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.

Covers the history and combat career of aircraft carriers and shipboard aircraft from their conception into the future.

Detailed book explores the landing gear systems of World War II German combat aircraft.

In the late-1990s people hear constantly about the "information revolution". The 24-hour news channels and dizzying Internet technologies bombard people with facts and pictures from around the globe. But what kind of a "revolution" is this? How has information really changed from what it was ten years or ten centuries ago? This work offers some answers to these questions. Albert Borgmann has written a history of information, from its inception in the natural world to its role in the transformation of culture - in writing and printing, in music and architecture - to the late-1990s Internet mania and its attendant assets and liabilities. Drawing on the history of ideas, the details of information technology, and the boundaries of the human condition, Borgmann explains the relationship between things and signs, between reality and information. His history ranges from Plato to Boeing and from the alphabet to virtual reality, all the while being conscious of the enthusiasm, apprehension, and uncertainty that have greeted every stage of the development of information. The book is underscored by the humanist's fundamental belief in human excellence and by the conviction that excellence is jeopardized unless we achieve a balance of information and "the things and practices that have served us well and we continue to depend on for our material and spiritual well-being - the grandeur of nature, the splendour of cities, competence of work, fidelity to loved ones, and devotion to art or religion".

During the mid-19th Century, thousands of unknown workers from so many countries toiled incessantly and under great danger during the construction of the railroad that joined the Atlantic city of Colon with the Pacific city of Panama, making it the world's first transcontinental railway. This is its story. Bilingual text in Spanish and English. Al mediados del siglo 19, miles de trabajadores inc gnitos de tantos pa ses trabajaron sin descanso y bajo gran peligro durante la construcci n del ferrocarril que uni la ciudad caribe a de Col n con la ciudad de Panam en el pac fico, convirti ndolo en el primer ferrocarril transcontinental del mundo. Esta es su historia. Texto biling e en espa ol e ingl s.

This is the first book-length analysis of 20th-century shipbuilding at the national level in Britain. It is based on the full breadth of primary and secondary sources available, blending the records of the UK government with those of the British Shipbuilding Employers Federation and Shipbuilding Conference, as well as making use of a range of records from individual yards, technical societies, and the shipping trade press. Few industries attest to the decline of Britain's political and economic power as does the near disappearance of British shipbulding. On the eve of the First World War, British shipbuilding produced more than the rest of the world combined. But, by the 1980s, the industry that had dominated world markets and underpinned British maritime power accounted for less than 1 percent of total world output. Throughout its decline, a remarkable relationship developed between the shipbuilding industry and the UK government as both sought to restore the fortunes and dominance of this once great enterprise. Authors: Lewis Johnman is Principal Lecturer in history at the University of Westminster in London. His previous books include The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997). Hugh Murphy is Senior Caird Research Fellow at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

By focusing on chromosomes, Heredity under the Microscope offers a new history of postwar human genetics. Today chromosomes are understood as macromolecular assemblies and are analyzed with a variety of molecular techniques. Yet for much of the twentieth century, researchers studied chromosomes by looking through a microscope. Unlike any other technique, chromosome analysis offered a direct glimpse of the complete human genome, opening up seemingly endless possibilities for observation and intervention. Critics, however, countered that visual evidence was not enough and pointed to the need to understand the molecular mechanisms. Telling this history in full for the first time, Soraya de Chadarevian argues that the often bewildering variety of observations made under the microscope were central to the study of human genetics. Making space for microscope-based practices alongside molecular approaches, de Chadarevian analyzes the close connections between genetics and an array of scientific, medical, ethical, legal, and policy concerns in the atomic age. By exploring the visual evidence provided by chromosome research in the context of postwar biology and medicine, Heredity under the Microscope sheds new light on the cultural history of the human genome.

Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Initially the USSR reported that Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, had survived in space for seven days, providing valuable data that would make future manned space flight possible. People believed that Laika died a painless death as her oxygen ran out. Only in recent decades has the real story become public: Laika died after only a few hours in orbit when her capsule overheated. Laika's Window positions Laika as a long overdue hero for leading the way to human space exploration. Kurt Caswell examines Laika's life and death and the speculation surrounding both. Profiling the scientists behind Sputnik II, he studies the political climate driven by the Cold War and the Space Race that expedited the satellite's development. Through this intimate portrait of Laika, we begin to understand what the dog experienced in the days and hours before the launch, what she likely experienced during her last moments, and what her flight means to history and to humanity. While a few of the other space dog flights rival Laika's in endurance and technological advancements, Caswell argues that Laika's flight serves as a tipping point in space exploration "beyond which the dream of exploring nearby and distant planets opened into a kind of fever from which humanity has never recovered." Examining the depth of human empathy-what we are willing to risk and sacrifice in the name of scientific achievement and our exploration of the cosmos, and how politics and marketing can influence it-Laika's Windowis also about our search to overcome loneliness and the role animals play in our drive to look far beyond the earth for answers.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring This lively Very Short Introduction reviews the central events, machines, and people that feature in established accounts of the history of computing, critically examining received perceptions and providing a fresh look at the nature and development of the modern electronic computer. The book begins by discussing a widely accepted linear narrative of the history of computing, centred around innovatory highlights that start with the use of knotted cords to aid calculation, all the way to the smartphones of the present day. It discusses the problems and simplifications present in such a narrative, and offers instead an account, centred on users, that identifies four distinct historical threads: calculation, automatic computing, information management, and communication. These threads are examined individually, tracing their paths and the convergences of related technologies into what has come to be called 'the information age'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introduction series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Superlatives tend to fail in describing Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior-that being said, it stands as one of the most extravagant feats in the history of mapmaking. The original Latin edition, completed in 1665, was the largest and most expensive book to be published during the 17th century. Its 594 maps appearing across 11 volumes spanned Arctica, Africa, Asia, Europe, and America. Ambitious in scale and artistry, it is included in the Canon of Dutch History, an official survey of 50 individuals, creations, or events that chart the most important historical developments of the Netherlands. TASCHEN's meticulous reprint brings this luxurious Baroque wonder into the hands of modern readers. In an age of digitized cartography and global connectivity, it celebrates the steadfast beauty of quality printing and restores the wonder of an exploratory age, in which Blaeu's native Amsterdam was a center of international trade and discovery. True to TASCHEN's optimum reproduction standards, this edition is based on the Austrian National Library's complete colored and gold-heightened copy of Atlas Maior, assuring the finest detail and quality. University of Amsterdam's Peter van der Krogt introduces the historical and cultural significance of the atlas while providing detailed descriptions for individual maps, revealing the full scale and ambition of Blaeu's masterwork.

This one-of-a-kind resource covers the saddleries of Montana Territory and State over the period from approximately the 1860s through 1940. Learn about the fascinating societal impact of nearly 200 prominent and lesser-known saddleries, brought to life with 545 photos and 9 useful charts. These "horse hardware stores" designed, manufactured, and sold a myriad of practical and artistic equipment for cowboys, ranchers, farmers, miners, loggers, and every settler that ventured west of the Mississippi River. Saddleries' hard-working-and today, collector-quality-products ranged from saddles and chaps to cuffs and boots, from hats to horse grooming tools to trunks. Organized by date and eight different geographical areas of Montana, here are details, vintage documents, receipts, and photos of some of the most exciting and desirable Western collectibles known today (chaps, saddles, bridles, etc.), with emphasis on their maker's marks for valid reference.

Already in the nineteenth century, German-language writers were contending with the challenge of imagining and accounting for a planet whose volatility bore little resemblance to the images of the Earth then in circulation. The Geological Unconscious traces the withdrawal of the lithosphere as a reliable setting, unobtrusive backdrop, and stable point of reference for literature written well before the current climate breakdown. Through a series of careful readings of romantic, realist, and modernist works by Tieck, Goethe, Stifter, Benjamin, and Brecht, Groves elaborates a geological unconscious-unthought and sometimes actively repressed geological knowledge-in European literature and environmental thought. This inhuman horizon of reading and interpretation offers a new literary history of the Anthropocene in a period before it was named. These close readings show the entanglement of the human and the lithic in periods well before the geological turn of contemporary cultural studies. In those depictions of human-mineral encounters, the minerality of the human and the minerality of the imagination become apparent. In registering libidinal investments in the lithosphere that extend beyond Carboniferous deposits and beyond any carbon imaginary, The Geological Unconscious points toward alternative relations with, and less destructive mobilizations of, the geologic.

