Invention and Technology

by Milton Lomask

Book Overview

Invention and Technology's Great Lives includes a list of important dates in the history of invention and technology. Author Milton Lomask offers brief life stories of twenty-seven persons whose... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684191067
• ISBN13: 9780684191065
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.5" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

If you share my personal interest in invention & discovery, this is a good book to read!

Books on invention & technology always fascinate me. This is irrespective of whether they are written for adults or young people. My personal library have quite a large of collection of both types. I have picked up this particular one, after reading its Foreword which somehow grasps my immediate attention: "...The pages that follow offer brief life stories of twenty-seven persons whose inventions or discoveries have altered the environment to a marked degree...Although, according to an ancient saying, necessity is the mother of invention, most of the stories in this book seem to support the often-expressed contention that the opposite is true - that invention is the mother of necessity...A case in point is whathappened in the wake of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876. Today most of us find it hard to imagine life without Bell's ingenious gadget, but at least twenty years went by after its first appearance before very many people realise that they needed it...What moved bell to create the speaking telegraph, as the telephone was first called, was his desire as a teacher of the deaf to help his students...New information first, then invention: thus has much of what we call progress come about...If this book, dealing as it does with an array of highly different individuals, can be said to have a central theme, it is this: that discovery is the true begetter of most new products & new processes. It is as our knowledge of the universe grows that inventions multiply." Well, I hardly see it that way & that piques my curiosity & I bought the book & added it to my personal library. On the whole, & for me, the stories are spellbinding as the author's clear, lively narratives capture the wonder & excitement of invention & discovery. Well-known inventors in the stories include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edision, Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, & the Wright Brothers. Inventors who have influenced conemporary life are also included, like Carl Benz, builder of the first automobile powered by an internal combustion enegine; Enrico Fermi, builder of the first atomic reacors; Robert Goddard, developer of the liquid-fuel rocket; & Jack St Claire Kilby & Robert Norton Noyce, inventors of the microchip. To supplement the biographical sketches of inventors, the author has also provided a list of important dates in the history of invention & technology. With this list, I could locate the names of the other inventors in these fields. If you share my personal interest in invention & discovery, this is a good book to read.