The engines of our ingenuity : an engineer looks at technology and culture
Millions of people have listened to John H. Lienhard's radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." In this fascinating book, Lienhard gathers his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, and human inventiveness. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes that the history of technology is a history of us--we are the machines we create. Thus farming dramatically changed the rhythms of human life and redirected history. War seldom fuels invention--radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World War II began. And the medieval Church was a driving force behind the growth of Western technology--Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, whose water wheels cut wood, forged iron, and crushed olives. Lienhard illustrates his themes through inventors, mathematicians, and engineers--with stories of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. We gain new insight as to who we are, through the familiar machines and technologies that are central to our lives
VIII, 262 p. : il. ; 24 cm
9780195167313, 9780195135831, 0195167317, 0195135830
842215400
Preface
1. Mirrored by our machines
2. God, the master craftsman
3. Looking inside the inventive mind
4. The common place
5. Science marries into the family
6. Industrial revolution
7. Inventing America
8. Taking flight
9. Attitudes and technological change
10. War and other ways to kill people
11. Major landmarks
12. Systems, design, and production
13. Hreoic materialism
14. Who got there first
15. Ever-present dangers
16. Technology and literature
17. Being there
Correlation of the text with the radio program
Notes
Index
Incluye bibliografía e índices