Recounts the history of 100 of the most significant 20th century inventions Imagine your average day without zippers, airplanes or vacuum cleaners, without your clock radio or your personal stereo, without photocopiers. All of these devices were invented within the last hundred years and have since transformed our daily landscape. Drawing on The British Library's vast and comprehensive collection of patents, this handsomely illustrated book recounts the history of 100 of the most significant inventions of the century, decade by decade. From the photocopier to the Slinky, from genetic fingerprinting to the Lava Lamp, from the ballpoint pen to the fuel cell, Inventing the Twentieth Century is an informative, illuminating window onto the technology of the twentieth century. It's the perfect gift book for every inventor and tinkerer in your life!

Inventions In the Century by William Henry Doolittle. Inventions and Discoveries, Agriculture and its Implements, the Greatest Agriculturists, Chemistry, