Customer Reviews

Milestones in Science and Technology: The Ready Reference Guide to Discoveries, Inventions, and Facts

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For $41 I expected a lot more than this. I expected a fat reference book packed with information about all sorts of inventions and technologies. After all, for about twice the price you can get the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on CD-ROM. Instead, I now have a slim volume which only skims the surface, with entries for only the most well-known of developments.

For example, there is an entry for nitroglycerine but none for ordinary glycerine. There is a general entry for aromatic hydrocarbons, but nothing for such important compounds as benzene, toluene, or phenol. There is no entry for the split trail, the interrupted screw, the recoil cylinder, the brass cartridge, the armor-piercing discarding-sabot round, or even the modern artillery piece itself. There is an entry for "cannon", but it mentions nothing more recent than 1350 A.D. There are no entries for shock absorbers, springs, pistons, rivets, or riveting machines. There is an entry for welding, but none for acetylene or welding flux.

The entries themselves are very skimpy, and often enough only the name of the device, its purpose, and the date of its invention are given. There are a fair number of cases where the authors appear not to have understood what they were writing about. For example, in one case the Russian word "kamera" is translated as "camera" when it is obvious that "chamber" or "room" was meant. For another, the entry for "Stellar Distance" states that trigonometry did not work, therefore they used parallax. But parallax is a type of trigonometry.

A fair list of references is provided, and perhaps they will make it a little easier to find the information you want to know, if you have access to a large library or a lot of money to spend.

A good explanation for the strengths and weaknesses of this book is easily found by searching the Amazon.com book list for other books by Ellis Mount. There are dozens of them, all about libraries.