How invention begins [[electronic resource] ] : echoes of old voices in the rise of new machines / / John H. Lienhard

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910777793203321
• Autore: Lienhard John H. <1930->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Oxford ; ; New York, : Oxford University Press, 2006
• ISBN: 0-19-988556-7; 1-280-84651-8; 0-19-804172-1; 1-4294-2054-5
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (288 p.)
• Disciplina: 609
• Soggetti: Inventions - History
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-259) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Priority and apriority. Ötzi and silent beginnings -- The unrelenting presence of priority -- I built my airplane before the Wright brothers did -- Steam and speed. Inventing steam: "Alles was Odem hat" -- From steam to steam engine -- From steam engine to thermodynamics -- Inventing speed -- Inventive motivation and exponential change -- Writing and showing. Inventing Gutenberg -- From Gutenberg to a newly literate world: gestation to cradle to maturation -- Inventing means for illustrating reality -- Fast presses, cheap books, and ghosts of old readers -- Views through a wider lens. Inventing education: the great equalizer -- The arc of invention: finding finished forms.
• Sommario/riassunto: Invention--that single leap of a human mind that gives us all we create. Yet we make a mistake when we call a telephone or a light bulb an invention, says John Lienhard. In truth, light bulbs, airplanes, steam engines--these objects are the end results, the fruits, of vast aggregates of invention. They are not invention itself. In How Invention Begins, Lienhard reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for instance, the way in which thousands of people