Malta’s relationship with gunpowder will have its three minutes of fame on international television after a crew came to document the manufacture – and the firing – of fireworks on the island.

The crew from Lion Television shot a slot for a programme called The Link, to be broadcast on no less a channel than National Geographic. It traces the origins of modern-day technology to its forebears.

In this particular episode, called The Conquest of Darkness, the programme takes viewers from the discovery of gunpowder to virtual reality.

“In this programme, the end technology is virtual reality which comes from video games and which is being used in crime scene investigations in the US,” director David Hutt told The Times.

The programme kicks off with the discovery of gunpowder, which eventually led to guns and the nasty wounds they inflicted.

“That meant surgeons had to find new ways of treating wounds, and that made them, in the 16th century, look at anatomy, where they started thinking of the human body as a machine, and they started making little automata,” Mr Hutt said.

“One of these inventors then went on to work in the French silk industry where he used a chain drive, in 1750, and a 100 years later the people who invented the bicycle used the same chain, so that’s the link.

“In the 1890s, two bicycle repairmen – the Wright brothers – had a bicycle shop and used a chain to transfer power from the engine of their airplane to the propellers.”

It wasn’t much later until the British had to invent radar to cope with the aerial warfare in World War II. The technology was eventually modified by a US instruments specialist in 1958 where he hacked a radar screen and made a game of tennis, which was very successful. This, eventually, led to the start of the video game industry in the 1970s, which led to virtual reality, Mr Hutt explained.

With so many things to fit in, Malta will only be getting three minutes of the programme. The crew visited St Mary’s Fireworks Factory in Qrendi to film fireworks manufacture, where they were also shown a firelance – a precursor to the rifle – which they fired off in the sunset for dramatic effect.

They also went to the ground fireworks display in Żebbuġ, which had been facilitated by Godfrey Farrugia, a doctor in the village, who had been in touch with the production crew for months before they settled on Malta as a location.

The segment on guns also includes footage from Tennessee, where saltpetre is mined.

This will also be computer security expert and entrepreneur Josh Klein’s first series as a television presenter, and it was also his first time in Malta.

“It’s fantastic,” he exclaimed. “You’ve got great food, great weather, your scenery is unbelievable and everyone is really friendly, there’s nothing to complain about,” Mr Klein said.

The director admits he didn’t see enough of the island, but he liked the British influence, especially the electrical plugs and the fact driving is on the left.

“What I was extraordinarily impressed with was the St Mary Fireworks Factory, because the people there are such craftsmen... it blew me away,” Mr Hutt said.

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