangerous.

11:18 And I will explain that...

11:20 after this break.

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12:49 Hey, I think we got that!

12:50 That’s...

12:51 that’s great.

12:51 You were talking so fast!

12:52 I want to do the same, you know?

12:54 (crew laughing) You’re like, da-da-da-da-da, and I was like, auuugh!

12:59 Now, we were talking about the big vases

13:01 with the metal-wire construction all the way through them.

13:04 These are really experimental.

13:05 So how they turned on is that they were sat in a...

13:09 There’s no light switch.

13:10 Nobody’s invented the light switch yet.

13:11 No, of course they haven’t!

13:12 So they use the fact that these are not ceramic, they’re metal.

13:17 -Oh, no.

13:17 -And they put them in a...

13:19 It gets worse.

13:20 They put them in a charged bowl of mercury.

13:22 Oh, no!

13:23 And the youngest member of the household,

13:27 who was a ten-year-old boy called Andrew Crozier,

13:31 was given the task of literally picking them up,

13:34 and he got given gloves so he wouldn’t get

13:36 electrocuted and placing them in the charged bowl of mercury.

13:39 -They just had, like, on here...

13:42 -Yep.

13:42 ...a bowl of mercury effectively plugged into the mains.

13:45 Like it’s not the mains,

13:46 but it’s just electrified whenever guy-in-the-powerhouse switches it on.

13:51 Yep.

13:52 And they just pick up the lamp and put it in.

13:55 Yes.

13:59 ’Cos no one’s invented the light switch!

14:00 I’m not certain if any domestic light switch had been invented,

14:03 but the standardised, mass-produced ones hadn’t.

14:06 But Cragside’s lighting did have a switch.

14:09 Armstrong would call down to the powerhouse at the other end of the estate,

14:13 where there was lots of big electrical generating equipment...

14:15 ...and the staff member down there, the Caretaker of Electric Light,

14:19 would pull the big switch and energise the wires.

14:23 And the astonishing bit that I completely missed

14:25 in that story first time I heard it...

14:27 There was a telephone system on the estate!

14:30 The telephone had only just been invented,

14:32 and Armstrong had wires not just inside the house and around the grounds,

14:35 but running all the way to Newcastle, 30 miles away,

14:39 so he could talk to the folks at his factory.

14:41 Also, that ten-year-old boy with the insulated gloves

14:44 putting the lamps in charged-up toxic liquid metal?

14:47 He went on to be the head butler and retired when he was in his seventies.

14:51 Anyway, Cragside has incandescent light bulbs.

14:54 -Is that still incandescent now?

14:56 -No, it’s an LED.

14:57 It’s an LED now.

14:58 -I think that’s reasonable.

14:59 You know, it’s inside a globe there.

15:02 -Yeah.

15:02 But you’ll have matched the colour temperature.

15:04 Well, yeah, we’re still working on it ’cos these are actually a bit too white.

15:08 -Oh.

15:08 -So ideally, they should be more orangey.

15:11 It’s something that we want to improve

15:13 is actually getting the right tone of light.

15:15 But there’s no single correct tone of light.

15:18 Because that will have changed as the technology changed.

15:21 In theory, Cragside could have never been sold to the National Trust,

15:24 and the owners could have kept updating it as anyone does to their own home.

15:28 The Trust, including Clara as curator,

15:30 they have to make a decision on what year,

15:33 or mix of years, visitors should see as they walk around.

15:37 So, we continue walking around, upstairs,

15:39 to the drawing room and its enormous marble fireplace.

15:43 It’s completed in 1884.

15:46 So it’s the fourth extension to the house.

15:49 Completed just in time for a visit from the Prince and Princess of Wales.

15:55 And that’s really significant because Armstrong isn’t even a lord yet.

15:58 He’s just Sir.

15:59 -Oh, he’s a commoner.

16:00 He’s a commoner.

16:02 And royalty are coming along.

16:03 Because Cragside is so spectacular.

16:06 A commoner, someone without any formal title or nobility,

16:10 has more luxuries than a royal palace.

16:12 And also, the royal palaces probably didn’t

16:14 have a marble fireplace on the second floor,

16:17 because how do you build something strong enough to take that weight?

16:20 -Is that solid granite?

16:21 Marble?

16:22 -It’s marble.

16:22 -It’s marble.

16:23 -Ten tons of Italian marble.

16:26 And alabaster.

16:28 And it’s being held up by giant steel girders...

16:33 (laughs) ...that eventually go into the connecting crag.

16:39 But it gives the effect of it floating on the second floor.

16:44 That’s not a ghost in the background there,

16:46 that’s the person from the National Trust’s media department,

16:49 and in hindsight, I should have given a second camera to them,

16:51 so my editor had something to cut between.

