How We Got to Now How We Got to Now How We Got to Now is a British-American factual television series that was broadcast on PBS in 2014 and BBC Two in 2015. The series was commissioned by the BBC in the United Kingdom and made by Nutopia, a British-American production company in the United States. The six-part series, presented by Steven Johnson, explores the legacy of great ideas. Episode titles for the six parts are: 1) Clean, 2) Time, 3) Glass, 4) Light, 5) Cold, and 6) Sound. The historical characters who appear include Thomas Edison, Clarence Birdseye, Frederick McKinley Jones, Willis Carrier, Tim
Thomas Edison depression and ill health, worked at several menial jobs, but by 1931 (towards the end of his life) he would obtain a role in the Edison company, thanks to the intervention of his brother. Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker". Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In 1878, Edison joined the Theosophical Society in New