An approachable, accessible history of timekeeping and the impact of the increasing precision and accuracy of time on humanity. Western culture has been obsessed with regulating society by the precise, accurate measurement of time since the Middle Ages. In On Time, Ken Mondschein explores the paired development of concepts and technologies of timekeeping with human thought. Without clocks, he argues, the modern world as we know it would not exist. From the astronomical timekeeping of the ancient world to the tower clocks of the Middle Ages to the seagoing chronometer, the quartz watch, and the atomic clock, greater precision and accuracy have had profound effects on human society-which, in turn, has driven the quest for further precision and accuracy. This quest toward automation-which gave rise to the Gregorian calendar, the factory clock, and even the near-disastrous Y2K bug-has led to profound social repercussions and driven the creation of the modern scientific mindset. Surveying the evolution of the clock from prehistory to the twenty-first century, Mondschein explains how both the technology and the philosophy behind Western timekeeping regimes came to take over the entire world. On Time is a story of thinkers, philosophers, and scientists, and of the thousand decisions that continue to shape our daily lives.

Between 1920 and 1950, British and US internationalists called for aviation and atomic energy to be taken out of the hands of nation-states, and instead used by international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. An international air force was to enforce collective security and internationalized civil aviation was to bind the world together through trade and communication. The bomber and the atomic bomb, now associated with death and devastation, were to be instruments of world peace. Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on public and private discourse relating to the control of aviation and atomic energy, Waqar H. Zaidi highlights neglected technological and militaristic strands in twentieth-century liberal internationalism, and transforms our understanding of the place of science and technology in twentieth-century international relations.

Aristotle's voluminous writings on animals have often been marginalised in the history of philosophy. Providing the first full-length comprehensive account of Aristotle's biology, its background, content and influence, this Companion situates his study of living nature within his broader philosophy and theology and differentiates it from other medical and philosophical theories. An overview of empiricism in Aristotle's Historia Animalium is followed by an account of the general methodology recommended in the Parts of Animals. An account of the importance of Aristotle's teleological perspective and the fundamental metaphysics of biological entities provides a basis for understanding living capacities, such as nutrition, reproduction, perception and self-motion, in his philosophy. The importance of Aristotle's zoology to both his ethics and political philosophy is highlighted. The volume explores in detail the changing interpretations and influences of Aristotle's biological works from antiquity to modern philosophy of science. It is essential for both students and scholars.

Aristotle's voluminous writings on animals have often been marginalised in the history of philosophy. Providing the first full-length comprehensive account of Aristotle's biology, its background, content and influence, this Companion situates his study of living nature within his broader philosophy and theology and differentiates it from other medical and philosophical theories. An overview of empiricism in Aristotle's Historia Animalium is followed by an account of the general methodology recommended in the Parts of Animals. An account of the importance of Aristotle's teleological perspective and the fundamental metaphysics of biological entities provides a basis for understanding living capacities, such as nutrition, reproduction, perception and self-motion, in his philosophy. The importance of Aristotle's zoology to both his ethics and political philosophy is highlighted. The volume explores in detail the changing interpretations and influences of Aristotle's biological works from antiquity to modern philosophy of science. It is essential for both students and scholars.

Few people have changed the world like the Nobel Prize winners. Their breakthrough discoveries have revolutionised medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. Nobel Life consists of original interviews with twenty-four Nobel Prize winners. Each of them has a unique story to tell. They recall their eureka moments and the challenges they overcame along the way, give advice to inspire future generations and discuss what remains to be discovered. Engaging and thought-provoking, Nobel Life provides an insight into life behind the Nobel Prize winners. A call from Stockholm turned a group of twenty-four academics into Nobel Prize winners. This is their call to the next generations worldwide.

Engineering Disasters - Lessons to be Learned shows that there is always something to be learned from disasters. In this practical and highly relevant text Don Lawson has provided * Thoroughly researched accounts of well-known disasters and failures worldwide * Valuable interpretative sections, drawing out the lessons to be learned in each case * Examples from a wide range of industries * Background information and views of other experts in the field * An excellent source of references for further study * Common threads and conclusions from accident investigations Humans design, build, operate, use, maintain and can wreck engineering products. Humans are fallible. Engineers have to take into account all the potential failures of people, including other engineers, as well as failures of equipment and materials. Design engineering is a structured process using both art and science to create new or improved products - building on experience, bad as well as good. Failure occurs when something or someone fails to perform to expectations.