16:54 Anyway, while the fireplace is technically on the second floor of the building,

16:57 Cragside is also built on a steep, rocky hill.

17:00 Otherwise known as a crag.

17:03 Which is why it’s called Cragside,

17:04 and it took me far too long to figure that out.

17:07 Anyway, we were talking about the fireplace.

17:09 -So it looks like it’s in pieces?

17:11 -It is, yeah.

17:12 -There’s a join there.

17:13 -Yeah.

17:14 So it’s in big blocks.

17:15 So you can get up through the skylight and behind the chimney breast,

17:21 and all of the pieces are numbered.

17:22 So it’s a big jigsaw.

17:23 -They’re numbered?

17:24 -Mm-hm.

17:25 -They’re solid blocks.

17:26 -So it was constructed off-site?

17:28 So it was carved in London and then shipped up to the coast at Amble,

17:33 and then a horse and cart to here.

17:36 Carved off-site and constructed here.

17:39 Yeah, once you look...

17:40 -You can see the joins.

17:41 -You can see the joins!

17:42 -Yeah.

17:43 And they didn’t even use the fireplace.

17:46 So...

17:47 Of course they didn’t!

17:48 You didn’t need to, you had heating.

17:49 -Of course...

17:50 -So it’s all about showing off.

17:54 Sure.

17:56 So it was pretty much for display

17:59 because all around the room are heating grates.

18:02 So if you look here, it’s essentially massive pipes filled with water.

18:10 So it’s a wet system that’s being heated by a boiler.

18:12 So essentially they’re giant radiators.

18:15 That’s giant underfloor radiators.

18:18 Yeah.

18:20 -Sure, okay.

18:21 Oh, yeah!

18:21 -You need it in winter in Northumberland.

18:23 You absolutely need it in winter in Northumberland, but I’m just...

18:26 In 1884, that house had central heating and incandescent light.

18:31 There are plenty of older people alive in the city of Newcastle

18:34 today who will remember not having either of those things in their homes.

18:38 The most recent census showed that there are still hundreds

18:40 of thousands of homes across the UK without central heating.

18:43 And in 1884, Cragside had it.

18:47 Because when you have that amount of money,

18:49 and you’re looking to the future, why wouldn’t you?

18:52 We did go and have a look at the central heating system.

18:54 -So it was coal-fired.

18:56 -Mm-hm.

18:56 So he’s not trying to, you know,

18:59 Armstrong’s not interested in sustainable energy in the same way that we are.

19:03 -No.

19:03 A bit too early for that!

19:05 -So, they are debating coal in...

19:08 It’s called the coal question.

19:10 They are actually debating the fact that coal is a finite resource.

19:14 Huh.

19:15 So they obviously don’t understand greenhouse gas emissions.

19:19 They don’t understand global warming.

19:22 But they do understand that coal reserves will run out.

19:25 And the whole of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution...

19:28 -Runs on coal.

19:29 -...is being powered by coal.

19:30 So part of what Armstrong is doing

19:32 when he’s experimenting with hydroelectricity is going,

19:35 “Well, water is free.” He also talks about the possibility of solar power.

19:41 Yeah.

19:41 In the 1860s.

19:43 Wait, yeah, sorry!

19:44 -(laughter) -So...

19:46 But he hasn’t worked out a way of creating heat...

19:51 Right.

19:52 ...without anything but burning a fossil fuel.

19:56 And at this point, I’m kind of empathising a bit with William Armstrong.

19:59 I’m like, I think I get this guy.

20:02 If I had a ridiculous amount of money,

20:04 of course I’d want to try out all sorts of new,

20:07 experimental technology to make my life easier.

20:09 I like not being cold, and I like my home not being dark.

20:13 I’d like to think I’d donate some

20:14 of that ridiculous amount of money, too, and indeed,

20:16 Armstrong was something of a philanthropist,

20:19 but my read on this guy was that he’s a Victorian-era nerd.

20:24 The word “nerd” had not even been invented at that point.

20:26 Dr Seuss, who coined the word “nerd”, wasn’t even born.

20:30 But Armstrong is hanging out with scientists,

20:33 and he’s inventing stuff himself, he’s got the fancy smart home.

20:37 His nickname is The Magician of the North,

20:40 that’s the title of one of his biographies.

20:42 He’s built up this colossal construction

20:44 company in Newcastle through his own inventions.

20:46 And, like...

20:47 look at me, of course I’m going to feel like

20:50 I’ve got a bit of a connection to someone like that.

20:54 And so, congratulations to Clara,

20:57 who set up the punchline of this video perfectly, and I fell for it.

21:01 Because the last place we go in Cragside is the dining room.

