Download or read book The Age of Edison written by Ernest Freeberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of the electric light revolution and the birth of modern America The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but more than any other invention, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb marked the arrival of modernity, transforming its inventor into a mythic figure and avatar of an era. In The Age of Edison, award-winning author and historian Ernest Freeberg weaves a narrative that reaches from Coney Island and Broadway to the tiniest towns of rural America, tracing the progress of electric light through the reactions of everyone who saw it and capturing the wonder Edison’s invention inspired. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility in which the greater forces of progress and change are made by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects.
Download or read book Thomas Edison written by Linda Tagliaferro and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the electric lighting system and the phonograph.
Download or read book Nikola Tesla written by Dr. Richard Gunderman and published by 'The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc'. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a scientist, inventor, and engineer, Nikola Tesla was devoted to discovery, registering over 700 patents in his lifetime. Today, he is mostly celebrated as the father of modern electricity, shaping technology that came after. Tesla’s fascinating life story is the focus of this accessible volume, which includes beautifully reproduced documents from Tesla’s personal archives. Readers will be especially interested in original diagrams and drawings of his ingenious machines, which—along with comprehensible explanations—will familiarize them with the essential curricular concepts of X-ray, radar, and electricity.
Download or read book The Electrical Age written by and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Samuel F B Morse and the Dawn of the Age of Electricity written by George F. Botjer and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Morse telegraph launched the electronic telecommunications industry and reduced the travel time of information from days, weeks and months to seconds and minutes. It was one of the most important breakthrough inventions of all time. George F. Botjer's examination of the creator of the telegraph is based on previously unpublished archival sources. It considers Samuel F. B. Morse, the creator of the first telegraph, and the ways in which place and time had an effect on the launch of his invention and his resulting fame, and how the invention affected the inventor himself.
Download or read book Tesla written by W. Bernard Carlson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The gold standard for Tesla biography.”—Science “Superb.”—Nature The definitive account of Tesla's life and work Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft. Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. Drawing on original documents from Tesla's private and public life, Carlson shows how he was an "idealist" inventor who sought the perfect experimental realization of a great idea or principle, and who skillfully sold his inventions to the public through mythmaking and illusion. This major biography sheds new light on Tesla's visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs.
Download or read book The Electric Information Age Book written by Jeffrey Schnapp and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Electric Information Age Book explores the nine-year window of mass-market publishing in the sixties and seventies when formerly backstage players-designers, graphic artists, editors-stepped into the spotlight to produce a series of exceptional books. Aimed squarely at the young media-savvy consumers of the "Electronic Information Age," these small, inexpensive paperbacks aimed to bring the ideas of contemporary thinkers like Marshall McLuhan, R. Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn, and Carl Sagan to the masses. Graphic designers such as Quentin Fiore (The Medium Is the Massage, 1967) employed a variety of radical techniques-verbal visual collages and other typographic pyrotechnics-that were as important to the content as the text. The Electric Information Age Book is the first book-length history of this brief yet highly influential publishing phenomenon.
Download or read book Electrical Wizard written by Elizabeth Rusch and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2024-09-30 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An engaging volume that will encourage both budding scientists and anyone intrigued by the creative process.” — Kirkus Reviews Here is the story of the ambitious young man who brought life-changing ideas to America, despite the obstructive efforts of his hero-turned-rival, Thomas Edison. From using alternating current to light up the Chicago World’s Fair to harnessing Niagara Falls to electrify New York City and beyond, Nikola Tesla was a revolutionary ahead of his time. Established biographer Elizabeth Rusch sheds light on this extraordinary figure, while fine artist Oliver Dominguez brings his life and inventions to vivid color. Back matter includes additional information about Tesla, scientific notes and explanations, source notes, a bibliography, and suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book The Invisible Rainbow written by Arthur Firstenberg and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most misunderstood force driving health and disease The story of the invention and use of electricity has often been told before, but never from an environmental point of view. The assumption of safety, and the conviction that electricity has nothing to do with life, are by now so entrenched in the human psyche that new research, and testimony by those who are being injured, are not enough to change the course that society has set. Two increasingly isolated worlds--that inhabited by the majority, who embrace new electrical technology without question, and that inhabited by a growing minority, who are fighting for survival in an electrically polluted environment--no longer even speak the same language. In The Invisible Rainbow, Arthur Firstenberg bridges the two worlds. In a story that is rigorously scientific yet easy to read, he provides a surprising answer to the question, "How can electricity be suddenly harmful today when it was safe for centuries?"
Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Download or read book Empires of Light written by Jill Jonnes and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2004-10-12 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.
