Update: Because the 26th is the first presidential debate, the show will be shown at two times on the 26th. Once at 8pm and once at Midnight. Even though this time change means folks have to change the settings on their DVRs, it’s a very good development!
I’m really excited. I just found out that my TV show pilot, called History Hacker is going to air on the History Channel at New Friday, September 26th at 8PM and Midnight. This photograph, which is also the current header of my blog was shot during filming of the show. I’m on set in my infinity workshop and that’s a decent sized Tesla coil.
Over the course of the show I learn about the inventors and inventions of the past and then hack the inventions together out of stuff in my closet.
Tesla - Just chilling with a lot of electricity flying around.
The first pilot episode is all about Nikola Tesla who is an amazing character. He’s the man responsible for the current that comes out of your wall sockets. He battled Thomas Edison in the war of currents and won. He had over 300 patents and besides figuring out AC power, he came up with radio control and mucked about with electricity more than anybody.
In the show, I blow a glass tube from molten silica with Kevin at Scanlan Glass and then fill it neon gas with Dave of Tecnolux. I made an AC generator with my pal Raphael of NYCResistor. It got enough pedal power going to power a neon tube!
I visited a space lab at MIT to check out what they are doing with some of Tesla’s principles and inventions.
Besides being a lot of fun to make the show, i’m really satisfied with the look of the show. The director J.P. Balas and director of photography Scott Carrithers basically took my jumpcut style of making videos and pushed it forward into territory that traditional tv shows have never seen before. The look of the show is freaking awesome and the design principles that went into it make for a really fresh look. When folks are couch surfing, I predict they’ll have to stop and watch this show because it just looks that different.
A lot of folks made this show happen. I really appreciate all the hard work by the wonderful and creative team that put this together, shot it, and edited it and will be bringing it to air.
I’m really excited that my show will be airing, but I’m a bit nervous because the show basically will live or die based on Nielsen ratings. Nielsen is a company that tries to figure out how many people are watching a show and if they like it. They do this by compiling numbers from Tivo, installing Nielsen “go-boxes” in some family homes which document viewing habits, and choosing some households to document their tv views in a little journal. If Nielsen gives a good report, it’s more likely that the show will go to season and I’ll get to make more.
So here’s where you come in. Please watch it! If you don’t watch it, it may be the only one in the series. Have friends watch it too, especially if they have a Tivo! Watching it and getting other folks to watch it will really help this fun, educational, and wonderful show get off the ground!
Here’s what to put on your calendar or program into your Tivo.
History Hacker
Friday, September 26, 2008
8PM and Midnight (New Times)
The History Channel
Congrats! Airtime is on my calendar.
This is fantastic news. Congratulations! I can’t wait to see the new show.
I don’t watch TV, but I wouldn’t miss this for anything.
Freakin’ A, you rock Bre!
that is freakin’ awesome, Bre. hurray!!! we’ll get to a tv for you for sure!
congrats, Bre. hurray!!! we’ll get to a tv for you for sure!
Congrats, Bre! Hope you make it a series!
[...] Bre Pettis, who does a lot of the really cool videos on the Make Blog has a television pilot that will be showing on the History Channel later this month called History Hackers. [...]
Great news! I can’t wait to watch it!
Please re-treet the week and day before it comes on.
I’m IN!
how exciting! i’ll tivo it and look forward to watching it.
Great News!
I just posted info to the CCCKC hacker space that’s forming in Kansas City http://groups.google.com/group/ccckc
I plan to be watching.
Vince
on Twitter @SomeoneKnows
Hi Bre!
Wow, this is amazing. My best wishes, and lots of fun with the follow-ups.
[...] friend, Bre Pettis made a TV show pilot episode called “History Hacker” which is going to air on the History Channel on Friday, September 26th at [...]
Congrats Bre that is awesome!!!!!
Bre — no tivo here but I will mark my calendar. It looks like it’s going to be a great show.
Me happy for you! You happy for you! Win win. You’re gonna rock that History Channel Sir, bona fortuna!
Much congrats, Bre. Awesome news. And the show looks great.
Congrats!
Is it playing on just the regular channel, or on the HD channel too?
Awesome! A well-deserved recognition of your work, Bre.
Now, if there’s some way that someone who doesn’t have a television signal can get this…
[...] Bre Pettis | Living the DIY Dream [...]
Kick ass! Hey, quick suggestion… maybe you can create a Facebook event so we can share it… or perhaps you already have?
Cheers!
- Nick
Fantastico.
Is it watchable online? For those who don’t have cable..
