Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> History

The 20th century saw radical changes to the pulse and quality of its everyday life, thanks to a wave of astonishing inventions that improved virtually every aspect of daily existence. Some inventions became essential household products we continue to use today. Others were replaced by new and improved inventions. This invaluable reference presents more than 40 alphabetical categories of everyday inventions for the home and domestic life, grouped by purpose or function.

Inventions covered in Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions include ballpoint pens, coffee...

Beginning with World War II, missiles transformed the art of war. For the first time, cities of warring nations were vulnerable to sudden, unannounced, long-distance destruction. At the same time, rockets made possible one of the great triumphs of the modern age--the exploration of space. Rockets and Missiles traces the history of the technology that led to both the great fear of global warfare, and the great excitement of the Space Age. Beginning with the origins of rocketry in medieval and early modern Asia, the volume focuses on rocketry in late-20th-century Western...

Guns have existed in various forms for hundreds of years, and few objects have had such an immense impact on the history of the world. But how did firearms develop? Why did the styles of guns change over the years? Firearms tells the life story of the gun, from the hand-held weapons of ancient humans, to the medieval guns of China that propelled objects by chemical reactions, to the modern assault rifle, the gun as the primary weapon in the modern army, and the gun as a tool for hunting. Not only does the book demonstrate how firearms developed--an evolution dependent upon years of...

How did one of the great inventions of the 19th century-- Thomas Edison's phonograph-- eventually lead to one of the most culturally and economically significant technologies of the 20th and 21st centuries? Sound Recording tells that story, tracing the history of the business boom and the cultural revolution begun by Edison's invention. Ever since, recorded sound has been all around us--not just in reproducing and playing popular music, but also in more mundane areas, such as office dictation machines, radio and television programs, and even telephone answering machines. Just as the...

For better or worse, television has been the dominant medium of communication for 50 years. Almost all American households have a television set; many have more than one. Transmitting images and sounds electronically is a relatively recent invention, one that required passionate inventors, determined businessmen, government regulators, and willing consumers. This volume in the Greenwood Technographies series covers the entire history of television from 19the-century European conceptions of transmitting moving images electrically to the death of TV as a discrete system in a digital age....

Paolo Ulivi and David Harland provide in Robotic Exploration of the Solar System a detailed history of unmanned missions of exploration of our Solar System. As in their previous book Lunar Exploration, the subject will be treated wherever possible from an engineering and scientific standpoint. Technical descriptions of the spacecraft, of their mission designs and of instrumentations will be provided. Scientific results will be discussed in considerable depth, together with details of mission management.

The book will be comprehensive, covering missions and...

David Harland here initiates a series of books on NASA s Moon Program of the 1960s and early 1970s. Presented chronologically, NASA s Moon Program The Early Years will outline the Mercury and Gemini manned missions, the unmanned lunar probes and the Apollo missions leading up to Apollo 11, covering that mission only as a postscript. The First Men on the Moon The Story of Apollo 11, released in 2006 is devoted solely to that mission. Apollo The Definitive Sourcebook, published in 2006, covered all the missions, including the unmanned tests, in an encyclopedic style which included many facts...

In Spies in the Sky' Patrick Norris responds to the occasion of the 50^th Anniversary of the dawn of the Space Age the launch of Sputnik 1 with a review of the most important historical applications of space science for the benefit of the human race during that half century, focusing particularly on the prevention of nuclear war. The author addresses the oft quoted conclusion that the Moon landings and the race to the Moon between the two superpowers were a side effect of the Cold War, by describing what he believes was the more important event the use of satellites by...

An essential new account of some of the most valuable research and development in international military history.

Roy F. Houchin II shows how the roots of US Air Force hypersonic research and development are grounded in Army Air Force General Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold's identification of the need for advanced airpower weapon systems to meet the anticipated postwar enemy threat. The technology for a smooth transition to military spaceflight seemed within reach when Bell Aircraft Corporation executive Walter Dornberger (the former commander of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket research) made an...