This book is about the archaeology of science, or what can be learnt from the systematic examination of the artefacts made by precision craftsmen for the study of the natural world. An international authority on historical scientific instruments, Gerard Turner has collected here his essays on European astrolabes and related topics. By 1600 the astrolabe had nearly ceased to be made and used in the West, and before that date there was little of the source material for the study of instruments that exists for more modern times. It is necessary to 'read' the instruments themselves, and astrolabes in particular are rich in all sorts of information, mathematical, astronomical, metallurgical, in addition to what they can reveal about craftsmanship, the existence of workshops, and economic and social conditions. There is a strong forensic element in instrument research, and Gerard Turner's achievements include the identification of three astrolabes made by Gerard Mercator, all of whose instruments were thought to have been destroyed. Other essays deal with the discovery of an important late 16th-century Florentine workshop, and of a group of mid-15th-century German astrolabes linked to Regiomontanus.

Man, racing driver, entrepreneur: three terms that well describe Gianpiero Moretti, creator of Momo half a century ago, an Italian company renowned for its excellence in the production of steering wheels, racing suits and car components from 1964 to today. The historic marque decided to celebrate this important anniversary with a book that covers the salient stages of its development and consolidation, as well as Moretti's long and prestigious motor racing career. From the company's association with Ferrari, dating back to the '60s when the Prancing Horse adopted Momo steering wheels for Formula 1, to the prolific IMSA experience, first with the Porsche 935 and then the Ferrari 333 SP, to its current involvement in the official Momo team. Then there was the far-reaching production of steering wheels and rims for production cars and the lively, colorful advertising campaigns that branded half a century of communications. These are just some of the chapters that comprise this engaging book, produced in close collaboration with the company.

ONE OF AMAZON'S TOP 100 BOOKS OF 2014 Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Paabo's mission to answer this question: what can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010, Neanderthal Man describes the events, intrigues, failures, and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient DNA. We learn that Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our hominid relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Paabo's findings have not only redrawn our family tree, but recast the fundamentals of human history,the biological beginnings of fully modern Homo sapiens , the direct ancestors of all people alive today.

In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage generated by a population of over 2 million Londoners was pouring into the river, carried to and fro by the tides. The Times called the crisis "The Great Stink". Parliament had to act - drastic measures were required to clean the Thames and improve London's primitive system of sanitation. The great engineer entrusted with this enormous task was Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and this book is a fascinating account of his life and work. Bazalgette's response to the challenge was to conceive and build the system of intercepting sewers, pumping stations and treatment works that serves London to this day. In the process he cleansed the River Thames and helped to banish cholera, but this was only one of the achievements of his career. This enthralling history gives a vivid insight into Bazalgette's achievements and the era in which he worked and lived, including his heroic battle with politicians, bureaucrats and huge engineering problems to transform the face and health of the world's largest city.

It is clear that artifacts have the power to provoke thought, inspire action and arouse passions. There is evidence of this in the ever-increasing number of museums as well as in the ability of those museums to stimulate controversy through exhibits. As a consequence, much has been written analyzing the interaction between objects and museum visitors. Less well recognized, or understood, is the value of objects for historical research. In this series of books we propose to show by example how artifacts can be employed in the study of the history of science and technology in ways ranging from motivating a line of research to providing hard evidence in the solution of an otherwise insoluble problem. The first volume focused on medicine; in this, the second volume, the topic our authors address is electronics. As readers will discover, there is considerable scope in the range of topics and in the range of uses of artifacts. There is also a section that suggests to readers what kind of questions they might consider when they visit electrical exhibits, and where those exhibits are to be found.
This series is sponsored by the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Science Museum in London, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, with help from professional historians in other museums and elsewhere.

The importance of design has often been neglected in studies considering the history of structural and civil engineering. Yet design is a key aspect of all building and engineering work. This volume brings together a range of articles which focus on the role of design in engineering. It opens by considering the principles of design, then deals with the application of these to particular subjects including bridges, canals, dams and buildings (from Gothic cathedrals to Victorian mills) constructed using masonry, timber, cast and wrought iron.

In the light of new archival material the editors take a fresh look at Russian aviation in the twentieth century. Presenting a comprehensive view of Russian aviation, from its genesis in the late czarist period to the present era, the approach is essentially chronological with a major emphasis on the evolution of military aviation. The contributions are diverse, with appropriate attention to civilian and institutional themes.

