ebook img

Scientific American inventions and discoveries: all the milestones in ingenuity PDF

514 Pages·2004·4.408 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Scientific American inventions and discoveries: all the milestones in ingenuity

11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageiii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven R C ODNEY ARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageiii 11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPagei Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageii 11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageiii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven R C ODNEY ARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageiv This book is printed on acid-free paper. ●∞ Copyright © 2004 by Rodney Carlisle. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Carlisle, Rodney P. Scientific American inventions and discoveries : all the milestones in ingenuity—from the discovery of fire to the invention of the microwave oven / Rodney Carlisle. p. cm. ISBN 0-471-24410-4 (Cloth) 1. Inventions—History—Encyclopedias. 2. Inventions—United States—Encyclopedias. 3. Technology— History—Encyclopedias. 4. Technological innovations—Encyclopedias. I. Title. T15 .C378 2004 609—dc22 2003023258 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11164Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59AM Pagev C ONTENTS Acknowledgments vii General Introduction 1 Part I The Ancient World through Classical Antiquity, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 330 9 Part II The Middle Ages through 1599 81 Part III The Age of Scientific Revolution, 1600 to 1790 149 Part IV The Industrial Revolution, 1791 to 1890 223 Part V The Electrical Age, 1891 to 1934 319 Part VI The Atomic and Electronic Age, 1935 into the 21st Century 397 Index 481 11164Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59AM Pagevi 11164Carlisle_flast.m.qxd5/26/049:59AMPagevii A CKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing the essays for this encyclopedia has provided me with an opportunity to bring together thoughts, information, and ideas that drew from many sources, both literary and personal, to which I have been exposed over many years. My interest in the history of technology was stimulated by a course taken as a freshman at Harvard that was taught by Professor Leonard K. Nash. As I recall, Natural Sciences 4 or “Nat Sci Four” was suggested by other students and advisers as the appropriate course for a history major to take to meet the college’s general education requirements. I did not realize it at the time, but the course had been established by James B.ConantandwaslatercotaughtbyThomasS.Kuhn,whowouldpub- lishTheStructureofScientificRevolutions.ProfessorNashandThomas Kuhn developed many of the ideas together that would later appear in Kuhn’spathbreakingwork,includingafocusonthescientificrevolution initiatedbyCopernicusandexpoundedbyGalileo. In later decades, as I was teaching in the History Department at Rut- gers University in Camden, our college adopted a similar approach to general education requirements as that established by Conant. To pro- vide a course titled “Science, Technology, and Society,” I approached a colleague in the Chemistry Department, Professor Sidney Katz, and together we offered a sweeping history of science and technology, which we often taught in summer sessions, reflecting Thomas Kuhn’s focus on the revolutions in scientific thought, as well as investigations into the social impact of innovation. Of course, a great deal has happened in the disciplines of the history of science and technology over the past decades, and our readings in the subject took us to a finer appreciation of the complex crosscurrents 11164Carlisle_flast.m.qxd5/26/049:59AMPageviii viii Acknowledgments between these two progressing fields. As Derek de Solla Price has remarked, the two fields are sister disciplines, each progressing some- times independently, sometimes one helping the other. Although it became fashionable among government policymakers after World War II to believe that technology sprang from the advances of science, his- torical studies had shown a much more complex interweaving of the two fields over the centuries. My debts of gratitude include not only those to Professor Nash for teaching the course at Harvard, taken nearly half a century ago as an undergraduate, and to Professor Katz at Rutgers for coteaching with me but also to the many students who took our own course in recent years. Although some faculty are loath to admit it, it is often the case that teachers learn more by attempting to answer the questions posed by students than they have gained by preparing their lecture notes. Often what has puzzled students about the subject can lead into the most fruitful courses of scholarly inquiry. More than once the questions they asked led to thought-provoking discussions between Professor Katz and myself over coffee in his laboratory-office. The collaboration of Professor Katz and myself was so interesting and we both learned so much that we looked forward to the courses with pleasurable anticipa- tion. Later, Professor Katz made a number of contributions to my Ency- clopedia of the Atomic Age. Using ideas we had honed in discussion, I later individually taught a course, “Galileo and Oppenheimer,” that again led to new insights from students. Surprisingly, it was a much older book that I found in a used-book store, Lewis Mumford’s 1934 study Technics and Civilization, that helped formulate my thinking about the relationship of science and technology. I had the opportunity to work with the ideas stimulated by reading that work when, through a contract at History Associates Incorporated of Rockville, Maryland, I produced a study for the Navy Laboratory/Center Coordinating Group. Due to the wisdom of How- ard Law, who served as the executive of that group, I was commis- sioned to produce a small bibliographic work evaluating more than 150 books and articles in the fields of science and technology. Our intent was to bring many of the insights and perspectives of historians of both fields to the community of naval researchers and science and technol- ogy managers. Working on other studies for the U.S. Navy through History Associ- ates Incorporated contracts helped hone my thinking about the com- plex interplays among the disciplines of science, engineering, and technology more generally. My studies of the history of naval science

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.