Who would solve one of the most perplexing scientific problems of all time? This dramatic picture-book biography brings to life - with illustrations that glow with wit and inspiration - the fascinating story of the quest to measure longitude. While the scientific establishment of the eighteenth century was certain that the answer lay in mapping the heavens, John Harrison, an obscure, uneducated clockmaker, dared to imagine a different solution: a seafaring clock. How Harrison held fast to his vision and dedicated his life to the creation of a small jewel of a timepiece that would change the world is a compelling story - as well as a memorable piece of history, science, and biography. A Junior Library Guild Selection

A thrilling drama of man versus nature—detailing the fierce, ongoing fight against the mightiest and unlikeliest enemy: rust.
It has been called “the great destroyer” and “the evil.” The Pentagon refers to it as “the pervasive menace.” It destroys cars, fells bridges, sinks ships, sparks house fires, and nearly brought down the Statue of Liberty. Rust costs America more than $400 billion per year—more than all other natural disasters combined.
In Rust, journalist Jonathan Waldman travels from Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to meet the colorful and often reclusive people concerned with corrosion. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks with a brave artist and nearly gets kicked out of Can School. Across the Arctic, he follows a massive high-tech robot, hunting for rust in the Alaska pipeline. On a Florida film set he meets the Defense Department’s rust ambassador, who reveals that the navy’s number one foe isn’t a foreign country but oxidation itself. At Home Depot’s mothership in Atlanta, he hunts unsuccessfully for rust products with the store’s rust products buyer—and then tracks down some snake-oil salesmen whose potions are not for sale at The Rust Store. Along the way, Waldman encounters flying pigs, Trekkies, decapitations, exploding Coke cans, rust boogers, and nerdy superheroes.
The result is a fresh and often funny account of an overlooked engineering endeavor that is as compelling as it is grand, illuminating a hidden phenomenon that shapes the modern world. Rust affects everything from the design of our currency to the composition of our tap water, and it will determine the legacy we leave on this planet. This exploration of corrosion, and the incredible lengths we go to fight it, is narrative nonfiction at its very best—a fascinating and important subject, delivered with energy and wit.

"Technical and Military Imperatives: A Radar History of World War II" is a coherent account of the history of radar in the second World War. Although many books have been written on the early days of radar and its role in the war, this book is by far the most comprehensive, covering ground, air, and sea operations in all theaters of World War II. The author manages to synthesize a vast amount of material in a highly readable, informative, and enjoyable way. Of special interest is extensive new material about the development and use of radar by Germany, Japan, Russia, and Great British. The story is told without undue technical complexity, so that the book is accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike.

This celebrated and seminal text examines the industrial revolution, from its genesis in pre-industrial Britain, through its development and into maturity. A chapter-by-chapter analysis explores topics such as economic growth, agriculture, trade finance, labour and transport. First published in 1969, The First Industrial Nation is widely recognised as a classic text for students of the industrial revolution.

This is a biography of a major American inventor, who obtained more than 350 patents during his lifetime. Elmer Sperry contributed greatly to the technological changes occurring between 1880 and 1930. He was best known for the Sperry gyrocompass and automatic pilot, and his inventions included arc-light systems, mining machinery, electric automobiles and streetcars, and electrochemical processes. Characteristic of his various inventions were feedback controls which have made automation a fact of life. The book won the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology.

In Human-Built World, Thomas P. Hughes restores to technology the richness and depth it deserves by writing its intellectual history. Chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential, Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to explore what technology has brought to society and culture. From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry and Hughes's concept of "ecotechnology," Human-Built World nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered.

A thousand years before Isaac Asimov set down his Three Laws of Robotics, real and imagined automata appeared in European courts, liturgies, and literary texts. Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages.
Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. E. R. Truitt traces the different forms of self-moving or self-sustaining manufactured objects from their earliest appearances in the Latin West through centuries of mechanical and literary invention. Chronicled in romances and song as well as histories and encyclopedias, medieval automata were powerful cultural objects that probed the limits of natural philosophy, illuminated and challenged definitions of life and death, and epitomized the transformative and threatening potential of foreign knowledge and culture. This original and wide-ranging study reveals the convergence of science, technology, and imagination in medieval culture and demonstrates the striking similarities between medieval and modern robotic and cybernetic visions.