[...] bookmarks tagged hacks Bre Pettis’s pilot on history hacking coming to Hi… saved by 8 others YamiBakurasAngel bookmarked on 09/05/08 | [...]
This is so nifty! I am seriously happy for you cool topic and this much reach! convert those masses!
AWESOME! wish I could see it from Peru! Is there a way to watch it online WHILE contributing to the Nielsen ratings?
- tabo
Great!! Can’t wait to watch!! =)
Fantastic. Definitely will record and watch. Got to show it to my science-TV-loving 7-year-old nephew–he’ll be totally into it!
Congrats! I really liked your work on Make Weekend Projects. I will definitely check out History Hacker.
Great! I was hoping for a TV show from one of you MAKE guys… Will it broadcast in other countries? If not, there is always Bittorrent….
Hey awesome, I added this to my calendar too I look forward to it!
Yay and congrats! Can’t wait to see you on TV!
Bre, you’re such a rock star.
If anyone deserves this, it’s you! I can’t wait to see this puppy! Congratulations X 100!
superb! I have been wondering where/what you have been up to. Forget the Tivo, im watching this one live(and recording it as well clearly).
freaking sweet i had no idea what happened to u after i didnt find u on makezine o yeah the 26th is my b-day
[...] http://brepettis.com/blog/2008/09/04/history-hacker-history-channel/ [...]
Congrats!!
I hope that your spanish followers ( i’m a one of they )can see you too at spanish History channel.
Great Bre!!!
Sounds great and I’ll definitely watch it, but I think (if I remember Margaret Cheney’s bio right) that Tesla photo was actually a composite and not literally a photo of him with crazy lightning flying around. Awesome stuff, though, and I hope his work gets more attention and practical applications.
Thanks for setting the record straight Dr. Acula!
Jay, make sure to let me know how it goes with your 7 year old friend, I want to make sure the show is watchable by all ages!
[...] first MAKE host for weekend projects Bre Pettis, has a new show coming out this month on the History Channel called “History Hacker… - congrats Bre, looking forward to [...]
Congrats! I hope to be able to watch it from Spain somehow!
This looks like so much fun. I am really rooting for you!
Best wishes from Chile Bre
I really hope i works and someday people can watch you subbed or dubbed in their respective languajes too
History Hacker is an exciting idea, Bre!
Glad to see you are showing Tesla material right from the start…he was without a doubt the greatest inventor of all time.
Good luck with your new show…may you be blessed with many viewers!
WOOT! WOOT!
Cool! We are WorldNewsInvestigators which is a new organization made up of former investigative reporters for main stream media like myself for Post Newsweek. We are planning a major project on my hero Tesla which will hopefully show the world the free energy device my friend has in his basement that has been tested at 18 times above unity at the Teledyne lab in Calif. It is AWESOME!
Also do a show on another hero of mine Buck Minsterfuller as I manufacture dome kits of the dodecahedron dome as seen at the site above. Come and build the giant Tinkertoy with us!
Good luck and will be definitely watching! Telling all my Tesla friends to watch too!
Hugh
Awesome! Congrats Bre!
I’ll watch you with my family in Istanbul (Turkey).
Hope you make it a “long” series… And I hope to born a new “tv sci-star” like “Mythbusters”
[...] hip, hurrah, History Channel! On Sept 26 at 9pm(est), History Channel will air the 1st episode of History Hacker. Bre Pettis formerly of MAKE, explores and explains inventors and inventions of the past. Pettis [...]
Bummer - until 2 months ago I was a Nielsen home with the Box attached to my TV - I’ll watch but my vote won’t count. Good luck with the show.
Congratulations! And I’m really glad that the pilot is about Tesla, one of the most interesting characters in the history. I hope your show will make it big. BTW, Tesla wasn’t really chilling with lightnings flying around. Instead, as he wrote in his diaries from Colorado Springs, he used double exposure. He was also experimenting with photography.
[...] first MAKE host for weekend projects Bre Pettis, has a new show coming out this month on the History Channel called “History Hacker… - congrats Bre, looking forward to [...]
I LOVE BRE! Good luck with the show
This is totally awesome! I really wish I had TV now, and I would definitely watch it if I did. I’ll see if I can watch it on a neighbour’s set. It’s awesome to seem some DIY people getting the spotlight! Congrats, good luck, and I hope to see this come out as a series!
Huzzah! Two of my favorite subjects… history and hacking… this is just too cool!! I am so excited for you and for all of us Bre fans AND for all the fans-to-be who will get to know you through the History Channel. Congratulations!!
