80 years after they were first broadcast on television, historian Rupert Cole looks at the sto’‘The Chemical History of a Candle’ which produced perhaps the most popular science book ever published. As the Royal Institution’s flagship lecture series it was an obvious candidate for broadcasting by the BBC’s fledging television service in 1936. In the post-1945 period several lectures were televised, but it was not until the 1966/7 series that they started being broadcast annually. These two talks (see the other here: https://youtu.be/duaC3JOxGYo) illustrated by clips, experiments and perhaps the odd explosion, consider the development, content and impact of these lectures. Rupert Cole is a PhD student in the History of Science, jointly at the Royal Institution and University College London. His research is specifically concerned with the recent history of the Royal Institution and its role in communicating science to the public. Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/ Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter