Customer Reviews

Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries : All the Milestones in Ingenuity From the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven

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

 

 

If you like the style of a Scientific American issue, then you should check out this book. Their editors have amassed a chronicle of key inventions and discoveries, spanning the history of human civilisation. Some 400 inventions are explained. Albeit briefly, because of space considerations.

The book tries to put these into a context of ever onward and upward. Though in the historical periods (especially antiquity), these inventions must have been repeatedly invented and forgotten.

As an item of terminology - the "inventions" also include things which are arguably discoveries. Like the positron. It certainly existed in nature before physicists were aware of it. Though algebra might indeed be an invention, to some who would regard it as a pure construct of the mind. But others, especially some physicists, would pay that no heed; saying that such things exist independent of human consciousness.