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The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World traces the course of human ingenuity and innovation from the first crude stone tools of our earliest ancestors two and a half million years ago up to the early medieval period, drawing on the very latest research and discoveries, and addressing some of the most fundamental questions about our past. The seventy articles take us on an eye-opening and unusual journey through a panoply of inventions, some fundamental, others just intriguing or bizarr...

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. In 2006, SpaceX—a brand-new venture with fewer than 200 employees—rolled its first, single-engine rocket onto a launch pad at Kwajalein Atoll. After a groundbreaking launch from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Falcon 1 rocket designed by Elon Musk’s engineers rose in the air for approximately thirty seconds. Then, its engine flame...

The Great American Hall of Wonders is a vividly illustrated survey of the American ingenuity that energised all aspects of 19th-century society, from the painting of landscapes and scenes of everyday life, to the planning of scientific expeditions and the development of new mechanical devices. It focuses on six iconic objects that inspired the American imagination: the buffalo, the giant sequoia, and Niagara Falls (symbolising vast natural bounty), and the gun, the railroad, and the clock (repre...

The authoritative edition of Franklin's autobiography, now with a new introduction by eminent Franklin scholar Edmund S. Morgan Translated into a dozen languages, printed in hundreds of editions, and read by millions of people, Franklin's autobiography has had an influence perhaps unequaled by any other book by an American writer. Written ostensibly as a letter to his son William, the autobiography offers Franklin's reflections on philosophy and religion, politics, war, education, material succe...

"The cotton gin animates the American imagination in unique ways. It evokes no images of antique machinery or fluffy fiber but rather scenes of victimized slaves and battlefield dead. It provokes the suspicion that had Eli Whitney never invented the gin, United States history would have been somehow different. Yet cotton gins existed for centuries before Whitney invented his gin in 1794. Nineteenth-century scholars overlooked them as well as gins made by southern-and northern-mechanics, in order...

Did you know that the machine used to drill tunnels for the first underground railway in England was invented by a South African, or that the first computers in South Africa were women calculators working at the Royal Observatory in Cape Town? Everyone knows that the Kreepy Krawly, Pratley's Putty, Dolos, and CATscanner were invented in South Africa, but what about the Sheffel Bogie, Oil of Olay, Q20, Policansky fishing reels, Lodox low-dose X-ray machine, and Waste Shark? This authoritative vol...

Patent Ease is the new 'How to write your own patent" book for beginners; because you are a beginner...not a dummy! Finally a patent book that anyone can understand, written with words and terms that are easy for common people to understand. As a reader in Bakersfield, California said, "I just loved the little bits of humor that you added throughout the whole book, which helped me to loosen up and enjoy the patent process. You have made this book so easy to understand that I believe even a child...

No single invention epitomizes the Victorian era more than the black cast-iron range. Aware that the twenty-first-century has reduced it to a quaint relic, Ruth Goodman was determined to prove that the hot coal stove provided so much more than morning tea: it might even have kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Wielding the wit and passion seen in How to Be a Victorian, Goodman traces the tectonic shift from wood to coal in the mid-sixteenth century-from sooty trials and errors during the rei...

Does the thought of a rainy weekend indoors fill you with dread?Are you tired of your living room wall being one crayon scribble away from a mural?Have you ever contemplated moving to a bigger house simply to accommodate for your child's ever expanding collection of baby grows? Whether you're a first-time parent, or a seasoned pro, you'll know that parenting is a job full of challenges, and with no time off for good behaviour. But take heart and dive into Life Hacks for Parents, your handy guide...