There series was born of ABC's reaction to FCC chairman Newton B Minnow's charge that television was a vast wasteland. In those days of JFK, government officials were honest and networks actually did care about what people thought. So ABC promoted reporter Jules Bergman to "Chief Science Correspondent" and green-lit a project of his, a kid's science and culture show called DISCOVERY '62. And 7-year-old Davy Martin discovered a new favorite TV program. Each episode was like a gift box full of unexpected treats in the form of new knowledge or explanations of things I vaguely knew about. The episodes were simple enough for a child to understand and yet they were well-developed enough that 40+ years later, I still recall some of them. For example, in a show explaining dangerous weather systems, Frank and Virginia stood by a tabletop model of a town. Virgina demonstrated a tornado by running a vacuum cleaner in a line across the model, sucking up a line of toy houses. Frank then demonstrated a hurricane by placing a 2' wide disk on the tabletop and shoving it through the model town.
Or in an episode explaining special effects, they stood on either side of a VERY thin pillar. Then they walked behind this skinny thing and disappeared! Then parts of one appeared from the left side side while parts of the other appeared on the right side. Then they both walked out. And the screen switched to show a long shot of the studio, with TWO identical skinny pillars set a few feet apart. Then Frank explained about how two shots of the pillars could be merged into a single paradox-creating shot. Neat. It sure started me on the path to understanding SFX, starting with THE PATTY DUKE SHOW.