Download or read book Networks of Power written by Thomas Parke Hughes and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1993-03 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology, this book offers a comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. It described large-scale technological change and demonstrates that technology cannot be understood unless placed in a cultural context.
Download or read book Age of Auto Electric written by Matthew N. Eisler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The electric vehicle revival reflects negotiations between public policy, which promotes clean, fuel-efficient vehicles, and the auto industry, which promotes high-performance vehicles. Electric cars were once as numerous as internal combustion engine cars before all but vanishing from American roads around World War I. Now, we are in the midst of an electric vehicle revival, and the goal for a sustainable car seems to be within reach. In Age of Auto Electric, Matthew N. Eisler shows that the halting development of the electric car in the intervening decades was a consequence of tensions between environmental, energy, and economic policy imperatives that informed a protracted reappraisal of the automobile system. These factors drove the electric vehicle revival, argues Eisler, hastening automaking’s transformation into a science-based industry in the process. Challenging the common assumption that the electric vehicle revival is due to the development of better batteries, Age of Auto Electric instead focuses on changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions, energy and environmental policies, systems of energy conversion and industrial production, and innovation practices that affected the prevalence and popularity of electric vehicles in recent decades. Eisler describes a world in transition from legacy to alternative energy-conversion systems and the promises, compromises, new problems, and unintended consequences that enterprise has entailed.
Download or read book A Question of Power written by Robert Bryce and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed author and celebrated journalist breaks down the history of electricity and the impact of global energy use on the world and the environment. Global demand for power is doubling every two decades, but electricity remains one of the most difficult forms of energy to supply and do so reliably. Today, some three billion people live in places where per-capita electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator. How we close the colossal gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor will determine our success in addressing issues like women's rights, inequality, and climate change. In A Question of Power, veteran journalist Robert Bryce tells the human story of electricity, the world's most important form of energy. Through onsite reporting from India, Iceland, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, New York, and Colorado, he shows how our cities, our money--our very lives--depend on reliable flows of electricity. He highlights the factors needed for successful electrification and explains why so many people are still stuck in the dark. With vivid writing and incisive analysis, he powerfully debunks the notion that our energy needs can be met solely with renewables and demonstrates why--if we are serious about addressing climate change--nuclear energy must play a much bigger role. Electricity has fueled a new epoch in the history of civilization. A Question of Power explains how that happened and what it means for our future.
Download or read book Nikola Tesla written by Ryan Young and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nikola Tesla, a Serbian American, was a major contributor to the start of the electric age, which transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of the modern AC electricity system. Meanwhile, his inventive genius led to the development of the radio, the television, and the modern world as we know it. Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, much like his competitor Thomas Edison. He enjoyed the company of New York high society, dined at the finest restaurants, and amazed the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius, though his business skills were lacking. Tesla's last few years were spent alone, living in poverty in a hotel room paid for by George Westinghouse. Read this book and delve into the life of a fascinating man who helped change the world with his inventions.
Download or read book Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America written by Benjamin Franklin and published by . This book was released on 1751 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Beatles and McLuhan written by Thomas MacFarlane and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, The Beatles would address like no other musical act a radical shift in the cultural mindset of the late twentieth century. Through tools of "electric technology," this shift encompassed the decline of visual modes of perception and the emergence of a "way-of-knowing" based increasingly on sound. In this respect, the musical works of The Beatles would come to resonate with and ultimately reflect Marshall McLuhan's ideas on the transition into a culture of "all-at-once-ness" a simultaneous world in which immersion in vibrant global community increasingly trumps the fixed viewpoint of the individual. By engaging with recording technologies in a way that no popular act had before, The Beatles opened up for exploration the acoustical space precipitated by this shift. In The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age, scholar and musician Thomas MacFarlane examines how the incorporation of electric technology in The Beatles' art would enhance their musical impact. MacFarlane surveys the relationship between McLuhan's ideas on the nature and effects of electric technology and The Beatles own engagement of that technology; offers analyses of key works from The Beatles' studio years, with particular attention paid to the presence of cultural metaphors embedded in the medium of multi-track recording; and collates these data to offer stunning conclusions about The Beatles' creative process in the recording studio and its cultural implications. This work also features the first published transcriptions ever of the complete filmed conversation between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan on their respective ideas, as well as an interview between MacFarlane and McLuhan's son and executor, Michael McLuhan, on his father's and the Beatles' legacy. The Beatles and McLuhan will interest scholars and students of music and music history, recording technology, media studies, communications, and popular culture.
