Madness in the Making is an engaging narrative and a tour de force of original historical interpretation. An astute observer of patents for newspapers and magazines, David Lindsay here coins a new term -- the show inventor -- that highlights a tension rooted in the earliest days of the American republic. While some -- like Thomas Jefferson, founder of the U.S. Patent Office and an inventor himself -- believed that public exhibits of new inventions encouraged an unseemly coarsening of society, show inventors like Oliver Evans, who created the Orukter Amphibolos, a steam propelled dredger, hoped to advance American know-how, and not coincidentally, their own commercial prospects with public exhibitions. In this lively portrait of American inventors and the forces that spurred their creativity, Lindsay's cast includes dozens of colorful characters, such as Eli Whitney, who once demonstrated defective muskets to Jefferson, and Samuel Colt who years before unveiling his famous six-shooter, offered trials of laughing gas to the public. Lindsay also documents the bizarre "War of the Currents", when Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla dueled over how electricity would be delivered to the millions waiting for it. David Lindsay has written an entertaining book that shows how America became the invention-driven, technologically sophisticated society that it is today.
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inventions Seldom Sell Themselves,
By Bill Bazik (Fairview Park, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors (Hardcover)
Scan the newspapers of America, view endless TV programs listen alertly to your favorite radio stations and sum up how much space or time is devoted to inventors or inventing. The odds are great you will seldom encounter an inspiring story that will fire up your or your children's creative boilers. Indeed, if inventors or successful entrepreneurs are mentioned at all, the odds are also great they are portrayed as diabolical geniuses out to do the world no good.
Yet, as this author observes, from the earliest days of our Republic to relatively recently, we have soared to greatness among nations on the wings of inventors and entrepreneurs who were also geniuses at showmanship, or in today's vernacular, masters of PR. He documents his case by detailed examinations of some of the best known names in invention from the start of the United States up to the television era. Surprisingly, the earliest creators faced the greatest resistance by the public to showmanship. Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia public was dominated by Quakers who frowned on public displays such as plays, games and magic shows. Franklin had developed a fascination over the newly discovered uses for electricity, but he had to bring the public's notice to the use of lightning rods by sponsoring a colleague who put on shows. Europe, at that time, was intrigued by Franklin's experiments. His fame there later gave him legitimacy in America. Also, it is surprising to learn that the first patent office head, Thomas Jefferson, although an ingenious inventor himself, frowned on commercialism. The industrialization of England had generated some economic ills and this was a factor in forming his attitude. Robert Fulton is remembered for his steamboat because he demonstrated it in a masterful by-invitation-only manner. John Fitch had actually shown his steamboat twenty years earlier. Inventor showmanship in America had begun. Samuel Morse used his telegraph to deliver a live report of a vote at the Democratic National Convention. This was the world's first live coverage. Even though the telegraph was already in use in England for signaling locomotive movements, Morse's live report stirred up the public so much they lined up to visit his telegraph office! Cyrus McCormick did not, as commonly believed, invent the reaper, but he did become a master at publicity and merchandising. He staged contests (which involved the audience), offered money-back guarantees, and gathered testimonials. He hired what today would be called advance men to arrange local publicity and contests. They became, in fact, distributors in their allotted territories. All of these became standard American business practices. Elias Otis had gotten nowhere until Barnum asked him to demonstrate his safety elevator. Up until then, elevators were not considered safe for human use. When Otis, in top hat and tails, ordered his assistant to cut the hoisting rope and he and his elevator quickly came to a safe stop, the public formed a whole new image about elevators. It is interesting to speculate how the history of technology may have been changed by the proper use of promotion. The author notes that among the devices shown at the 1876 Centennial was a Map Facsimile Telegraph which the Signal Service actually used to transmit weather maps 150 miles. An ugly use of publicity and showmanship was Edison's electrocution of dogs and cats in an attempt to persuade the public that Tesla's AC current system was dangerous and Edison's DC current system was not. Unfortunately for Edison, it was not true and, in this case, Edison