The Tale of the Scale: An Odyssey of Invention (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The road to Jerusalem was dark and wet..." (more)
Key Phrases: face load cell, load cell design, scale diary, New York, United States, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Daydreaming about inventing a better mousetrap is common enough, but the dreamer who converts fantasy to reality is rare. Rarer still is the inventor with the reflective acumen to illuminate the process; that Angel has this ability makes the account amazingly exciting--not a quality usually associated with consumer-product development. To an extent, his bright idea--a slim scale for travelers--is incidental to the story, which dramatizes the collision between creative concepts and their marketability. By the denouement of Angel's saga, he has journeyed from Germany to Israel to Japan (with detours to Rockford, Illinois) negotiating with suits, fabricating parts, and patenting his weight sensor, an absorbing subplot in itself because the author is an urban planner, not a mechanical engineer. This contrast between occupation and obsession hints at the drive and belief propelling inventors, and for the decade Angel devoted to his effort through the mid-1990s, he opens a psychologically revealing window about how small successes nourished his faith in his dream. An immensely entertaining and instructive chronicle. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

..Not just Angel's against-the-odds feat of design and engineering...absorbing account of eurekas and frustrations involved in voyage of discovery.. -- Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (February 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195158687
• ISBN-13: 978-0195158687
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,707,236 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and rewarding reading, May 18, 2004

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Author Solly Angel envisioned a travel scale weighing a pound back in the mid-1980s - and decided to bring it to market as a reality. His evolution from idea to invention to marketing and design follows his thought processes in an unusual series of insights into the inventor's mind and achievements. Angel had no mechanical skills to aid him in realizing his vision, which makes his story of an inventor's achievement truly a remarkable series of insights. The Tale Of The Scale: An Odyssey Of Invention is unique and rewarding reading -- especially for anyone who has ever wondered about taking their own ideas, concepts and inventions into the marketplace.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars He should have written a different book!!!, May 10, 2006

By	Patrick T. Robinson "Patrick Robinson" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book awhile ago, and have since come to realize that he should have written a different book.

In one chapter he talks about how he is sidetracked into doing some Contract work for the United Nations to make some money. He is running low on funds while trying to design this new bathroom scale, and returns to his previous job with the United Nations. He goes to work defining the Low-income housing policy for a single African country. In a matter of months he went in and discarded the existing housing policy, (which was huge, bureaucratic, and ineffective), and put into its place a simple policy that moved most of this effort into the private sector. It defined the government's role to support the private sector such as protecting private ownership, enforcing contracts, subsidizing rent, all to support the private sector.

The end result was the United Nations accepted the proposal, not only for that country, but as its world wide policy for government assisted housing!

In a few months Solly Angel had crafted a policy that will (most likely) positively affect millions of lives all around the world. Instead of horrible government tenements (of the sort that large American cities are tearing down because they are so awful for the poor that live in them), the private sector would be encouraged to provide affordable and quality housing for the world's poor because experience has shown that the private sector is better at providing housing than the government.

That should have been the topic for this book.

Amazing how he had world wide influence and he wrote a book about trying to build a bathroom scale!!!

I still enjoyed the book.....

Pat Robinson

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars wait for the cliff notes version, November 24, 2004

By	el duderino (durham, nc) - See all my reviews

I picked up this book because I was interested in the trials and tribulations of product development. It turns out that half the book is about Solly Angel's life, which I had no interest in spending time with. Regarding the product development portion of the book....I am astounded that anybody with a degree in architecture design would make the lame brain mistakes that Angel makes from the get-go. I only read half the book, but my advice to those whose interest is in product design is to flip through and read a bunch of pages to get a feel for it before buying it.