Now updated - A comprehensive, 500-year history of technology in society. Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped-and have been shaped by-the cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial revolutions, as well as the more recent eras of imperialism, modernism, and global security, this compelling work evaluates what Misa calls "the question of technology." In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. Each chapter has been honed to relate to contemporary concerns. Globalization, Misa argues, looks differently considering today's virulent nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and trade wars. A new chapter focuses on the digital age from 1990 to 2016. The book also examines how today's unsustainable energy systems, insecure information networks, and vulnerable global shipping have helped foster geopolitical risks and instability and takes a look at the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of Wuhan, China's high-tech district. A masterful analysis of how technology and culture have influenced each other over five centuries, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects faced by our technology-dependent world.

In this revelatory and moving memoir, a former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver shares his personal journey from the gridiron to the stars, examining the intersecting roles of community, perseverance and grace that align to create the opportunities for success.Leland Melvin is the only person in human history to catch a pass in the National Football League and in space. Though his path to the heavens was riddled with setbacks and injury, Leland persevered to reach the stars. While training with NASA, Melvin suffered a severe injury that left him deaf. Leland was relegated to earthbound assignments, but chose to remain and support his astronaut family. His loyalty paid off. Recovering partial hearing, he earned his eligibility for space travel. He served as mission specialist for two flights aboard the shuttle Atlantis, working on the International Space Station.In this uplifting memoir, the former NASA astronaut and professional athlete offers an examination of the intersecting role of community, determination, and grace that align to shape our opportunities and outcomes. Chasing Space is not the story of one man, but the story of many men, women, scientists, and mentors who helped him defy the odds and live out an uncommon destiny.As a chemist, athlete, engineer and space traveler, Leland's life story is a study in the science of achievement. His personal insights illuminate how grit and grace, are the keys to overcoming adversity and rising to success.

With the recent landing of the Mars rover Curiosity, it seems safe to assume that the idea of being curious is alive and well in modern science--that it's not merely encouraged but is seen as an essential component of the scientific mission. Yet there was a time when curiosity was condemned. Neither Pandora nor Eve could resist the dangerous allure of unanswered questions, and all knowledge wasn't equal--for millennia it was believed that there were some things we should not try to know. In the late sixteenth century this attitude began to change dramatically, and in "Curiosity: ""How Science Became Interested in Everything, "Philip Ball investigates how curiosity first became sanctioned--when it changed from a vice to a virtue and how it became permissible to ask any and every question about the world. Looking closely at the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Ball vividly brings to life the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. In this entertaining and illuminating account of the rise of science as we know it, Ball tells of scientists both legendary and lesser known, from Copernicus and Kepler to Robert Boyle, as well as the inventions and technologies that were inspired by curiosity itself, such as the telescope and the microscope. The so-called Scientific Revolution is often told as a story of great geniuses illuminating the world with flashes of inspiration. But "Curiosity" reveals a more complex story, in which the liberation--and subsequent taming--of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade, and empire. Ball also asks what has become of curiosity today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged for consumption, how well it is being sustained, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may continue to ask. Though proverbial wisdom tell us that it was through curiosity that our innocence was lost, that has not deterred us. Instead, it has been completely the contrary: today we spend vast sums trying to reconstruct the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of a pure desire to "know." Ball refuses to let us take this desire for granted, and this book is a perfect homage to such an inquisitive attitude.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as: - Building actors - Building materials - The process of building - Structural theory and analysis - Building services and techniques - Socio-cultural aspects - Knowledge transfer - The discipline of Construction History The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history.

Narrative Science examines the use of narrative in scientific research over the last two centuries. It brings together an international group of scholars who have engaged in intense collaboration to find and develop crucial cases of narrative in science. Motivated and coordinated by the Narrative Science project, funded by the European Research Council, this volume offers integrated and insightful essays examining cases that run the gamut from geology to psychology, chemistry, physics, botany, mathematics, epidemiology, and biological engineering. Taking in shipwrecks, human evolution, military intelligence, and mass extinctions, this landmark study revises our understanding of what science is, and the roles of narrative in scientists' work. This title is also available as Open Access.