The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and CultureOxford University Press, 2000 - 262 sivua A million people tune in twice each week to hear John H. Lienhard's radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." Now Lienhard has gathered together his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, human inventiveness, and the history of engineering in this fascinating new book. The Engines of Our Ingenuity offers a series of intriguing glimpses into technology--as a mirror, as a danger, as a product of heroic hubris. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes, for instance, that the history of technology is a history of us--we are the machines we create. Indeed, our very first technology, farming, which demanded year-long care, dramatically changed the rhythms of human life and the course of our history. We also learn that war does not necessarily fuel invention (radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World War II began), and that the medieval Church was actually a driving force behind the growth of Western technology (Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, putting water wheels to work in wood-cutting, forging, and olive crushing). Lienhard also illuminates the unpredictable nature of the inventive mind, leading us through one fascinating example after another. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, for instance, were highly passionate, even combative figures, while the almost invisible Josiah Willard Gibbs, living a quiet, outwardly uneventful life, was probably America's greatest scientist. Lienhard ranges far and wide with stories of inventors, mathematicians, and engineers, telling the story of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. The result is less history than autobiography--for the autobiography of all of us is written in our machines. |
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Tulokset 1 - 3 kokonaismäärästä 63
Sivu 93
... built in England , and fewer than five hundred of them were Watt engines . Actually , steam engines never became a major power source in the eighteenth century . Most power still came from waterwheels and wind- mills . Steam - engine ...
... built in England , and fewer than five hundred of them were Watt engines . Actually , steam engines never became a major power source in the eighteenth century . Most power still came from waterwheels and wind- mills . Steam - engine ...
Sivu 123
... built throughout Europe . f Penaud's toy helicopter as pictured in the 1897 Ency- clopaedia Britannica . By 1874 the twenty - four - year - old French experimenter Alphonse Pénaud , had built a rubber - band - powered toy helicopter ...
... built throughout Europe . f Penaud's toy helicopter as pictured in the 1897 Ency- clopaedia Britannica . By 1874 the twenty - four - year - old French experimenter Alphonse Pénaud , had built a rubber - band - powered toy helicopter ...
Sivu 200
... built before them . Leonardo da Vinci sketched self - powered vehicles . And Homer wrote about such machines in remote antiquity . So let us limit our search to autos driven by internal combustion engines and to autos that were actually ...
... built before them . Leonardo da Vinci sketched self - powered vehicles . And Homer wrote about such machines in remote antiquity . So let us limit our search to autos driven by internal combustion engines and to autos that were actually ...
Sisältö
Mirrored by Our Machines | 3 |
God the Master Craftsman | 20 |
Looking Inside the Inventive Mind | 35 |
Tekijänoikeudet | |
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The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture John H. Lienhard Rajoitettu esikatselu - 2003 |
The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture John H. Lienhard Rajoitettu esikatselu - 2003 |
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