The diverse forms of regional connectivity in the ancient world have recently become an important focus for those interested in the deep history of globalisation. This volume represents a significant contribution to this new trend as it engages thematically with a wide range of connectivities in the later prehistory of the Mediterranean, from the later Neolithic of northern Greece to the Levantine Iron Age, and with diverse forms of materiality, from pottery and metal to stone and glass. With theoretical overviews from leading thinkers in prehistoric mobilities, and commentaries from top specialists in neighbouring domains, the volume integrates detailed case studies within a comparative framework. The result is a thorough treatment of many of the key issues of regional interaction and technological diversity facing archaeologists working across diverse places and periods. As this book presents key case studies for human and technological mobility across the eastern Mediterranean in later prehistory, it will be of interest primarily to Mediterranean archaeologists, though also to historians and anthropologists.

This is the first-ever publication detailing the Navy’s role in manned spacecraft recovery from 1961 to 1975, from Alan Shepherd’s initial suborbital mission to the Apollo-Soyuz flight, which inaugurated the first space collaboration between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Splashdown: NASA, the Navy, and Space Flight Recovery takes the reader through a detailed explanation of how recovery forces on land, sea, and in the air were deployed across the globe to be trained for any and all emergencies and eventualities. This book gives concise histories of all prime recovery ships as well as back-up ships in both manned and unmanned missions, with every ship’s history followed by a retelling of their space missions.

From the preeminent Edison scholar . . . The definitive life of the inventor of the modern age

The conventional story is so familiar and reassuring that it has come to read more like American myth than history: With only three months of formal education, a curious and hardworking young man beats the odds and becomes one of the greatest inventors in history. Not only does he invent the phonograph and the first successful electric light bulb, but he also establishes the first electrical power distribution company and lays the technological groundwork for today's movies, telephones, and sound recording industry. Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, the story goes, Thomas Alva Edison perseveres—and changes the world.

In the revelatory Edison: A Life of Invention, author Paul Israel exposes and enriches this one-dimensional view of the solitary "Wizard of Menlo Park," expertly situating his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America, and with it the newly overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison's remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor's fast-changing era. Edison drew widely from contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in the transformation of invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development.

Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, Paul Israel's ambitious life of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. In these pages, history's most prolific inventor—he received an astounding 1,093 U.S. patents—comes to life as never before. Edison is the only biography to cover the whole of Edison's career in invention, including his early, foundational work in telegraphy. Armed with unprecedented access to Edison's workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, Israel brings fresh insights into how the inventor's creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan—where the young Edison honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and editor of a weekly newspaper—underscoring the inventor's later successes with new resonance and pathos.

In recognizing the inventor's legacy as a pivotal figure in the second Industrial Revolution, Israel highlights Edison's creation of the industrial research laboratory, driven by intricately structured teams of researchers. The efficient lab forever changed the previously serendipitous art of workshop invention into something regular, predictable, and very attractive to corporate business leaders. Indeed, Edison's collaborative research model became the prototype upon which today's research firms and think tanks are based.

The portrait of Thomas Alva Edison that emerges from this peerless biography is of a man of genius and astounding foresight. It is also a portrait rendered with incredible care, depth, and dimension, rescuing our century's godfather of invention from myth and simplification.

Advance Praise for Edison: A Life of Invention

"Familiar Edison stories come alive with fresh insight . . . Israel's scholarship is impeccable while his deceptively easy grace transforms a challenging story into a page turner. One hundred years of history texts have been right all along. Thomas Edison, a protean actor on the American landscape, requires our attention. Paul Israel has given us a book to satisfy that requirement for a long time to come."— John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Editor, Technology and Culture

Praise for Paul Israel's Edison's Electric Light "Well documented and significant."

