"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.

At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.
In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.
Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.
From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.
With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.

The modern industrialized world is a complex system on a scale never before witnessed in the history of humankind. Technologically dependent, globally interconnected, it offers seemingly limitless conveniences, choices, and opportunities. Yet this same modern civilization is as unstable as a house of cards, fear complexity scientists like John L. Casti. All it would take to downsize our way of life-to send us crashing back to the 19th century way of life-is a nudge from what Casti calls an X-Event, an unpredictable occurrence that with extreme, even dire, consequences. When an X-Event strikes - and scientists believe it will-finance, communication, defense, and travel will stop dead in their tracks. The flow of food, electricity, medicine, and clean water will be disrupted for months, if not years. What will you do? A renowned systems theorist, Casti shows how our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to a system that's ever more fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse. Fascinating and chilling, "X-Events" provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the pre-industrial age: global financial black swans; a world-wide crash of the Internet that would halt all communication; the end of oil; nuclear winter; nano-plagues; robot uprisings; electromagnetic-pulse bombs; pandemic viruses; and more. You won't look at the world the same way again after reading this book.

本書論述中國造紙術、火藥術的發明、科學代表作《本草綱目》及《天工開物》在全世界的傳播和影響；討論西方科學知識、技術術語和科學著作在中國的傳播和影響；又介紹中西互相翻譯對方科學著作的具體情況；中、日兩國之間的科學交流,亦有專章論述。

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.

Why do cities, regions and nations experience periods of pronounced growth and decline? Why have the world's centres of economic activity been continually reshuffled as the industrial revolution has spread to new parts of the globe?
This book demonstrates that under capitalism, the process central to growth is geographical industrialization, and that the creation and use of territory is fundamental to economic development. In doing so, they make new contributions to the study of growth theory, industrial economics, technological change, industrial organization, labour market, urban and regional development, and theoretical human geography. Beginning with the economics of disequilibrium growth, the authors reveal the technological, organizational and political foundations of industrialization, and conclude by showing that the territorial forms that industry takes are central to the shape and survival of capitalism itself.

Future Imperfect describes and discusses a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work and play. We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

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.

Why are some nations more technically creative than others and why do some highly innovative societies eventually stagnate? In this provocative study of the value and meaning of technological advance, Joel Mokyr considers how past physical and social conditions have influenced the development and reception of new ideas, and shows how these trends can guide future industrial strategies at a time when more countries than ever before are competing for the rewards of technical ingenuity.

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。