Contents:
Introduction
Part One: Ancient Cities 1. Urban origins: a review of theories Harold Carter 2. Bricks and Brickmaking in Mud and Clay P.R.S.Moorey 3. History Herodotus 4. Deir el-Medina A.R. David 5. Heavy Transport in Classical Antiquity A. Bruford 6. Ancient Greek Water Supply Alfred Burns 7. Lifting in Early Greek Architecture J.J. Coulton 8. The Construction of Fortified Towns Vitruvius 9.The Organization and Supply of Roman Building James c. Anderson jr. 10. On the Water Supply of the City of Rome Frontinus 11. A Model of Agricultural Change Neville Morley 12. The Transformation of the Roman Suburbium Neville Morley
Part Two: Medieval and Early Modern Cities 13. Water Supply in Early Medieval Italy Bryan Ward-Perkins 14. From Polis to Madina: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria Hugh Kennedy 15. Medieval Technology and Social Change Lynn White 16. Fuelling the city: production and distribution of firewood and fuel in London's region, 1290-1400 James A. Galloway 17. Road Improvement in Thirteenth-century Pisa David HerlihyL 18. Town and Hinterland in Medieval Scotland Elizabeth Ewan 19. Building Renaissance Florence: materials, techniques, organization Richard A Goldthwaite 20. Repositioning the Vatican Obelisk Domenico Fontana 21. Urbanization in Early Modern Europe: Change or Continuity? Christopher R. Friedrichs 22. Technology and the Built Environment of the Early Modern City Christopher R. Friedrichs 23. A Golden Age: Innovations in Dutch Cities, 1648-1720 Jonathan Israel 24. Fire-fighting Technology in Early Modern England Stephen Porter 25. Technological Innvation in Seventeenth-century Paris Leon Bernard 26. Rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 John Evelyn 27. Technological Change in a Traditional Society: The Case of the Desagiie in Colonial Mexico Louisa Schell Hoberman
Part Three: Pre-Industrial Cities of China and Africa 28. Building in 'The Book of Odes' 29. Meanings of Walls and Gates Nelson I. Wu 30. Water-pipes, Fountains and Clocks Joseph Needham and Wang Ling 31. Tiles, Bricks and Coal Sung Ying-Hsing 32. Guilds and Property Development in Hankou William T. Rowe 33. Fire Brigades and Ferries in Hankou William T. Rowe 34. A Description of Hankou in 1850 Evariste Regis Huc 35. Hausa Building Techniques J.C. Moughtin 36. Building-types of the Hausa People: characteristics and formative influences J.C. Moughtin
Part Four: The Sjoberg Model 37. The Pre-Industrial City Gideon Sjoberg 38. Some Reflections on the Pre-Industrial City Peter Burke

This book deals with the period when iron became the dominant 'high-technology' material, increasingly taking over from timber and masonry. It was necessary for the engines and machines of the new industries, but equally vital for the vast civil engineering works which supported this industrialisation. It was these works - mills, warehouses, dockyards, and above all bridges - which so impressed the public in the early 19th century. The papers selected here trace the evolving structural uses of cast and wrought iron in frames and roofs for buildings, and look in particular at the development of bridge design and construction, in America, France, and Russia, as well as in Britain. They cover the processes of design and testing, and at the same time throw much light on the attitudes and careers of the engineers themselves.

Each volume in this new series is a collection of seminal articles on a theme of central importance in the study of transport history, selected from the leading journal in the field. Each contains between ten and a dozen articles selected by a distinguished scholar, as well as an authoritative new introduction by the volume editor. Individually they will form an essential foundation to the study of the history of a mode of transport; together they will make an incomparable library of the best modern research in the field.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology gives readers a view into this increasingly vital and urgently needed domain of philosophical understanding, offering an in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. The thirty-two contributions in this volume cut across and connect diverse philosophical traditions and methodologies. They reveal the often-neglected importance of technology for virtually every subfield of philosophy, including ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and political theory. The Handbook also gives readers a new sense of what philosophy looks like when fully engaged with the disciplines and domains of knowledge that continue to transform the material and practical features and affordances of our world, including engineering, arts and design, computing, and the physical and social sciences. The chapters reveal enduring conceptual themes concerning technology's role in the shaping of human knowledge, identity, power, values, and freedom, while bringing a philosophical lens to the profound transformations of our existence brought by innovations ranging from biotechnology and nuclear engineering to artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics. This new collection challenges the reader with provocative and original insights on the history, concepts, problems, and questions to be brought to bear upon humanity's complex and evolving relationship to technology.