Thanks to Lee LeFever at Common Craft for turning me onto the show - sounds awesome! I’ve got it programed for the 26th.
How awesome! I will definitely set it on my auto-tune
Congratulations on your success! Looking forward to seeing your show.
I have a Tivo and will watch it again and again and again. Freaking sweetness Bre!
Congradualations Bre!
Great choice for the pilot subject. Bringing Make: to TV permanatly would be wonderful!
Awesome!
I was so sad when I stopped seeing you in weekend projects. But I guess this is what you’ve been doing.
I’m so excited to see the show. good luck!
-Adam
Just make sure you don’t fall out of the hammock!
I always thought your skills were beyond making videos for those buttholes over at Make. Way to go, Bre!!
Bre goin’ after the big issues!
REALLY Looking forward to it!
Tesla/Westinghouse AC/DC is such a great place to start! If you ever do a follow-up on energy issues, be sure to touch base with Vaclav Smil, the geographer of energy at the U of Manitoba who’s got a mind for clear graphical presentation like Edward Tufte’s. He put out a great historical atlas for MIT a few years ago called Energies: An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization. Also would be great to hear from Kenneth Deffeyes, the geophysical engineer at Princeton, who’s got an incredible sense of humor about fossil fuels.
Arrrgh! I don’t have cable. How else can I get this?
[...] mer på Bre’s blog: brepettis.com. Det ser ut att kunna bli riktigt bra, och blir det troligen också med tanke på att det är Bre [...]
Great Trailer - Will be watching and TIVOing. Keep the energy up and the understanding easy. I consider the show a success. They would be crazy to “not” produce the show for at least a year, or 5.
Wow - very cool Bre! I saw the teaser on UTUBE and is was really amazing. You are going to be BIG. Tammy.
Just stumbled this, definitely going to check it out, glad i found this or else i would of missed it! GL
Fantastic. Missed you on the MAKE podcast. I unsubscribed after enduring Kipkay too many times.
HA! i just got onto iTunes and saw that you have a TV SHOW NOW!? ASDFGHJKL:”?!?!
That is so awesome! I’m a huge fan of you (Been watching you from MAKE and ETSY), you inspired me to get into Blogging and Vlogging, and I love stuff about technology and history so I’m DEFINATELY WATCHING YOU SHOW!
Stoked to see the Tesla show but, FYI, tivo.com which gets it’s feed from TV Guide say you are doing ancient Egypt on the 26th.
TiVo can program it now. Confirmed about the Egypt description for the first show.
Bre, we will be watching and wishing your pilot much success.
A *proper* TV show - that’s one in the eye for Kipkay! Will it be shown in the UK?
[...] Day. He’s a NY tinkerer and he’s got a new show up on the History Channel called History Hacker. He’s not actually hacking history itself so much as hacking on historical [...]
Just happened across a link to this site and plan to watch.. and I have a TiVo
Good luck.
Bre, In your UPDATE above you state: “Update: Because the 26th is the first presidential election,… ”
My friend ‘Shawn’ asked me “How many presidential elections will there be?”
was flicking through the channels and happened to stumble upon the show. I saw Bre and then yelled to my fiance, “hey that’s Bre from Etsy!!”
Great show we’re watching now, very awesome how you made the light tubes!!
Bre, the show is great but I can’t find any mention of it on History.com, nor does it seem to have its own site! Hook me up with someplace to go gush about your show.
Congrats, Bre. Excellent job on the show. I hope History picks it up. I’m happy to see History has finally gotten science right.
Bre, I just watched your show and I have to say that it is absolutely fantastic! I hope more of these are produced! Also, what did you do with all of those neon tubes that you made after the pilot was done filming?
Great job man its about time that someone shows hackers in a good light. I’m getting tired of being tagged as a bad person because I’m a hacker. Keep on showing the good side of hackers.
Bre,
Looking forward to the show - but a few comments.
1. History Channel’s forums (at least on my Mac/Firefox) basically won’t load, tried to load them to add a note in support of the show
2. At the moment at least doesn’t appear History Channel has your video available online, though this seems of any video they have ideal for being distributed widely online - any plans to change this (assuming as I hope you are you are picked up for a full season?)
In any case congrats on the pilot and as I said, very much looking forward to seeing it.
Shannon
Bre,
This show rocked. I have been harping Tesla around since I was 13 years old and rarely does anyone know who he was. You are helping to bring one of the great unknowns to the masses and showing what a genius he still is. He may be gone, but as shown by you, his inventions and experimentations will live on forever.
