scientific american inventions and discoveries

Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven R ODNEY C ARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page i 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Pageii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven RODNEY CARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii This book is printed on acid-free paper. ● ∞ Copyright © 2004 by Rodney Carlisle. 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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Carlisle, Rodney P. Scientific American inventions and discoveries : all the milestones in ingenuity—from the discovery of fire to the invention of the microwave oven / Rodney Carlisle. p. cm. ISBN 0-471-24410-4 (Cloth) 1. Inventions—History—Encyclopedias. 2. Inventions—United States—Encyclopedias. 3. Technology— History—Encyclopedias. 4. Technological innovations—Encyclopedias. I. Title. T15 .C378 2004 609—dc22 2003023258 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iv CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii General Introduction 1 Part I The Ancient World through Classical Antiquity, 8000 B.C .toA.D. 330 9 Part II The Middle Ages through 1599 81 Part III The Age of Scientific Revolution, 1600 to 1790 149 Part IV The Industrial Revolution, 1791 to 1890 223 Part V The Electrical Age, 1891 to 1934 319 Part VI The Atomic and Electronic Age, 1935 into the 21st Century 397 Index 481 11164 Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page v 11164 Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page vi W riting the essays for this encyclopedia has provided me with an opportunity to bring together thoughts, information, and ideas that drew from many sources, both literary and personal, to which I have been exposed over many years. My interest in the history of technology was stimulated by a course taken as a freshman at Harvard that was taught by Professor Leonard K. Nash. As I recall, Natural Sciences 4 or “Nat Sci Four” was suggested by other students and advisers as the appropriate course for a history major to take to meet the college’s general education requirements. I did not realize it at the time, but the course had been established by James B. Conant and was later cotaught by Thomas S. Kuhn, who would pub- lish The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Professor Nash and Thomas Kuhn developed many of the ideas together that would later appear in Kuhn’s pathbreaking work, including a focus on the scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus and expounded by Galileo. In later decades, as I was teaching in the History Department at Rut- gers University in Camden, our college adopted a similar approach to general education requirements as that established by Conant. To pro- vide a course titled “Science, Technology, and Society,” I approached a colleague in the Chemistry Department, Professor Sidney Katz, and together we offered a sweeping history of science and technology, which we often taught in summer sessions, reflecting Thomas Kuhn’s focus on the revolutions in scientific thought, as well as investigations into the social impact of innovation. Of course, a great deal has happened in the disciplines of the history of science and technology over the past decades, and our readings in the subject took us to a finer appreciation of the complex crosscurrents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 11164 Carlisle_flast.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page vii viii Acknowledgments between these two progressing fields. As Derek de Solla Price has remarked, the two fields are sister disciplines, each progressing some- times independently, sometimes one helping the other. Although it became fashionable among government policymakers after World War II to believe that technology sprang from the advances of science, his- torical studies had shown a much more complex interweaving of the two fields over the centuries. My debts of gratitude include not only those to Professor Nash for teaching the course at Harvard, taken nearly half a century ago as an undergraduate, and to Professor Katz at Rutgers for coteaching with me but also to the many students who took our own course in recent years. Although some faculty are loath to admit it, it is often the case that teachers learn more by attempting to answer the questions posed by students than they have gained by preparing their lecture notes. Often what has puzzled students about the subject can lead into the most fruitful courses of scholarly inquiry. More than once the questions they asked led to thought-provoking discussions between Professor Katz and myself over coffee in his laboratory-office. The collaboration of Professor Katz and myself was so interesting and we both learned so much that we looked forward to the courses with pleasurable anticipa- tion. Later, Professor Katz made a number of contributions to my Ency- clopedia of the Atomic Age. Using ideas we had honed in discussion, I later individually taught a course, “Galileo and Oppenheimer,” that again led to new insights from students. Surprisingly, it was a much older book that I found in a used-book store, Lewis Mumford’s 1934 study Technics and Civilization, that helped formulate my thinking about the relationship of science and technology. I had the opportunity to work with the ideas stimulated by reading that work when, through a contract at History Associates Incorporated of Rockville, Maryland, I produced a study for the Navy Laboratory/Center Coordinating Group. Due to the wisdom of How- ard Law, who served as the executive of that group, I was commis- sioned to produce a small bibliographic work evaluating more than 150 books and articles in the fields of science and technology. Our intent was to bring many of the insights and perspectives of historians of both fields to the community of naval researchers and science and technol- ogy managers. Working on other studies for the U.S. Navy through History Associ- ates Incorporated contracts helped hone my thinking about the com- plex interplays among the disciplines of science, engineering, and technology more generally. My studies of the history of naval science 11164 Carlisle_flast.