21:05 So which one is the man himself?

21:07 Is he up there?

21:08 -He’s there!

21:08 That’s him there.

21:09 -That’s him just there.

21:10 And that’s him sitting here.

21:12 Oh!

21:12 Sitting...

21:13 literally just there?

21:14 -Yep.

21:14 So this is a replica of the settle,

21:17 because we let visitors sit in it and pretend to be Armstrong.

21:19 Right.

21:20 So he’s just sort of perched here, one leg up there, yeah, reading the paper.

21:24 Yeah!

21:24 In his favourite spot, you know?

21:26 No, I don’t feel comfortable.

21:28 That’s, nope.

21:28 -(laughs) -Nope, not feeling comfortable.

21:31 ’Cos I have the worry that, like, you know...

21:34 old Victorian guy in the 1870s, what was he invested in?

21:37 -(inhales sharply) -Was it?

21:38 I would like, if I may,

21:41 to just play that hesitant breath in from Clara one more time.

21:45 Old Victorian guy in the 1870s, what was he invested in?

21:48 (inhales sharply) Armstrong actually started out as a lawyer.

21:52 He got interested in engineering.

21:54 And all was well for a while.

21:56 His big mentor, Armorer Donkin, which is a great Victorian name,

22:01 sets him up with funds to create a reservoir and a connecting

22:07 system that provides clean drinking water to Newcastle and Gateshead.

22:11 And that’s his first kind of big enterprise.

22:13 And from that, he starts to set up his hydraulics business.

22:17 So he supplies cranes to Liverpool docks.

22:20 He supplies the accumulators that open Tower

22:23 Bridge or the Swing Bridge in Newcastle.

22:26 -No wonder he got so rich.

22:27 Yeah, but that isn’t where he made the big money.

22:29 Ah.

22:30 By the time Armstrong could afford to have Cragside constructed,

22:33 he’d come up with a different invention and entered a very different business.

22:37 In the Crimean War, a lot of British

22:39 soldiers were killed when their guns failed.

22:41 And we’re not talking about handguns here,

22:43 we’re talking about field guns, the ones that look more like cannons.

22:46 So he creates a better gun, the first modern, breech-loading gun,

22:50 where you can open up the gun to put in the shell,

22:52 instead of shoving it down the barrel.

22:54 So he creates a field gun that has a better range,

23:00 it’s safer to fire, it’s more efficient.

23:03 And he sells that patent to the British government.

23:07 And they essentially make him the head of their ordnance.

23:10 On the scale of things that a very

23:13 rich Victorian guy could have made their money from...

23:15 -Yeah, it’s pretty bad.

23:16 It could be worse.

23:18 It gets worse.

23:20 Essentially, in 1863, he quits the British ordnance.

23:23 He’s had enough of the politics involved with working for the government,

23:28 the pressure from other rivals trying to compete for that patent.

23:34 And while he still allows the British government to produce his guns,

23:39 he creates a private enterprise.

23:42 -Right.

23:42 And he starts selling to the world.

23:45 Arguably, he is the first international...

23:47 -Arms dealer.

23:48 -Arms dealer.

23:49 And he’s selling to competing imperial powers.

23:53 -Oh, he’s playing both sides.

23:55 -Oh, yeah.

23:55 So, for example, he’s selling to both China and Japan.

24:00 Right.

24:01 He’s shipping guns to South America.

24:04 He, potentially, we’re still trying to find concrete evidence,

24:09 but we suspect that he was also selling

24:12 to both sides of the Civil War in America.

24:15 And there are quotes from Armstrong, later in life,

24:17 that showed he had no regrets about this.

24:20 -He’s a complicated person.

24:22 -Yeah.

24:22 By the standards of the Victorians...

24:25 Yep.

24:26 ...he’s making his money in a completely legitimate way.

24:29 In a hundred years’ time, are some tourists going to be walking around, say,

24:33 Mark Zuckerberg’s former mansion,

24:35 some high-tech compound that’s been preserved for history, and say, sure,

24:38 the company he founded had a horrible effect on society,

24:41 and fuelled international violence,

24:43 but by the standards of the early 21st century,

24:45 he was making money in a completely legitimate way?

24:49 Maybe.

24:49 Times and standards do change.

24:51 But if those future tourists are doing that, then I can only

24:54 hope that they’re also thinking about

24:56 all the luxuries that those billionaires have,

24:58 all the equivalents of central heating and electric light

25:00 that only the very rich have access to right now.

25:04 And I hope those future tourists are saying:

25:07 isn’t it wonderful that so many more of us have access to that as well.

25:11 Next time, or right now on Nebula:

25:14 I go underneath a river, and get very cold and wet.