From the age of railroads through the building of the first battleships, from the first skyscrapers to the dawning of the age of the automobile, steelmakers proved central to American industry, building, and transportation. In A Nation of Steel Thomas Misa explores the complex interactions between steelmaking and the rise of the industries that have characterized modern America. A Nation of Steel offers a detailed and fascinating look at an industry that has had a profound impact on American life.
From the age of railroads through the building of the first battleships, from the first skyscrapers to the dawning of the age of the automobile, st...
Over the course of several decades, the Pentagon's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) helped transform computing from a cumbersome enterprise based on batch processing to the instantly interactive, graphically rich, highly intelligent computing of today. With the purpose of improving command and control systems for the military, IPTO researchers strengthened time-sharing, laid the groundwork for graphics and parallel processing, contributed to the study of artificial intelligence, and developed the wide-area network that came to be known as the Internet. Transforming...
Over the course of several decades, the Pentagon's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) helped transform computing from a cumbersome ent...
Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe explores the history of gunpowder in Europe from the thirteenth century, when it was first imported from China, to the sixteenth century, as firearms became central to the conduct of war. Bridging the fields of military history and the history of technology--and challenging past assumptions about Europe's -gunpowder revolution---Hall discovers a complex and fascinating story. Military inventors faced a host of challenges, he finds, from Europe's lack of naturally occurring saltpeter--one of gunpowder's major components--to the limitations...
Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe explores the history of gunpowder in Europe from the thirteenth century, when it was first import...
Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this -picturesque artifact- was for centuries man's primary mechanical source of power and was the foundation upon which mills and other industries developed.
Stronger than a Hundred Men explores the development of the vertical water wheel from its invention in ancient times through its eventual demise as a source of power during the Industrial Revolution. Spanning more than 2000 years, Terry Reynolds's account follows the progression of this...
Like many apparently simple devices, the vertical water wheel has been around for so long that it is taken for granted. Yet this -picturesque artif...
According to the stereotype, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century inventors, quintessential loners and supposed geniuses, worked in splendid isolation and then unveiled their discoveries to a marveling world. Most successful inventors of this era, however, developed their ideas within the framework of industrial organizations that supported them and their experiments. For African American inventors, negotiating these racially stratified professional environments meant not only working on innovative designs but also breaking barriers.
In this pathbreaking study, Rayvon Fouche...
According to the stereotype, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century inventors, quintessential loners and supposed geniuses, worked in splendid...
Civil War Ironclads supplies the first comprehensive study of one of the most ambitious programs in the history of naval shipbuilding. In constructing its new fleet of ironclads, William H. Roberts explains, the U.S. Navy faced the enormous engineering challenges of a largely experimental technology. In addition, it had to manage a ship acquisition program of unprecedented size and complexity. To meet these challenges, the Navy established a -project office- that was virtually independent of the existing administrative system. The office spearheaded efforts to broaden the naval...
Civil War Ironclads supplies the first comprehensive study of one of the most ambitious programs in the history of naval shipbuilding. In c...
A boxed set (three trade paperbacks) of the internationally celebrated speculative fiction trilogy from one of the most visionary authors of our time, Margaret Atwood. Across three stunning novels--Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam--the best-selling, Booker Prize-winning novelist projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining. In Oryx and Crake, a man struggles to survive in a world where he may be the last human. In search of answers, he embarks on a journey through the lush wilderness that was so...
A boxed set (three trade paperbacks) of the internationally celebrated speculative fiction trilogy from one of the most visionary authors of our time,...
Combining economic theory with the history of technology, Making Tobacco Bright revises several narratives in American history, from colonial staple-crop agriculture to the origins of the tobacco industry to the rise of identity politics in the twentieth century.
Combining economic theory with the history of technology, Making Tobacco Bright revises several narratives in American history, from colonial staple-c...
