Cardiff-built AI app helps TV team reveal Merthyr’s role in Industrial Revolution
1 July 2025
Scientists from Cardiff University have helped reveal how one Welsh valley town changed the course of global history in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Professor Jose Camacho Collados and PhD researcher Yuefeng Shi leant their expertise to the team behind a landmark documentary telling the extraordinary story of Merthyr Tydfil, which was once the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution.
Presented by Cardiff University graduate Steffan Powell (LLB 2008, PgDip 2009), Boom Town: How Merthyr Made the World, unpacks the five powerful forces that fuelled Merthyr’s meteoric rise: geology, wealth, people, war, and innovation.
The duo from the School of Computer Science and Informatics created a bespoke artificial intelligence (AI) app to help scan and evaluate a large dataset – a newspaper archive from the National Library of Wales from 1840-1850.
Professor Jose Camacho Collados said: “AI is improving so rapidly that applications such as this one, which were only a dream just a few years ago, can now be developed in a matter of weeks.
“Yuefeng, who is currently a PhD student, was in charge of implementing the tool. It was an excellent training opportunity for him. I was advising and testing that everything was fine, providing input and guidance on what to do.”
What was most challenging was to make sure that answers were accurate and reflected what people shared in letters and newspapers in the past. With generative AI technology, there is always the risk of generating content that looks and reads as if it were real, but in fact isn't - these are commonly known as hallucinations and not always easy to deal with.
Their findings feature in the history programme, which reveals how a unique mix of natural resources, daring investment, the fierce ‘Merthyr spirit’, global wars and a drive to innovate, all transformed this valley town from rural idyl into an industrial superpower.
Yuefeng Shi added: “The team's objective was to answer questions based on a given set of 18th-century local news articles about Merthyr. To achieve this, we needed to provide the large language model with this specific historical context. We leveraged Retrieval-Augmented Generation technology for this purpose, as it enables the model to generate answers based on provided documents.”
There is still room for improvement, of course. For instance, achieving more precise retrieval of key information is an area that warrants deeper research, but I hope to see AI technology applied more widely in similar scenarios in the future.
Boom Town: How Merthyr Made the World is part of a collection of programmes and content commissioned by BBC Cymru Wales to celebrate the history, the culture, and the people of Merthyr as the town marks 200 years of Cyfarthfa Castle.
The programme was produced by Little Bird Films and received funding support from Welsh Government via Creative Wales.
It aired on Tuesday 17th June at 9:00 PM on BBC1 Wales and is also available on BBC iPlayer.
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