The Origins of Invention PDF Download

Author: Otis T. Mason
Publisher: London : W. Scott
ISBN:
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Author: Silvia Ferrara
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374601631
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.

Author: Autumn Stanley
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813521978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
Stanley traces women's inventions in five vital areas of technology worldwide--agriculture, medicine, reproduction, machines, and computers.

Author: Trevor Illtyd Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816040728
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Profiles the history of invention from the first crude stone ax head to the latest achievements in biotechnology, including a biographical dictionary of the individuals responsible for these discoveries.

Author: Chris Woodford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816054404
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Reviews the history of power and energy inventions, from the dawn of civilization to the present, including the first machines, steam and electric engines, and the incandescent light bulb.

Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

Author: Rodney Carlisle
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470306920
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 711

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Book Description
A unique A-to-Z reference of brilliance in innovation and invention Combining engagingly written, well-researched history with the respected imprimatur of Scientific American magazine, this authoritative, accessible reference provides a wide-ranging overview of the inventions, technological advances, and discoveries that have transformed human society throughout our history. More than 400 entertaining entries explain the details and significance of such varied breakthroughs as the development of agriculture, the "invention" of algebra, and the birth of the computer. Special chronological sections divide the entries, providing a unique focus on the intersection of science and technology from early human history to the present. In addition, each section is supplemented by primary source sidebars, which feature excerpts from scientists' diaries, contemporary accounts of new inventions, and various "In Their Own Words" sources. Comprehensive and thoroughly readable, Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries is an indispensable resource for anyone fascinated by the history of science and technology. Topics include: aerosol spray * algebra * Archimedes' Principle * barbed wire * canned food * carburetor * circulation of blood * condom * encryption machine * fork * fuel cell * latitude * music synthesizer * positron * radar * steel * television * traffic lights * Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

Author: Stewart Ross
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1789290635
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A lively and highly readable account of human invention, innovation and discovery. The First of Everything recounts the origins, invention and discovery of just about everything on the planet, from the Big Bang to driverless cars.

Author: Steven Caney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780894800764
Category : Inventions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A project book for the would-be inventor with activities, a list of "contraptions" in need of invention, and the stories behind thirty-six existing inventions.

Author: Ekkehard Kopp
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800640978
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.