The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes [Hardcover]

David E. H. Jones (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co (Sd); First edition. edition (September 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716714124
• ISBN-13: 978-0716714125
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,755,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight, wit and whimsy come to science., May 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Hardcover)

If you have a sense of humor, if you love science and all its endless possibilities, if you have ever been bemused by the minds that devised those improbable patent specifications which proliferated at the close of the last century - then beg, borrow or steal a copy of this book. Or, better still, get Amazon.com to search for one for you.

David Jones's book is a selection of his short pieces that appeared in New Scientist and other publications. No area of science seems too abstruse for him not to know something of its peculiarities or well kept secrets. The delight for readers is Jones's endless ability to make unusual connections between scientific knowledge and worldly problems.

His speculations purport to be the ideas of a butterfly-minded inventor, Daedalus. Daedalus and his research team at his company, Dreadco, are engaged in a perpetual struggle to solve the pressing problems of mankind.

Each sketch begins with the statement of a problem which may be trivial or substantial. Daedalus's solution is always an surprising one - typically it will involve an unexpected interdisciplinary insight. The pleasure of the pieces is that the proposed solutions always seem unlikely but are sufficiently plausible for the reader to wonder whether they really would work. Jones rounds off each piece by extending the idea to comically improbable lengths.

Every piece is thought provoking. Readers are amused and stimulated at the same time. One is always left wondering whether Jones's ideas could work or whether he has fooled us into overlooking some blindingly obvious obstacle.

In fact, Jones has a remarkable track record of predicting unlikely solutions to common problems. I recall reading that something like 70% of Daedalus's inventions are eventually realised. Last week I read that an insomniac's bed had appeared on the market - it claimed to cancel out sounds that would keep the light sleeper awake. It did this by generating sounds of reverse amplitude thus cancelling out the unwanted sound. Daedalus had proposed anti-sound for just this purpose 20 years ago.

Reviewing older Daedalus inventions could yield the entrepreneurial reader a good profit - what was not feasible when written may well be possible now.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In. Credible., February 1, 2003

By 

David Rysdam (Milford, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Inventions of Daedalus; A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Paperback)

Flights of scientific fancy firmly grounded (usually) in facts and figures. Almost every page is pure gold and many have me thinking "Hmmm...I wonder..." If you think you might like it, buy it. You will love it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A definite read for the inventor-at-heart, November 26, 1999

By 

F. Edward Boas (Stanford, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Hardcover)

Absolutely fascinating book! It really stretched my imagination of what might be possible -- every scheme either made me laugh, left me dumbfounded in amazement, or made me try to invent my own scheme. David Jones' ideas are a modern-day version of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. And some of the wild-sounding ideas proposed in this book have already come true!