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Books > Professional & Technical > Technology: general issues > History of engineering & technology
'Women have won their political independence. Now is the time for
them to achieve their economic freedom too.' This was the great
rallying cry of the pioneers who, in 1919, created the Women's
Engineering Society. Spearheaded by Katharine and Rachel Parsons, a
powerful mother and daughter duo, and Caroline Haslett, whose
mission was to liberate women from domestic drudgery, it was the
world's first professional organisation dedicated to the campaign
for women's rights. Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary
Machines tells the stories of the women at the heart of this group
- from their success in fanning the flames of a social revolution
to their significant achievements in engineering and technology. It
centres on the parallel but contrasting lives of the two main
protagonists, Rachel Parsons and Caroline Haslett - one born to
privilege and riches whose life ended in dramatic tragedy; the
other who rose from humble roots to become the leading professional
woman of her age and mistress of the thrilling new power of the
twentieth century: electricity. In this fascinating book, acclaimed
biographer Henrietta Heald also illuminates the era in which the
society was founded. From the moment when women in Britain were
allowed to vote for the first time, and to stand for Parliament,
she charts the changing attitudes to women's rights both in society
and in the workplace.
Union Pacific Railroad Heritage covers the history of this amazing
railroad that was founded in 1862 and completed the United States
first transcontinental railroad in 1869. With the need to develop
more powerful steam locomotives to handle the railroad's steep
gradients, the Union Pacific Railroad designed the 4-12-2
locomotive, 4-6-6-4 Challenger which influenced development of the
4-8-8-4 Big Boy, followed by the 6,600-horsepower Centennial diesel
locomotive, and 8,500-horsepower gas turbine electric locomotive.
The Union Pacific Railroad operated well-maintained passenger
trains including City of San Francisco, City of Los Angeles, City
of Portland, and City of Denver until May 1, 1971, when AMTRAK took
over United States intercity passenger service.
'A wonderful book' - Guardian Truth, murder and the birth of the
lie detector Henry Wilkens burst through the doors of the emergency
room covered in his wife's blood. But was he a grieving husband, or
a ruthless killer who'd conspired with bandits to have her
murdered? To find out, the San Francisco police turned to
technology, and a new machine that had just been invented in
Berkeley by a rookie detective, a visionary police chief, and a
teenage magician with a showman's touch. John Larson, Gus Vollmer
and Leonarde Keeler hoped the lie detector would make the justice
system fairer - but the flawed device soon grew too powerful for
them to control. It poisoned their lives, turned fast friends into
bitter enemies, and as it conquered America and the world, it
transformed our relationship with the truth in ways that are still
being felt. As new forms of lie detection gain momentum in the
present day, Tremors in the Blood reveals the incredible truth
behind the creation of the polygraph, through gripping true crime
cases featuring explosive gunfights, shocking twists and
high-stakes courtroom drama. Touching on psychology, technology and
the science of the truth, Tremors in the Blood is a vibrant,
atmospheric thriller, and a warning from history: be careful what
you believe.
"What Bodanis does brilliantly is to give us a feel for Einstein as
a person. I don't think I've ever read a book that does this as
well . . . Whenever there's a chance for storytelling, Bodanis
triumphs." --Popular Science "Fascinating." --Forbes Widely
considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein
revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general
theory of relativity and helped lead us into the atomic age. Yet in
the final decades of his life, he was ignored by most working
scientists, and his ideas were opposed by even his closest friends.
How did this happen? Best-selling biographer David Bodanis traces
the arc of Einstein's life--from the skeptical, erratic student to
the world's most brilliant physicist to the fallen-from-grace
celebrity. An intimate biography in which "theories of the universe
morph into theories of life" (Times, London), Einstein's Greatest
Mistake reveals what we owe Einstein today--and how much more he
might have achieved if not for his all-too-human flaws.
An eye-opening history of the technology that harnessed
electricity and powered the greatest scientific and technological
advances of our time.
What begin as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a
dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would
become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the
battery. Science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of
this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our
lives, from Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800
to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs. Schlesinger
introduces the charlatans and geniuses, the paupers and magnates,
who were attracted to the power of the battery.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A parable written for the age of
technological disruption . . . brilliantly told' Sunday Times The
international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one
of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century 'The Bomber
Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some shiny new
idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our laps.
It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.' In the years before
the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central
Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea.
What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought
entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes
between armies on the ground a thing of the past? This book tells
the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test. The
Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and
his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend,
a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who
sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis
Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second
World War. In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks:
what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the
heat of war? And what is the price of progress?
Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the
world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's
Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide
and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's
Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who
helped launch a multi-million-pound industry. Writing with warmth
and ironic humour, Meier describes the genesis of his influential
studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas
arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from
vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization
and beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a videogame should be
"a series of interesting decisions", Meier also shares his
perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of
gamers and fascinating insights into the creative process,
including his ten rules of good game design.
An engrossing origin story for the personal computer—showing how
the Apple II’s software helped a machine transcend from
hobbyists’ plaything to essential home appliance.  Skip
the iPhone, the iPod, and the Macintosh. If you want to understand
how Apple Inc. became an industry behemoth, look no further than
the 1977 Apple II. Designed by the brilliant engineer Steve Wozniak
and hustled into the marketplace by his Apple cofounder Steve Jobs,
the Apple II became one of the most prominent personal computers of
this dawning industry. Â The Apple II was a versatile piece
of hardware, but its most compelling story isn’t found in the
feat of its engineering, the personalities of Apple’s founders,
or the way it set the stage for the company’s multibillion-dollar
future. Instead, historian Laine Nooney shows, what made the Apple
II iconic was its software. In software, we discover the material
reasons people bought computers. Not to hack, but to play. Not to
code, but to calculate. Not to program, but to print. The story of
personal computing in the United States is not about the evolution
of hackers—it’s about the rise of everyday users. Â
Recounting a constellation of software creation stories, Nooney
offers a new understanding of how the hobbyists’ microcomputers
of the 1970s became the personal computer we know today. From
iconic software products like VisiCalc and The Print Shop to
historic games like Mystery House and Snooper Troops to
long-forgotten disk-cracking utilities, The Apple II Age offers an
unprecedented look at the people, the industry, and the money that
built the microcomputing milieu—and why so much of it converged
around the pioneering Apple II.