‘Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.’

It’s been almost 150 years since Alexander Graham Bell said these immortal words on the first ever phone call, to his assistant in the next room. Between 10 March 1876 and now, the world has changed beyond recognition. And telecommunications, which has played a fundamental role in this change, has itself evolved into an industry that was the sole preserve of science fiction.

When the world’s first modern mobile telephone network was launched in 1979, there were just over 300 million telephones. Today, there are more than eight billion, most of which are mobile. Most people in most countries can now contact each other in a matter of seconds. Soon we’ll all be connected, to each other, and to complex computer networks that provide us with instant information, but also observe and record our actions. No other phenomenon touches so many of us, so directly, each and every day of our lives.

This book describes how this transformation came about. It considers the technologies that underpin telecommunications – microcircuits, fibre-optics and satellites – and touches on financial aspects of the industry: privatisations, mergers and takeovers that have helped shape the $2-trillion telecom market. But for the most part, it’s a story about us and our need to communicate.

J. B. S. Haldane's life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama-from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him "the last man who might know all there was to be known." He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio-all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think. Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian's A Dominant Character recounts Haldane's boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics-questions that resonate even more urgently today.

We are always hearing about the Next Big Thing. Whether it is a new iPhone or the New World, the freshest and newest inventions, discoveries, and fads loom large in the public mind. The impact that everyone thinks these "next big things" will have is often more important than the actual impact it generates. After all, if it fails, it will be almost immediately forgotten. The Next Big Thing searches through 3,000 years of Western culture to find the colorful and key steps (and missteps) that led us to where we are today. Paradigm-shifting events, such as the spread of ethical monotheism and the invention of the printing press, stand beside such cultural ephemera as the aborted U.S metric campaign and the misbegotten vogue for smart drinks. Each entry features the historical context of that Next Big Thing as well as an overview of its legacy, including photos, sidebars, trivia, and quotes.

A critical examination of the rise of wearable EEG monitors. From Fitbits to GPS trackers, wearables promise to help us understand and improve ourselves in quantified ways. We count our steps, track our location, and even monitor our brain waves as we strive to achieve better fitness, clearer direction, or a more focused mind. But why do we rely on wearables to learn about ourselves? In Instrumental Intimacy, Melissa M. Littlefield questions our desire for mechanistic guidance by examining brain-based EEG wearables that promise to improve sleep, relationships, self-knowledge, and learning. Littlefield focuses specifically on EEGs' transition out of the laboratory and into the hands of consumers. While other brain-imaging technologies (such as MRI, PET, and MEG) are used only in specialized laboratories, human electroencephalography (a.k.a. EEG) is embedded in portable, user-friendly devices. These direct-to-consumer wearables visualize brain activity as accessible data, and many offer the promise of self-optimization. Littlefield's illuminating book brings the histories of EEG to bear on the contemporary development of EEG wearables via case studies of EEG-based sleep aids, bio-mapping instruments, fashionable surveillance tools, and athletic training devices. The author argues that, over the past century, applied uses of EEG helped to create new states of mind to be monitored and manipulated, as well as discourses about the existence of brain waves and their viability as a tool for brain optimization. By contextualizing and analyzing EEG wearables, Instrumental Intimacy provides a crucial intervention in an emergent consumer market and in the scholarly fields of STS, critical neuroscience, and the history of technology.

Empire of the Air tells the story of three American visionaries-Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff-whose imagination and dreams turned a hobbyist's toy into radio, launching the modern communications age. Tom Lewis weaves the story of these men and their achievements into a richly detailed and moving narrative that spans the first half of the twentieth century, a time when the American romance with science and technology was at its peak. Empire of the Air is a tale of pioneers on the frontier of a new technology, of American entrepreneurial spirit, and of the tragic collision between inventor and corporation.

