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[[underlined]]Television and Film[[/underlined]]

[[underlined]]Smithsonian World [[/underlined]] is well into production.  Its seven one-hour magazine-type programs will be broadcast monthly (with some repeats) on the Public Broadcasting System beginning on Wednesday, February 15, 1984 at 8 p.m.  Each program deals with a central theme.  The first show will open with a one-minute introductory "View from the Castle" by Secretary Ripley.  As television consultant Tom Wolf has reported, the program entitled "Time and Light," slated to be the first or second show,

...opens with host David McCullough on camera at the Multiple-Mirror Telescope at Mount Hopkins in Arizona.  He say:  "This may not look much like the Smithsonian Institution, but it is....The Smithsonian isn't just a group of museums in Washington.  It includes places like this.  In fact it reaches around the world.  That's what our series is all about -- everything that interests the Smithsonian, and that means everything -- in science, arts and the humanities.  The Multiple -- Mirror Telescope, like all telescopes, is a time machine.  When we look at the light from the stars, we are actually looking back in time.  And that's what this hour is all about:  time and light."

The program then looks at several stories which center on time and/or light:  [[underlined]] Bamboo [[/underlined]], one of the world's strangest clocks.  Every member of a given species blooms and dies at the same time no matter where it grows.  A Smithsonian botanist is trying to discover why.  [[underlined]] Sea Urchins [[/underlined]], being studied at the SI research station on Carrie Bow Cay, by paleontologist Porter Kier, are helping refine Darwin's theory and creating an impeccable calendar of evolutionary time.  The [[underlined]] Time Museum [[/underlined]] in Rockford, Ill., affords a fascinating look at devices that have told time in the past.  The [[underlined]] Tower of the Winds [[/underlined]] in Vatican City unlocks the story of the Gregorian calendar, courtesy of the earth's strongest light:  the sun.  And the sun, in turn, has a story of anthropology to tell through the architecture of religious edifices in the U.S.

The show ends where it started -- at the MMT -- with McCullough speculating on what the Space Telescope may show us:  "Perhaps we may be able to look back at light that was created more than 10 billion years ago -- evidence from the day the universe itself was born -- Day One -- the beginning of time.  In the depths of space time and light are one."