"An accurate and exciting narrative . . . the standard source on Edison's greatest invention."—Science

"Eminently readable and meticulously researched . . . a scholarly work of high order."—Library Journal

Flight research takes up where the other instruments of aeronautical research -- wind tunnels, fluid dynamics, and mathematical analyses -- leave off. No matter how the equations suggest it ought to fly, only by studying actual flight, often demanding complicated and dangerous maneuvers, can researchers discover the limits of flight and the true characteristics of experimental flight vehicles. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1915) and its successor, The National Aeronautic and Space Act (1958) were created to find out.

Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth-century practitioners as England's Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA.

NASA historian Michael H. Gorn explores the vital human aspect of the history of flight research, including such well-known figures as James H. Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and A. Scott Crossfield, as well as the less heralded engineers, pilots, and scientists who also had the "Right Stuff". While the individuals in the cockpit often receive the lion's share of the public's attention, Expanding the Envelope shows flight research to be a collaborative engineering activity, one in which the pilot participates as just one of many team members.

Here is more than a century of flight research, from well before the creation of NACA to its rapid transformation under NASA. Gorn gives a behind-the-scenes look at the development of groundbreaking vehicles such as the X-1, the D-558, and the X-15, which demonstrated mannedflight at speeds up to Mach 6.7 and as high as the edge of space.

"Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is an important book.""Publishers Weekly," starred review

"Cassidy does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that makes this biography a pleasure to read.""Los Angeles Times"

"Well crafted and readable . . . Cassidy] provides a nuanced and compelling account of Heisenberg's life.""The Harvard Book Review"

In 1992, David C. Cassidy's groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, "Uncertainty," was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the "Playbill" of the Broadway production of "Copenhagen," referred to it as one of his main sources and "the standard work in English." Richard Rhodes ("The Making of the Atom Bomb") called it "the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist," and the "Los Angeles Times" praised it as "an important book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg's actions." No book that has appeared since has rivaled "Uncertainty," now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg's role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In "Beyond Uncertainty," Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist's personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

David C. Cassidy is the author of "J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century," "Einstein and Our World," and "Uncertainty."

In the second half of the nineteenth century, British firms and engineers built, laid, and ran a vast global network of submarine telegraph cables. For the first time, cities around the world were put into almost instantaneous contact, with profound effects on commerce, international affairs, and the dissemination of news. Science, too, was strongly affected, as cable telegraphy exposed electrical researchers to important new phenomena while also providing a new and vastly larger market for their expertise. By examining the deep ties that linked the cable industry to work in electrical physics in the nineteenth century - culminating in James Clerk Maxwell's formulation of his theory of the electromagnetic field - Bruce J. Hunt sheds new light both on the history of the Victorian British Empire and on the relationship between science and technology.

AN UNSUNG HEROINE OF THE SPACE AGE--HER STORY FINALLY TOLD.
This is the extraordinary true story of America's first female rocket scientist. Told by her son, it describes Mary Sherman Morgan's crucial contribution to launching America's first satellite and the author's labyrinthine journey to uncover his mother's lost legacy--one buried deep under a lifetime of secrets political, technological, and personal.
In 1938, a young German rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun had dreams of building a rocket that could fly him to the moon. In Ray, North Dakota, a young farm girl named Mary Sherman was attending high school. In an age when girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, Mary wanted to be a chemist. A decade later the dreams of these two disparate individuals would coalesce in ways neither could have imagined.
World War II and the Cold War space race with the Russians changed the fates of both von Braun and Mary Sherman Morgan. When von Braun and other top engineers could not find a solution to the repeated failures that plagued the nascent US rocket program, North American Aviation, where Sherman Morgan then worked, was given the challenge. Recognizing her talent for chemistry, company management turned the assignment over to young Mary.
In the end, America succeeded in launching rockets into space, but only because of the joint efforts of the brilliant farm girl from North Dakota and the famous German scientist. While von Braun went on to become a high-profile figure in NASA's manned space flight, Mary Sherman Morgan and her contributions fell into obscurity--until now.