The Pickering Masters Works of Charles Babbage is the first and only collected edition of all the known works of this major thinker. Texts have been edited by an expert to reflect the development of the many facets of Babbage's work. For easy reference, volumes are arranged by genre, so that Babbage's work on mathematics, table-making and calculating engines, science, technology, inventions and his writing on economics and statistics, theology and politics, is grouped together, in chronological order within each volume where appropriate.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY After a few billion years of bearing witness to life on Earth, of watching one hundred billion humans go about their day-to-day lives, of feeling unbelievably lonely, and of hearing its own story told by others, The Milky Way would like a chance to speak for itself. All one hundred billion stars and fifty undecillion tons of gas of it. It all began some thirteen billion years ago, when clouds of gas scattered through the universe's primordial plasma just could not keep their metaphorical hands off each other. They succumbed to their gravitational attraction, and the galaxy we know as the Milky Way was born. Since then, the galaxy has watched as dark energy pushed away its first friends, as humans mythologized its name and purpose, and as galactic archaeologists have worked to determine its true age (rude). The Milky Way has absorbed supermassive (an actual technical term) black holes, made enemies of a few galactic neighbors, and mourned the deaths of countless stars. Our home galaxy has even fallen in love. After all this time, the Milky Way finally feels that it's amassed enough experience for the juicy tell-all we've all been waiting for. Its fascinating autobiography recounts the history and future of the universe in accessible but scientific detail, presenting a summary of human astronomical knowledge thus far that is unquestionably out of this world.

Because science and technology have opened new avenues for vintners, our taste in wine has grown ever more diverse. Wine is now the subject of careful chemistry and global demand. Paul Lukacs recounts the journey of wine through history how wine acquired its social cachet, how vintners discovered the twin importance of place and grape, and how a basic need evolved into a realm of choice.

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This book tells the inside story of Germany's first contributions to space research by experiments with artificial plasma clouds in space. In this autobiography, Gerhard Haerendel, former director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, describes his 60 adventurous years in space research. The narrative of exciting events-covering 40 years of rocket and satellite work-is underpinned with accessible accounts of the actual physical phenomena and processes involved. The reader also learns about how the goals set by a visionary astrophysicist eventually led to one of Germany's first major contributions to space research by the creation of artificial comets in the solar wind. Haerendel's efforts also led to two further satellite programs, one in partnership with Sweden, focusing on the aurora borealis, the other, a national German endeavor, to explore the outer border of the magnetosphere. A further interesting chapter concerns his engagement in the evaluation and restructuring of eastern German Academy institutes after reunification. All readers interested in space research and its history will enjoy sharing the fascinating experiences and dramatic events that accompany the story throughout, even some spectacular failures relating to rocket campaigns.

Bishop is undoubtedly one of the most widely-known names in the soil mechanics, or geotechnical engineering, community today, alongside the `founding father', Karl Terzaghi. This is mainly due to the method Bishop devised for estimating the stability of soil slopes; it became known as The Bishop Method and immortalised his name. However, Bishop's contributions to the development of soil mechanics were far wider and of greater significance than his slope stability `method'. His colleague, Professor Skempton, makes this very clear in his contribution to the Bishop eulogy published in Geotechnique in 1988. ...It was a great privilege and the best of good luck to be associated for nearly 40 years with one of the finest intellects in our subject ... his work in this field brought about a highly beneficial revolution in soil mechanics... He was loved and respected by his numerous students... Through them and the strict but friendly criticism of his colleagues' work, and his own important contributions, he exerted a unique influence. Bishop began his career in 1943 when the new soil mechanics world was still grappling with the fundamental issue of soil shear strength. Even the great Terzaghi had not sorted this out. Bishop applied himself immediately to this problem and by the mid 1950s had largely solved it. He published his findings in 1960 in a paper co-authored with Lauritz Bjerrum. This established the parameters to be determined by triaxial testing and the two methods of analysis in use today. This was undoubtedly Bishop's most influential paper. In the eyes of many people Bishop did not receive the recognition he deserved during his lifetime, and indeed has not received since. However, The Bishop Method makes it clear just how influential and important Bishop's contributions were to soil mechanics. The book comprises three parts: Part 1 - the story of Bishop's life, emphasising his particular problem-solving skills Part 2 - his contribution to soil mechanics in some detail, of particular interest to anyone with a technical/professional perspective Part 3 - articles by past students and others who knew him which together paint a fascinating picture of the man

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.