"Riveting...A great read, full of colorful characters and
outrageous confrontations back when the west was still wild."
--George R.R. Martin A propulsive and panoramic history of one of
the most dramatic stories never told--the greatest railroad war of
all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio
Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is
difficult to imagine now, but for all its gorgeous scenery, the
American West might have been barren tundra as far as most
Americans knew well into the 19th century. While the West was
advertised as a paradise on earth to citizens in the East and
Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be
worthwhile--until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad
changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became
the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating
brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like
Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities.
But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an
opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private
investments and determination to build an empire across the
Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the
greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the
Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and
thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J.
Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the "little family" of his Rio
Grande, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the
corporate-minded Santa Fe. What begins as an accidental rivalry
when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out
battle as each man tries to outdo the other--claiming exclusive
routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver
mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land
and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain
information; and even using the power of the press and incurring
the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould--to emerge
victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into
anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled
success--and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty
thousand called "Los Angeles" into a booming metropolis that will
forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters
and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River
to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history "that
seems to demand a big-screen treatment" (The New Yorker).
This timely book explores technological innovation as a concept,
dissecting its emergence, development and use. Benoit Godin offers
an exciting new historiography of the subject, arguing that the
study of innovation originates not from scholars but from
practitioners of innovation. Godin looks to engineers, managers,
consultants and policymakers as the instigators of our current
understanding of technological innovation. Offering a conceptual
history of the subject, Part I considers the many iterations of
innovation - as an science applied, outcome, process and system -
to track and analyse the changing discourses surrounding
technological innovation. In Part II, the author turns to historic
and contemporary innovation policy to illustrate the critical role
that practitioners have had in formulating and strategizing policy.
Effectively rewriting the historiography of the topic, this book is
critical reading for scholars of innovation studies, sociology and
the history of science and technology. Students will benefit from
Godin's pioneering approach to the subject and policymakers will
also find value in the book's unique insight into innovation.
This set of 10 volumes, originally published between 1900 and 1994,
amalgamates a wide breadth of research on Science and Technology in
the Nineteenth Century, including studies on notable figures such
as Gregor Johann Mendel, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sir Humphry
Davy. This collection of books from some of the leading scholars in
the field provides a comprehensive overview of the subject how it
has evolved over time, and will be of particular interest to
students of history and the sciences.
A "beautifully written" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
memoir-manifesto from the first female director of the National
Science Foundation about the entrenched sexism in science, the
elaborate detours women have take to bypass the problem, and how to
fix the system. If you think sexism thrives only on Wall Street or
Hollywood, you haven't visited a lab, a science department, a
research foundation, or a biotech firm. Rita Colwell is one of the
top scientists in America: the groundbreaking microbiologist who
discovered how cholera survives between epidemics and the former
head of the National Science Foundation. But when she first applied
for a graduate fellowship in bacteriology, she was told, "We don't
waste fellowships on women." A lack of support from some male
superiors would lead her to change her area of study six times
before completing her PhD. A Lab of One's Own is an "engaging"
(Booklist) book that documents all Colwell has seen and heard over
her six decades in science, from sexual harassment in the lab to
obscure systems blocking women from leading professional
organizations or publishing their work. Along the way, she
encounters other women pushing back against the status quo,
including a group at MIT who revolt when they discover their labs
are a fraction of the size of their male colleagues. Resistance
gave female scientists special gifts: forced to change specialties
so many times, they came to see things in a more interdisciplinary
way, which turned out to be key to making new discoveries in the
20th and 21st centuries. Colwell would also witness the advances
that could be made when men and women worked together--often under
her direction, such as when she headed a team that helped to
uncover the source of anthrax used in the 2001 letter attacks. A
Lab of One's Own is "an inspiring read for women embarking on a
career or experiencing career challenges" (Library Journal, starred
review) that shares the sheer joy a scientist feels when moving
toward a breakthrough, and the thrill of uncovering a whole new
generation of female pioneers. It is the science book for the
#MeToo era, offering an astute diagnosis of how to fix the problem
of sexism in science--and a celebration of women pushing back.
 One of the most elusive and controversial figures in
NASA’s history, George W. S. Abbey was said to be
secretive, despotic, a Space Age Machiavelli. Yet Abbey had more
influence on human spaceflight than almost anyone in history. His
story has never been told—until now. The Astronaut Maker
takes readers inside NASA to learn the real story of how Abbey rose
to power, from young pilot and wannabe astronaut to engineer,
bureaucrat, and finally director of the Johnson Space Center.
During a thirty-seven-year career, mostly out of the spotlight, he
oversaw the selection of every astronaut class from 1978 to 1987,
deciding who got to fly and when. He was with the Apollo 1
astronauts the night before the fatal fire in January 1967.
He was in mission control the night of the Apollo 13 accident and
organized the recovery effort. Abbey also led NASA’s recruitment
of women and minorities as space shuttle astronauts and was
responsible for hiring Sally Ride. The Astronaut Maker is the
ultimate insider’s account of ambition and power politics at
NASA.
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