Inventions History

Early Balloons and Airships: The History of the City’s Underground Ossuaries and Burial Network looks at the development of the first balloons and airships, and how they were primarily used. You will learn about the first airships like never before.

Go on an illuminating journey through the evolution of knowledge and communication with the debut non-fiction book by best-selling author Chris Haughton. Discover how the ways we share and store information have shaped and changed the world in this utterly unique book. A fascinating listen for both children and adults, it is suitable for children from age 8+. What is it that makes technology improve rather than stay static or even fall into decline? The answer is information.

Before there were machines, every product had to be done manually. Even handling of dangerous substances were done by humans without proper protection. This resulted in a lot of health problems, but people didn’t care because they were given jobs. So when the machines were introduced, millions of lives changed.

What will our world be like in the year 2010? Where will we work? How will we travel? What kind of advances can we expect in medicine and technology? Probable Tomorrows offers a look into the near-future advances, inventions, products, services, and everyday conveniences that will change how people live and work.

Who can foretell India's future? Mr. Joshi is a fortune teller in a slum in south Delhi who uses a soothsaying green parrot to make predictions. When Adam Roberts visited him in 2012, Joshi's parrot declared that India was destined to become the most powerful nation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Through vivid storytelling and insight, Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation examines the problems and promises of fast-growing India to reveal how it might reach its full potential and become, as Mr. Joshi's parrot predicted, a truly powerful nation.

This history of medieval inventions, focusing on the 11th to the 14th centuries, vividly portrays a thriving era of human ingenuity, and the results are still being felt to this day. From the mechanical clock to the first eyeglasses, both of which revolutionized society, many of the commonplace devices we now take for granted had their origin in the Middle Ages. Divided into 10 thematic chapters, the accessible audiobook allows the listener to sample areas of interest or listen to the book from beginning to end for a complete historical overview.

En China, una de las grandes fuentes de la civilización humana, fueron creados numerosos y brillantes inventos científicos y tecnológicos, por los cuales el país asiático mantenía en un puesto de liderazgo en todo el mundo durante un largo período a lo largo de la historia milenaria. A través de las observaciones y estudios sobre la astronomía, la geografía y la vida cotidiana los antiguos chinos formaron el concepto filosófico de “integración entre la naturaleza y los seres humanos”, y basándose en esta teoría se generaron maravillosos inventos científicos y tecnológicos.

At noon on October 27, 1924, a factory worker was admitted to a hospital in New York City, suffering from hallucinations and convulsions. Before breakfast the next day, he was dead. Alice Hamilton was determined to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. By the time of the accident, Hamilton had pioneered the field of industrial medicine in the United States. She specialized in workplace safety years before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created. But this time, she was up against a formidable new foe: America’s relentless push for progress, regardless of the cost.

A unique tour around the world in search of the great thinkers of our time and their next big ideas. With the world at the threshold of profound changes, the questions become: Where are the philosophers? Where are the great thinkers of today? Where is the next Jefferson, Curie, or Mandela? Which technologies and changes in the nature of life will they harness, embrace, or be inspired by?

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads—the first time ironclad vessels would engage each other in combat. For four hours the two ships pummeled one another as thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians watched from the shorelines. Although the battle ended in a draw, this engagement would change the nature of naval warfare by informing both vessel design and battle tactics.

Voyages of discovery, inventions, the revival of classical learning, and the advent of science contributed to the intellectual upheavals of this creative period, and are reflected in its literature and art. Hudson focuses on the one thread of continuity that he sees as both the seed and the fruit of this exciting era: the awakening of secular humanism and the emergence of the individual. This history gives the listener a lucid, perceptive analysis of the splendid Renaissance.

Get ready to feast your eyes and taste buds on the incredible journey of conveyor belt sushi with The History of Conveyor Belt Sushi: From Invention to International Phenomenon! From its humble beginnings in Japan to its worldwide popularity, this book delves into the fascinating story of how conveyor belt sushi has become a global culinary sensation.

In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.

The late 19th century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the light bulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity.

Award-winning author Philip Dray delves into the lesser-known side of an American icon in Stealing God's Thunder. Benjamin Franklin, more often viewed as a statesman and founding father than as a man of science, challenged religion, science, and reason with his inventions. But in a time when everything was blamed on sin, it was the lightning rod, Franklin's attempt to control the heavens, that caused the greatest controversy.

Benjamin Franklin is renowned for his landmark inventions, including bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the lightning rod. Yet his own favorite invention is unknown to the general public. The glass armonica, the first musical instrument invented by an American, was constructed of stacked glass bowls and played by rubbing one's fingers on the rims. It was so popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss composed for it. In Angelic Music, Corey Mead describes how Franklin's instrument fell out of popular favor.

From the New York Times reporter whose beat is culture and ideas comes a fascinating, revelatory, and timely social history of the concept of middle age. For the first time ever, the middle-aged make up the biggest, richest, and most influential segment of the country, yet the history of middle age has remained largely untold. This important and immensely listenable book finally fills the gap.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company.

Accidents happen. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Did you realize cheese puffs, Coca-Cola, Bubble Wrap, and the Post-it note were all invented by accident? This audiobook covers fascinating origin stories of 60 everyday items that were invented by accident; that is, the inventor did not expect to make the product when the product was discovered. Not only will this audiobook share amazing stories about everyday products, but it will also inspire you. We all encounter things that go wrong, and this audiobook reminds us that when life gives lemons, we can make lemonade.

If you're Irish American or African American or Eastern European Jewish American, there's a rich literature to give you a sense of your family's arrival-in-America story. Until now, that hasn't been the case for Chinese Americans. From noted historian Mae Ngai, The Lucky Ones uncovers the three-generational saga of the Tape family. It's a sweeping story centered on patriarch Jeu Dips' (Joseph Tapes') self-invention as an immigration broker in post-gold rush San Francisco, and the extraordinary rise it enables.