Yesterday's Witness

In 1903 the aeroplane raised itself off the ground for the first time and stayed aloft for twelve glorious seconds. A new age had begun. In tonight's film pioneer aviators recall their first experiences of powered flight. The only way to learn to fly was to go and teach yourself.... Most of us did our first flight involuntarily. One looked over the side and found the ground had gone. Well, there you were, you were in the air and you'd got to do something about it!

TBC

"Today Britain's narrow canal system is being developed for pleasure cruising, but a hundred years ago the waterways were crowded with fleets of working boats." The pains and pleasures of trading on Britain's narrow canals are recalled.

Some of the artists, cameramen, and others who made or showed or appeared in British films fifty, sixty, seventy years ago-long before the talkies-recall their work as we see it. 'Off I'd go on my bicycle and get some old skirts or something, and then we'd do a film, and it was all over by lunchtime ... It was an awful business really. But still we enjoyed it. We got to where films are now, when you think of it. We're pioneers aren'we-we people? ' says May Clarke, who is seen in the programme in the part of a nursemaid in Cecil Hep-worth's 1905 classic Rescued by Rover.