was the villain and not the hero. Incidentally, it took the Wright Brothers five years to convince the public they had flown. The author ascribes this to the "Rumford Rule". Count Rumford had observed you must involve as many people as possible in a demonstration. The average person must "see and touch" before they believe. An example of this principal was when David Sarnoff broadcast the Dempsey-Carpentier fight in 1921. Radio sale then leaped forward. In conclusion, the author wonders if the modern inventor has lost his or her sense of drama. He asks if the rise of large corporations has "marginalized" the individual inventor. He does see hope and promise in the coming of the Internet, Cyberspace and virtual reality. If there is one main lesson to be learned by reading this book, it is that even great inventions seldom sell themselves. You must find a way to excite the public. Modesty may be nice, but showmanship pays the bills. An easy and delightful read.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A new perspective on 19th century culture,
By
This review is from: Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors (Hardcover)
Lectures were a way for the larger 19th century public to gain access to knowledge. David Lindsay is a journalist who wrote on the history of invention in the United States. Even though his work is less scholarly than that of many professional academics, Lindsay is very successful at presenting the relationship between technology and entertainment in the 19th century as one with nebulous and permeable boarders. It is perhaps Linday's lack of academic disciplinary bias that encourages him to connect events which historians of technology and entertainment proper have not viewed as causally related. Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors is a fantastic example of what fruits interdisciplinary work can bear. He is not afraid to examine resources which until recently have often overlooked by many historians, such as art, waxworks, and technology exhibitions and fairs. His history of what he terms "show-inventers" during the 19th century is the only resource of its kind, in that Lindsay combines aspects of entertainment, popular culture, economics, and technology to portray a neglected aspect of American culture. Lindsay identifies a 19th century trend which he calls the "technological spectacle." These spectacles presented a new device or object in a way that fits it into a network of preexisting concepts. Lindsay traces the lineage of these 19th century performers to the mountebanks ("bench mounters") emerging out of the iterant entertainment tradition. Lindsay's book may be flawed in its lack of intellectual rigor, but researchers should look to it as an impetus for their own research into peripheral areas perhaps only obliquely related to their scholarly subjects.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting thesis - Great Writing,
By Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors (Hardcover)
The subtitle of this book, "The Triumphant Rise & Untimely Fall of America's Show Inventors" tells it all. This is the story of the rise of modern American capitalism with all of the accompanying charactersistcs we - and the rest of the world - normally associate with it. There is the showmanship, the grand challenges and dares, the incredible ingenuity, the curious and hardworking genius and the freely accepted wild competition that has made this nation the economic powerhouse of all time. As Daniel Boorstin said, the salient feature of Western capitalism is the ability to create unneeded wants. After all, when you get down to it, the "things" in our lives only serve to better it from a previous state when those things were not available. But this is the whole point (if I may digress). We have things like air conditioners, refrigerators, heating pads and remote controls to add quality to our lives. The book starts at the beginning of the nation and the decision by the government to actively promote and protect inventors. This decision had enormous consequences. For if the inventor was free to work and reap the rewards of his effort this only increased the tidal wave of innovation that swept the country. Museums, expositions, trade, the huckster, the precursers to the much-maligned marketing folks - all of these were essential elements of the system. Why did it matter that a new time-saving device existed if no one knew about it? Much detail was given to the invention of electric lights and how the rivalries between two men with similar claims would play out in the future, indeed set the tone for the future. For who can imagine GM without Ford, or Coca Cola without Pepsi, or Schick without Gillette? Spreading the new product Gospel by sideshow evolved into the commercial system that exists today - the supermarket, the chain, E-bay, advertising, and the line of new products that continue to dazzle the world. The book has some illustrations and the writing is informative as well as witty in parts. Lindsay writes with a wry wit and seems to place a high value on irony. Excellent book - get it now.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