"An adulating biography of Apple's left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology." --"Kirkus Reviews"
In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple's headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive's collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world's most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive's work helped reverse Apple's long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his "spiritual partner."
Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive's former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney "takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects." ("The Wall Street Journal")

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the Third IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on the History of Nordic Computing, HiNC3, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2010. The 50 revised full papers presented together with a keynote address and a panel discussion were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers focus on the application and use of ICT and ways in which technical progress affected the conditions of the development and use of ICT systems in the Nordic countries covering a period from around 1970 until the beginning of the 1990s. They are organized in the following topical sections: computerizing public sector industries; computerizing management and financial industries; computerizing art, media, and schools; users and systems development; the making of a Nordic computing industry; Nordic networking; Nordic software development; Nordic research in software and systems development; teaching at Nordic universities; and new historiographical approaches and methodological reflections.

This pioneering work revises our notions of the origins and early development of textiles in Europe and the Near East. Using innovative linguistic techniques, along with methods from palaeobiology and other fields, it shows that spinning and pattern weaving began far earlier than has been supposed.

"Prehistoric Textiles" made an unsurpassed leap in the social and cultural understanding of textiles in humankind's early history. Cloth making was an industry that consumed more time and effort, and was more culturally significant to prehistoric cultures, than anyone assumed before the book's publication. The textile industry is in fact older than pottery--and perhaps even older than agriculture and stockbreeding. It probably consumed far more hours of labor per year, in temperate climates, than did pottery and food production put together. And this work was done primarily by women. Up until the Industrial Revolution, and into this century in many peasant societies, women spent every available moment spinning, weaving, and sewing.

The author, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, demonstrates command of an almost unbelievably disparate array of disciplines--from historical linguistics to archaeology and paleobiology, from art history to the practical art of weaving. Her passionate interest in the subject matter leaps out on every page. Barber, a professor of linguistics and archaeology, developed expert sewing and weaving skills as a small girl under her mother's tutelage. One could say she had been born and raised to write this book.

Because modern textiles are almost entirely made by machines, we have difficulty appreciating how time-consuming and important the premodern textile industry was. This book opens our eyes to this crucial area of prehistoric human culture.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Networks of Modernity: Germany in the Age of the Telegraph, 1830-1880 offers a fresh perspective on the history of Germany by investigating the origins and impact of the 'communications revolution' that transformed state and society during the nineteenth century. It focuses upon the period 1830-1880, exploring the interactions between the many different actors who developed, administered, and used one of the most important technologies of the period-the electric telegraph. It reveals the channels through which scientific and technical knowledge circulated across Central Europe during the 1830s and 1840s, stimulating both collaboration and confrontation between the scientists, technicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats involved in bringing the telegraph to life. It highlights the technology's impact upon the conduct of trade, finance, news distribution, and government in the tumultuous decades that witnessed the 1848 revolutions, the wars of unification, and the establishment of the Kaiserreich in 1871. Following the telegraph lines themselves, it weaves together the changes which took place at a local, regional, national, and eventually global level, revisiting the technology's impact upon concepts of space and time, and highlighting the importance of this period in laying the foundations for Germany's experience of a profoundly ambiguous, networked modernity.

Technological change is about more than inventions. This concise history of the Industrial Revolution places the eighteenth-century British Industrial Revolution in global context, locating its causes in government protection, global competition, and colonialism. Inventions from spinning jennies to steam engines came to define an age that culminated in the acceleration of the fashion cycle, the intensification in demand and supply of raw materials and the rise of a plantation system that would reconfigure world history in favour of British (and European) global domination. In this accessible analysis of the classic case of rapid and revolutionary technological change, Barbara Hahn takes readers from the north of England to slavery, cotton plantations, the Anglo-Indian trade and beyond - placing technological change at the centre of world history.

