Inventing the 20th Century: 100 Inventions That Shaped the World

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and informative - a great book, I love it!!
Review: I purchased this book to help with a university project and have found it extremely informative and absorbing.
The inventions mentioned are sometimes taken for granted in every day life, while others are just plain awesome. Some are wacky and outrageous, others are very practical. The author has provided an amazing insight into the inventions with clear information and patent drawings. I have recommended this book to many others on my course and this is the best book on inventions I have ever seen. Even my course tutor has commented on the book being a 'delight'.

Rating:
Summary: 100 Inventions that shaped the world? Hardly.
Review: The subtitle to Van Dulken's "Inventing the 20th Century" is "100 inventions that shaped the world." True, the airplane, jet engine, automatic transmission, and microchip, among others, certainly have changed the world. But I find it hard to accept that Silly Putty and the Slinky fall into that category. His 100 inventions include many other inventions of questionable worth and pedigree, including several British ones that few Americans would recognize. In many instances the inventions cited by patents were not the ones that turned into the products that we are now familiar with, and his discriptions were often difficult to follow, in part because the auther writes more like a patent attorney than a historian or storyteller. The stories of many of the most significant inventions were already well known to me ---- their stories have been better told in other books, articles or documentaries that I've seen or read over the years. The more obscure inventions were not presented in any more exciting manner. The fault may have been in the author being limited by the format of one or two pages of narrative for each invention. The overall effect was that of a bland, incomplete and unsatisfying meal. You're left feeling hungry but without a desire to consume any more.

Rating:
Summary: 100 Inventions that shaped the world? Hardly.
Review: The subtitle to Van Dulken's "Inventing the 20th Century" is "100 inventions that shaped the world." True, the airplane, jet engine, automatic transmission, and microchip, among others, certainly have changed the world. But I find it hard to accept that Silly Putty and the Slinky fall into that category. His 100 inventions include many other inventions of questionable worth and pedigree, including several British ones that few Americans would recognize. In many instances the inventions cited by patents were not the ones that turned into the products that we are now familiar with, and his discriptions were often difficult to follow, in part because the auther writes more like a patent attorney than a historian or storyteller. The stories of many of the most significant inventions were already well known to me ---- their stories have been better told in other books, articles or documentaries that I've seen or read over the years. The more obscure inventions were not presented in any more exciting manner. The fault may have been in the author being limited by the format of one or two pages of narrative for each invention. The overall effect was that of a bland, incomplete and unsatisfying meal. You're left feeling hungry but without a desire to consume any more.

Rating:
Summary: "Intellectual Capital" with Global Impact
Review: This is one of those rare books which is as entertaining as it is informative. Van Dulken selects and discusses "100 inventions that shaped the world", organizing his material within ten chapters to correspond with the ten decades of the 20th century:

1900-1910 (e.g. aeroplane, air conditioning, and the vacuum cleaner)

1910-1919 (e.g. Formica®, neon lighting, and the self-service supermarket

1920-1929 (e.g. the bread slicing machine, power steering, and television

1930-1939 (e.g. the jet engine, the photocopier, and radar

1940-1949 (e.g. the ballpoint pen, the computer, and the transistor

1950-1959 (e.g. the geodesic dome, the microchip, and Velcro® fasteners)

1960-1969 (e.g. implantable pacemaker, the mouse, and the Workmate® workbench) 1970-1979 (e.g. the artificial heart, Post-it® notes, and the smart card)

1980-1989 (e.g. cellular phones, genetic fingerprinting, and the video game)

1990-1999 (e.g. cloning animals, fuel cells, and programmable materials)

Van Dulken discusses ten different inventions in each of the ten chapters, providing detailed descriptions as well as explanations of the historical context in which each was devised and by whom. In the Introduction by Andrew Phillips, the reader is told that the inventions highlighted in this book "have benefitted people of virtually every nation. Some have helped combat the despair of disease, poverty, excessive (even unendurable) labour. Other inventions -- though less illustrated by this book --have contributed to the ravages of war. What comes forth so often, however, from the examples described here is the individuality and initiative which characterizes so many inventors who helped change the world between 1900 and 1999." Quite true. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Mokyr's The Lever of Riches and Novak's The Fire of Invention.