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page viii [...]... encyclopedia of invention and discovery is a historical one, dividing the inventions and scientific discoveries of the human race into six periods and reviewing them in the context of their impact on broader society Organizing significant inventions in such a way, rather than in a single listing, requires some thought as to the periodization, and this introduction provides an explanation and rationale for... intensive commerce, and we explore the roots of those developments in the systems of agriculture and the uses of animal, wind, and water power In the Age of Scientific Revolution, the great discoveries of natural laws were supplemented by exploration and discovery of new lands, with improved ships and navigation equipment In the Industrial Revolution, the means of production changed from craft and shop work... great scientific discoveries, including the major laws, the most notable astronomical discoveries, and a number of findings at the microscopic level Of course, in common discussion, the term discovery is also used to describe the process of geographic exploration and the location of previously uncharted lands In fact, the discovery of the West Indies and the North American continent by Columbus and the... bridges, lighthouses, roads, and public buildings Palaces and homes had glass windows, hinged doors, simple latches, and such everyday items as tables, benches, shelves, shutters, cabinets, bottles, and metal utensils Concrete, chains, solder, anvils, and hand tools for working wood and stone were part of the craftsman’s kit, while horses pulled light carts and chariots, and oxen plowed the fields For... craftsmen and instrument makers The scientific questions raised, 11164 Carlisle_cintro.m.qxd 5/27/04 10:07 AM Page 3 General Introduction 3 particularly by the telescope and the microscope, brought a refinement of scientific observation and many new discoveries Coupled with more accurate timekeeping, thermometers, barometers, and better laboratory equipment such as glass retorts, sealed bottles, beakers, and. .. this statement by including as true discoveries the uninhabited lands found by Europeans, such as Antarctica and Pitcairn’s Island, or the Northwest Passage through the islands of extreme northern North America However, we have not attempted to include geographic discoveries in this encyclopedia but have restricted ourselves to the process of scientific discovery and technological invention As a consequence... seeds, harvesting crops, cooking food, and living in shelters, specialists emerged, with craftsmen and artists perfecting and passing down through families and apprenticeship systems such special arts as jewelry and instrument making, the fine arts, wood furniture making, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, and metal smithing These craftsmen and artists flourished in antiquity and organized into craft guilds in... our collective store of technology, some 100 or more grandparents back in time So this part of the encyclopedia, and to a large extent its second part, cannot focus on the unsolvable mystery of “who” made an invention Rather, we explore the evidence and the informed guesses about the “when” and the “where” and about the impact of the inventions and discoveries on the history of the human race 11164 Carlisle_p01.m.qxd... beginnings of mechanization of processes and innovations such as the conveyor belt and overhead crane, which would allow for mass production In the Electrical Age, consumer goods proliferated And in the Atomic and Electronic Age, the arts of war and the technology of communication transformed the world again By examining discovery and invention in this chronological and historical fashion, we look beyond... other groups settled down and domesticated some wild plants, beginning agriculture Agriculture and nomadic herding, both recorded in the Bible, led to a host of accumulated inventions and innovations in what historians have called the New Stone Age or the Neolithic Age Agriculture and herding were at the heart of the Neolithic Revolution, and much of the human heritage of arts and artifacts can be traced . iii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page i 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Pageii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All. x T his encyclopedia of invention and discovery is a historical one, divid- ing the inventions and scientific discoveries of the human race into six periods and reviewing them in the context. agriculture and the uses of animal, wind, and water power. In the Age of Scientific Revolution, the great discoveries of natural laws were supplemented by exploration and discovery of new lands, with improved