Tracing the relationship between science and technology from the dawn of civilization to the early twenty-first century, James E McClellan III and Harold Dorn's bestselling book argues that technology as "applied science" emerged relatively recently, as industry and governments began funding scientific research that would lead directly to new or improved technologies. McClellan and Dorn identify two great scientific traditions: the useful sciences, which societies patronized from time immemorial, and the exploration of questions about nature itself, which the ancient Greeks originated. The authors examine scientific traditions that took root in China, India, and Central and South America, as well as in a series of Near Eastern empires in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. From this comparative perspective, McClellan and Dorn survey the rise of the West, the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern marriage of science and technology. They trace the development of world science and technology today while raising provocative questions about the sustainability of industrial civilization. This new edition of Science and Technology in World History offers an enlarged thematic introduction and significantly extends its treatment of industrial civilization and the technological super system built on the modern electrical grid. The Internet and social media receive increased attention. Facts and figures have been thoroughly updated and the work includes a comprehensive Guide to Resources, incorporating the major published literature along with a vetted list of websites and Internet resources for students and lay readers.

This unique book presents the story of the pioneering manufacturing company Ferranti Ltd. - producer of the first commercially-available computers - and of the nine end-user organisations who purchased these machines with government help in the period 1951 to 1957. The text presents personal reminiscences from many of the diverse engineers, programmers and marketing staff who contributed to this important episode in the emergence of modern computers, further illustrated by numerous historical photographs. Considerable technical details are also supplied in the appendices. Topics and features: provides the historical background to the Ferranti Mark I, including the contributions of von Neumann and Turing, and the prototype known as The Baby; describes the transfer of technologies from academia to industry and the establishment of Ferranti's computer production resources; reviews Ferranti's efforts to adapt their computers for sale to business and commercial markets, and to introduce competitive new products; covers the use of early Ferranti computers for defence applications in different government establishments in the UK, including GCHQ Cheltenham; discusses the installation and applications of Ferranti computers at universities in the UK, Canada, and Italy; presents the story of the purchase of a Ferranti Mark I* machine by the Amsterdam Laboratories of the Shell company; details the use of Ferranti Mark I* computers in the UK's aerospace industry and compares this with the American scene; relates the saga of Ferranti's journey from its initial success as the first and largest British computer manufacturer to its decline and eventual bankruptcy. This highly readable text/reference will greatly appeal to professionals interested in the practical development of early computers, as well as to specialists in computer history seeking technical material not readily available elsewhere. The educated general reader will also find much to enjoy in the photographs and personal anecdotes that provide an accessible insight into the early days of computing.

Forest is the natural vegetation of most of Europe. Although the majority has been destroyed by human activity over the centuries, a considerable amount remains and has been managed to varying degrees and for a wide variety of reasons. This has resulted in a large number of natural and semi-natural landscapes and habitat types over the region and a high diversity of plant and animal communities adapted to them. The growing interest in natural history and the environment in recent years has resulted in a greater demand for information on the complex ecological history of European forest. This book is unique in providing wide ranging and detailed case studies on specific aspects, including grazing, management practices and conservation and overviews, from recognized authorities, of the latest research on the ecological history of forests and woodland in Europe. It consists of selected papers given at an international conference of forest historians organized in association with the British Ecological Society and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations at Nottingham University in September 1996. Contributions come from the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Turkey. This book is essential reading for ecologists, conservationists, landscape historians, foresters and geographers. It will also be of interest to advanced students in these areas.

This collection of essays explores the history of control by looking at a variety of cultural forms, practices, and beliefs. These ideas are examined critically, not only in the light of the possibilities which control technologies seem to offer for resolving human problems, but also the contradictory moral, political, and economic consequences they have had. The discussion takes into account the important modes in which humans have cast their organizational efforts: political, social, sychological, economic, and legal. It also takes a longue duree view of the history of control, looking back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and establishes the continuities in the twentieth century as a transatlantic phenomenon.

This book deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present. Martin Lynch opens with the invention, sometime before 1453, of a revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper. It was this invention which brought back to life the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe, in the process making brass cannon and silver coin available to the ambitious Habsburg emperors, thereby underpinning their quest for European domination. Lynch also discusses the Industrial Revolution and the far-reaching changes to mining and smelting brought about by the steam engine; the era of the gold rushes; the massive mineral developments and technological leaps forward which took place in the USA and South Africa at the end of the 19th century; and, finally, the spread of mass metal-production techniques amid the violent struggles of the 20th century. In an engaging, concise and fast-paced text, he presents the interplay of personalities, politics and technology that have shaped the metallurgical industries over the last 500 years.