Great Inventions

Dyson details the greatest achievements of the human imagination since early hominids invented stone tools about 250,000 years ago. Through thousands of years and vital inventions more -- the canoe, the wheel, ink and papyrus, language, maps, currency, law -- the primitive hunter-gatherer of the Stone Age would evolve into the literate citizen of ancient Rome at the time of Christ, as the opening chapter of this fascinating chronicle shows. Succeeding chapters follow human technological advances up to the seventeenth century and then in the age of industrial power, the age of electricity, the atomic age, and the postwar world of the microchip and the genome. Also includes universal joint, steam engine, ball bearings, steam wagon, battery, suspension bridge, dynamo & motor, fuel cell, vulcanization of rubber, airship, internal combustion engine, bicycle, traffic lights, steam turbine, fingerprint forensics, motor car, motorcycle, lie detector, aeroplane, windscreen wipers, caterpillar tracks, television, liquid-fuel rocket, jet engine, helicopter, obile phone, general-purpose computer, video game, computer mouse, optical disc, lcd and led, personal computer, and many others. Not only does Dyson survey the history of human inventions, he also explores the circumstances and impulses that underlie them. While necessity often proves to be the mother of invention, frustration and serendipity, too, can prod genius. Frustration over the countless ships and lives lost at sea led to John Harrison's invention of extraordinarily accurate clock.