Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries : All the Milestones in Ingenuity From the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven

515 Pages·2004·4.48 MB·English

by  Rodney Carlisle

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Scientific American
INVENTIONS
AND
DISCOVERIES
All the Milestones in Ingenuity—
from the Discovery of Fire to the
Invention of the Microwave Oven
R C
ODNEY ARLISLE
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPagei
Scientific American
INVENTIONS
AND
DISCOVERIES
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11164Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd5/26/049:58AMPageiii
Scientific American
INVENTIONS
AND
DISCOVERIES
All the Milestones in Ingenuity—
from the Discovery of Fire to the
Invention of the Microwave Oven
R C
ODNEY ARLISLE
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper. ●∞
Copyright © 2004 by Rodney Carlisle. All rights reserved
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Carlisle, Rodney P.
Scientific American inventions and discoveries : all the milestones in ingenuity—from the discovery of fire to
the invention of the microwave oven / Rodney Carlisle.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-471-24410-4 (Cloth)
1. Inventions—History—Encyclopedias. 2. Inventions—United States—Encyclopedias. 3. Technology—
History—Encyclopedias. 4. Technological innovations—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
T15 .C378 2004
609—dc22 2003023258
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
General Introduction 1
Part I The Ancient World through Classical Antiquity, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 330 9
Part II The Middle Ages through 1599 81
Part III The Age of Scientific Revolution, 1600 to 1790 149
Part IV The Industrial Revolution, 1791 to 1890 223
Part V The Electrical Age, 1891 to 1934 319
Part VI The Atomic and Electronic Age, 1935 into the 21st Century 397
Index 481
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing the essays for this encyclopedia has provided me with an
opportunity to bring together thoughts, information, and ideas
that drew from many sources, both literary and personal, to which I
have been exposed over many years.
My interest in the history of technology was stimulated by a course
taken as a freshman at Harvard that was taught by Professor Leonard K.
Nash. As I recall, Natural Sciences 4 or “Nat Sci Four” was suggested
by other students and advisers as the appropriate course for a history
major to take to meet the college’s general education requirements. I did
not realize it at the time, but the course had been established by James
B.ConantandwaslatercotaughtbyThomasS.Kuhn,whowouldpub-
lishTheStructureofScientificRevolutions.ProfessorNashandThomas
Kuhn developed many of the ideas together that would later appear in
Kuhn’spathbreakingwork,includingafocusonthescientificrevolution
initiatedbyCopernicusandexpoundedbyGalileo.
In later decades, as I was teaching in the History Department at Rut-
gers University in Camden, our college adopted a similar approach to
general education requirements as that established by Conant. To pro-
vide a course titled “Science, Technology, and Society,” I approached a
colleague in the Chemistry Department, Professor Sidney Katz, and
together we offered a sweeping history of science and technology, which
we often taught in summer sessions, reflecting Thomas Kuhn’s focus on
the revolutions in scientific thought, as well as investigations into the
social impact of innovation.
Of course, a great deal has happened in the disciplines of the history
of science and technology over the past decades, and our readings in the
subject took us to a finer appreciation of the complex crosscurrents