Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America [Paperback]

David C. Mowery (Author), Nathan Rosenberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521646537 | ISBN-13: 978-0521646536 | Publication Date: October 28, 1999

The first digital electronic computer, the ENIAC, was over 100 feet long, with 18,000 simultaneously functioning vacuum tubes. Now virtually every business and home in America has its own compact PC. In 1903 the Wright brothers' airplane, held together with baling wire and glue, traveled a couple hundred yards. Today fleets of streamlined jets transport millions of people per day to cities worldwide. Between discovery and application, between invention and widespread use, there is a world of innovation, of tinkering and improvements and adaptations. This is the world David Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg map out in Paths of Innovation, a tour of the intersecting routes of the technological.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This small volume details the laborious, painstaking ways in which technological innovation occurs in America, focusing on the development of four giants: the internal combustion engine, chemicals, electric power, and the electronics revolution. Mowery and Rosenberg, coauthors of Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (Cambridge Univ., 1989), are particularly interested here in the "intense period of imaginative design" that lies between the scientific idea and the ultimate product in a particular field. This somewhat scholarly though nonetheless readable work, loaded with not-too-cumbersome footnotes, citations, tables, and graphs, includes ample discussion of the role of universities and the federal government in the research and development (R&D) that led to the success of the four giants, as well as the general importance of R&D in a technological society. Recommended for academic libraries.?Robert Ballou, Atlanta, GA.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Rosenberg and Mowery are among the nation's premier historians of technical change. They relate the sagas of four technologies--the internal combustion engine, the chemical industry, electric power, and the electronics revolution that followed the invention of the transistor in 1947--and look for patterns that repeat among the details that do not." Boston Globe

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521646537
• ISBN-13: 978-0521646536
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #547,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing doing, May 30, 1999

By 

SeanFurl (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America (Hardcover)

I found stale recounting of very well-known facts about 20th century technologies and their economics, with no insights. Since it covers the gamut from plastics to jet engines to microprocessors, and it's only 200 pages in a fairly large typeface, I wasn't expecting historical depth. But I was expecting at least one fresh idea. I bought it on the strength of a much earlier book by Nathan Rosenberg (about technology in the economy of the 19th century). I was disappointed. I get the feeling the book is intended as a brief survey for people who just came down in the last shower -- college freshmen born in the 1980s. I'll bet they find it kinda stodgy.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really, it's readable!, December 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America (Hardcover)

Thankfully, this book is more accessible than the blurb would lead one to believe. A useful summary.