Oscar-winning costume designer John Bright looks at the evolution of the corset from the 16th century to the restricting steel and whalebone Victorian corsets to today's fashion as outerwear. Oscar-winning costume designer John Bright looks at the evolution of the corset. From it's beginnings in the 16th century, the corset evolved in the 19th century with smaller high-waisted stays in the fashion for empire styles. During the 19th century, restricting steel and whalebone Victorian corsets were worn to create an hourglass figure, while in Edwardian times, the straight-fronted corset was invented to create an S-bend silhouette that was said to cause less constriction to internal organs. Falling out of fashion during the 20th century, with a brief renaissance during the 1940s, today's revival in fashion corsets are often worn as outerwear rather than underwear
In 1901 George Eastman revolutionised photography when he introduced the Kodak Box Brownie, making it accessible to the public. One hundred years later, as the Sun's royal photographer prepares to take a picture of the Queen using the same device, the programme considers how this technology helped to develop a modern view of the world.
The Qwerty keyboard is commonplace with computers in the modern world, but it was invented by engineers to slow typists down rather than speed them up. The typewriter was therefore an awkward device, and despite its role in getting early 20th-century suffragettes into the workplace, it is debatable just how liberating it was for the masses.
How Edwardian technology improved the bicycle, which helped it become a universal mode of transportation regarded as one of the most important inventions of all time. The bike was unhindered by class boundaries, enabling residents of urban areas to escape to the country and, surprisingly, it is also credited with widening the gene pool. Last in series.