Explains the inner workings of a variety of modern inventions, including the washing machine, personal stereo, video recorder, toaster and hair dryer. Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.

In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. Everyday Technology is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate “big” technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold’s fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.

More than 20 cutaway illustrations expose the insides of common machines, and short captions identify individual components. Images include an electric guitar, air conditioner, laptop computer, vacuum cleaner, cell phone, and more.

Full of fascinating information and colorful graphics the pages reveal the science behind how many of today's machines work.

Everyday life in the Crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was characterized by a direct encounter of people with modernity through the consumption and use of foreign machines – in particular, the Singer sewing machine, but also the gramophone, tramway, bicycle and varieties of industrial equipment. The ‘metallic modern’ of the 19th and early 20th century Ceylon encompassed multiple worlds of belonging and imagination; and enabled diverse conceptions of time to coexist through encounters with Siam, the United States and Japan as well as a new conception of urban space in Colombo. Metallic Modern describes the modern as it was lived and experienced by non-elite groups – tailors, seamstresses, shopkeepers, workers – and suggests that their idea of the modern was nurtured by a changing material world.

Million-copy bestselling author of The Elements, Molecules, and Reactions Theodore Gray applies his trademark mix of engaging stories, real-time experiments, and stunning photography to the inner workings of machines, big and small, revealing the extraordinary science, beauty, and rich history of everyday things. Theodore Gray has become a household name among fans, both young and old, of popular science and mechanics. He's an incorrigible tinkerer with a constant curiosity for how things work. Gray's readers love how he always brings the perfect combination of know-how, humor, and daring-do to every project or demonstration, be it scientific or mechanical.In How Things Work he explores the mechanical underpinnings of dozens of types of machines and mechanisms, from the cotton gin to the wristwatch to an industrial loom. Filled with stunning original photographs in Gray's inimitable style, How Things Work is a must-have exploration of stuff--large and small--for any builder, maker or lover of mechanical things.

In his foreword to Schrödinger's Machines, Paul Davies writes, "The nineteenth century was known as the machine age, the twentieth century will go down in history as the information age. I believe the twenty-first century will be the quantum age." Perhaps the most successful scientific theory in history, quantum mechanics has already ushered in the information age with inventions like the transistor and the laser. In Schrödinger's Machines, renowned quantum physicist Gerard Milburn explores how our ever-increasing ability to manipulate atomic and subatomic processes is turning purely hypothetical situations and concepts (of a truly weird nature) into concrete, practical devices-- resulting in a complete transformation of our world view. Imagine the creation of machines the size of molecules, detectors sensitive enough to pick up the sound of a pin dropping on the other side of the earth, the fabrication of new and exotic materials, and extraordinarily powerful computers that can process information in many alternative realities simultaneously, creating a whole new type of mathematics. This isn't science fiction, but just some of the breathtaking possibilities offered by quantum technology over the next fifty years. Leaving the common sense of Newtonian machines far behind, Schrödinger's Machines is an advance preview of the strange new world ahead. Clearly presented, and with an acute awareness of recent advances in the field, it's indispensable reading for anyone interested in the future.