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Prime Movers of Globalization - The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines (Paperback)
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Prime Movers of Globalization - The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines (Paperback)
Series: The MIT Press
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The story of how diesel engines and gas turbines, used to power
cargo ships and jet airplanes, made today's globally integrated
economy possible. The many books on globalization published over
the past few years range from claims that the world is flat to an
unlikely rehabilitation of Genghis Khan as a pioneer of global
commerce. Missing from these accounts is a consideration of the
technologies behind the creation of the globalized economy. What
makes it possible for us to move billions of tons of raw materials
and manufactured goods from continent to continent? Why are we able
to fly almost anywhere on the planet within twenty-four hours? In
Prime Movers of Globalization, Vaclav Smil offers a history of two
key technical developments that have driven globalization: the
high-compression non-sparking internal combustion engines invented
by Rudolf Diesel in the 1890s and the gas turbines designed by
Frank Whittle and Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain in the 1930s. The
massive diesel engines that power cargo ships and the gas turbines
that propel jet engines, Smil argues, are more important to the
global economy than any corporate structure or international trade
agreement. Smil compares the efficiency and scale of these two
technologies to prime movers of the past, including the sail and
the steam engine. The lengthy processes of development,
commercialization, and diffusion that the diesel engine and the gas
turbine went through, he argues, provide perfect examples of
gradual technical advances that receive little attention but have
resulted in epochal shifts in global affairs and the global
economy.
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