I caught your show last night. Loved It! Good luck.
I would like to maybe see some History Hacking that could be put to practical use by average DIY’ers.
Saw the show last night - loved it! My 5 year old son (a big Mythbusters and The Universe fan) was glued to the set as well!
I hope you get to do more!!!!!
Great show…very interesting…keep up the good work
Great show! Myself and my 5 year old son watched it last night and loved it! When can we see it again?
Great show! Kids and I loved it!
Awesome show Bre! Been a big fan of yours on Make and its really good to see you on TV. Hope history channel picks this up and we can get some more episodes!
Bre— I’m an EE and worked with your dad some years ago. Your show was fascinating and dead-on. The technical quality was superb. I hope the show gets picked up and we see more of you in the future.
Nice show. i enjoyed it, i thought it was a little rough around the edges, but anything i did would probably be far worse.
my only real critique is you go on about how walwarts suck phantom power, but then you mention nothing of the inefficiency of the tesla effect. what is your efficiency verses lighting those bulbs with a wire and a transformer?
I run into similar things with people all the time, thinking that going green is all about using these other power sources/methods without much care for the efficiency or the ultimate source of the power. Throwing away 10%,20%.90%+ of energy is bad no matter the source!
Hi.
I caught the last minute of your show on its last airing, and I would love to see the whole thing. How can I do that? I am president of an organization that is working towards establishing a science museum in Tesla’s only remaining laboratory at Wardenclyffe. Please contact me.
My kids (age 4 and 7) and I like your show. Thanks!
Will there be more episodes?
Thanks!
Great show! Do you have any information/guides on how to build the bike powered generator?
thanks
Show was great! I can’t wait to see second episode as my son missed the first show and I wasn’t able to record it. ( I happedened on the midnight show by accident. I wish I would have known and planned. -We didn’t see any ads for your show’s debut!) You have got to sell this to the schools! What a better way to get kids excited! I told my nieghbor who is a physics teacher. She would like to show it in her class! Simply Amazing. The best thing I’ve seen on T.V. in a long time!
Great pilot!
It’s really educational and entertaining at the same time.
Hope you will make more in the same spirit and quality!
I am watching the first episode on electricity and the first thing that caught me was when Bre cut the battery door of the Garmin GPS to get external power to it. That model of GPS was a Garmin 60CSX and there is a round, four pin connector on the back for power and serial NMEA data. I sell these connectors on through my website (http://www.rpc-electronics.com/garmin.php). I wish I had known about this, I would have gladly supplied the show with the connector, instead of them hacking up the battery door. Regardless, I am enjoying the show. Always liked Bre’s segments on Make.
Great Show - when are you doing more?
Excellent show! I loved it and hope to see more. I am also a big fan of Mythbusters and Blue Planet series.
One note on Tesla - it seems so many people know him from the movie “The Prestige”, and they believe what was said and shown regarding Tesla (played by the awesome David Bowie) is based on facts. Hopefully your show gives them the “right stuff”. :o)
Best wishes!
I want to get a copy of this show to use it in my class. I teach an Ag mechanics course in high school and we do a section on electricity and this would be a perfect introduction for them.
Just incase the other email does not work
I just saw the show and thought it was really good. I teach a high school Ag mechanics class where we do a section on electricity and this would be a great inroduction for them.
hey man i watched the show and it was freaking awesome. good job
I saw the show and thought it was great. I’ve been a huge Tesla fan and teach physics. I didn’t record the show and would like to purchase a copy but can’t find info on the History channel website. Could you send me info if it is available, thanks and keep up the good work.
Hey Bre,
Is your show a serries yet? I LOVED the pilot!
Elijah
Hey Bre,
If you can, can I get a copy of the pilot?
my email is: drummerboyx@verizon.net
thanks,
Elijah
Hey Bre,
Is it possible to get a video of the pilot?
thanks,
Elijah
Im a senior in high school, and for a project for my environmental science class, a buddy and i wanted to try and make a bicycle generator. We already made a homemade hand powered generator earlier in the year with positive results. I saw your show and was inspired. We will be working with an electronics teacher, so no need to worry about us getting hurt. I was wondering if you could send me some simple instructions on how you made yours, or direct me to one of your sources.
Thanks
Ingenious concept for bringing history to life again for the next generation. Keep inspiring new generations to experiment and learn the ways of the past for the future of all of us– and it was fun to watch.
you should post the safer projects online so we can try them ourselves…
I saw your pilot show and loved it, email your show times and I’ll get everyone else to watch, too.