佛郎机铳的研究，既是《澳门文化丛书：佛郎机铳在中国》重新检视欧人东来史不能够忽视的起点课题，也是了解近500年来中国军事武力兴衰和研究东亚战争形态的首要门径，其重要性自不待言。在世界军事史中，再也找不到像佛郎机铳这样独特而深刻的个案。尤其是数百年间，佛郎机铳长期捍卫数千公里的中华帝国疆土，这样对历史有巨大影响的科技产品，无疑需要引起更多研究者的注意。

《王徴全集》正文共二十二卷，另有附录五种，插图约二百余幅，总计71万字。全书的正文可分为三大类，包括政事类六卷，学术类十二卷，诗文杂著类四卷；其中学术类又分儒学、天学类五卷，音学类一卷，制器学类六卷。此外，附录部分收录有有关王徴家族世系的史料、有关王徴年谱、王徴的传记资料、王徴著译序、跋、提要以及王徴著译的考辨等。

《奇器图说:诸种奇异器物的制作与使用》内容简介：明朝末年，西洋教士邓玉函与中国制器奇人王徵共撰的《奇器图说》，是西方机械制造学与中国古代日用器具制造结合的第一部专著。卷一讲述了有关重心、重力线、比重、浮力、压强等基本概念以及相关的定理、定律。卷二则把机械制造的常见元件分作六类，即天平、等子、杠杆、滑车、圆轮和螺旋等，并分别介绍了各自的使用原理和计算方法。卷三为实用器械的制作图，包括起重十一图，引重四图，转重二图，取水九图，转磨十五图，解木四图，解石、转碓、书架、水日晷、代耕各一图，水铳四图，总计五十四图，并附有详细说解。
为了便于当代读者轻松阅读并运用其中的知识，我们对全书进行了白话精译，并参考《诸器图说》补入了更多器具的制造原理和方法，是了解古代制器的全面读本。

《技术转移与技术创新历史丛书：德国克虏伯与晚清火炮 贸易与仿制模式下的技术转移》系一部研究19世纪末至20世纪初德国克虏伯技术向中国转移的学术专著。在考察中国社会从传统向现代转型、自强运动、军事变革等宏观问题的同时，重点分析了李鸿章等人主导的晚清军火贸易以及建立在仿制基础上的兵器工业发展的得失成败，以及贸易、仿制与技术转移之间错综复杂的关系。全书从历史背景、军火贸易、书本知识的输入、技术的引进与消化吸收、装备与运用等方丽，综合论述了德国克虏伯与晚清技术转移的过程、路径及影响因素。《技术转移与技术创新历史丛书：德国克虏伯与晚清火炮 贸易与仿制模式下的技术转移》适合科学技术史、军事技术史、中西交流史、科技政策等领域的研究者参考。

Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, biology, and history, Ian Morris explains why. Fundamental long-term changes in values, Morris argues, are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. Humans have found three main ways to get the energy they need--from foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. Each energy source sets strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed, and each kind of society rewards specific values. But if our fossil-fuel world favors democratic, open societies, the ongoing revolution in energy capture means that our most cherished values are very likely to turn out not to be useful any more. Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels offers a compelling new argument about the evolution of human values, one that has far-reaching implications for how we understand the past--and for what might happen next. Originating as the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, the book includes challenging responses by classicist Richard Seaford, historian of China Jonathan Spence, philosopher Christine Korsgaard, and novelist Margaret Atwood.

Napoleon's Buttons is the fascinating account of seventeen groups of molecules that have greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for early exploration, and made possible the voyages of discovery that ensued. The molecules resulted in grand feats of engineering and spurred advances in medicine and law; they determined what we now eat, drink, and wear. A change as small as the position of an atom can lead to enormous alterations in the properties of a substance-which, in turn, can result in great historical shifts.
With lively prose and an eye for colorful and unusual details, Le Couteur and Burreson offer a novel way to understand the shaping of civilization and the workings of our contemporary world.

The real inventor of the steam engine. The creator of the bra. The man who invented modern banking. The creator of the computer operating system. These and scores of others are the characters that populate Harold Evans's rollicking, brilliant history of the men and women who made America great. Vast and beautifully designed with hundreds of duotones and photos throughout (many never before published), the book is itself a creation as grand as those it describes. Evans reveals the surprising truths behind many of the creations that made our modern world, as well as the lessons we can learn by studying the great entrepreneurs and innovators of the past two centuries.