The Machines That Built America

Those of you who said "well done" should be embarrassed. This is entertaining, at best. It's on the level of a fictional movie like Batman and Robbin. As a documentary, it very well may be a series full of lazy information gathering and lack luster fact finding.

I should clarify, I'm not sure if this documentary is wrong or if its The Titans That Built America that is wrong but, the two documentaries have completely opposite facts about Henry Ford and airplanes.

This "documentary" describes Henry Ford as a pioneer in air travel. A man who is a driving force in the development of airplanes.

In The Titans That Built America, Henry Ford is completely against the idea of airplanes and is at odds with his son Edsel Ford who uses Ford money, power and ingenuity to help develop air travel. Edsel wanted his legacy to be in air travel while his father, Henry Ford, felt it was a waste of time and money.

I use quotes when I say "documentary" because this is labeled as a documentary but a documentary is supposed to present official facts. This "documentary" makes me question its' creditability all together.

I decided to do a little quick research to see if the same people wrote and produced the two documentaries but I couldn't find that information for this series which leads me to believe that it was written and produced by some 6th graders in their moms basement. I'm comfortable with my conclusion that the producers of The Titans That Built American did their research.

I'm only in episode 2 of this series and I'm pretty sure that everything else that they tell me is going to be based on lazy, ill-informed "fact" finding. Complete garbage!

As a retired Bell employee, I was excited to watch Ep5 Telephone Wars. However, I found the background music quite annoying. I even turned off my audio sound system. The background music was still annoying and a distraction to the story.

"Don't let the truth get in the way of telling a good story" is the crutch of the production dept., with no budget, or no fact checkers.

How someone approved the description of Serbian national treasure Nikolai Tesla as "From what is now called Croatia" beggars belief.

And "Plane Pioneers" completely ignores Edsel Ford's contribution as the driving force behind the Ford Aircraft Co,.

And that's just the easily spotted contradictions between this and other documentary series.

If you call yourself "The History Channel", know your history. There were probably lots of futuristic displays when Bill Boeing attended the 1910 International Air Meet, but a 50 star U. S. flag was not one of them.

This program isn't what it purports to be. Whilst well Put together and interesting, factually it is wrong largely because it's US centric and biased. Many of these inventions started in the UK and Europe, NOT THE US. Example television, stated to be invented and developed in the states, no mention of the real Scottish inventor, John Logi Baird. Ditto the motorcycle invented by Daimler, the program cites Harley Davison along with another U. S. inventor.

If you want an interesting documentary, well produced, then fine. If you want real facts, forget it!