Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

London: Bracken Books. Very Good/Very Good. 1989. First Edition. Hard Cover. Thick 8vo 1851702679 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. Slight yellowing to pages. 681 pages including the index illustrated with over 432 black and white illustrations. The pace of scientific discovery in our own age is so rapid that it is easy to forget the many important developments that occurred during the last century. Within the space of a hundred years, the railways had transformed overland travel, sail had given way to steam at sea, electricity had been harnessed to provide lighting, heating, and power for machinery, and photography, telegraphy and sound-recording had brought about a revolution in human communication. In this volume the author, Robert Routledge, describes both the chief inventions of the 1800s and some of the scientific principles behind them in a manner that could be easily understood by the general reader. There are more than 400 illustrations covering every imaginable aspect of the subject, from the construction of Brunel's massive iron ship, the Great Eastern, (sadly sold for scrap), to Edison's original phonograph. And to remind us that some advances take longer than others, there is a map of one proposed route for the underwater Channel Tunnel intended to connect England and France, which dates from 1890. Routledge has arranged the individual articles by specific subjects. Readers interested in a particular topic can quickly turn to that section without reading through the whole hook. He has also taken care to list older processes and inventions even when these have been superseded by more up-to-date models, allowing the full development of a particular branch of science to be traced throughout the preceding ninety years. In its panoramic view of nineteenth-century technological advances, this book offers a great deal of detailed description that will be of interest to the historian, the scientist, and the engineer. But more than that, it contains a wealth of information for all readers, however basic their knowledge, who ask the questions `How?' and 'Why?'. .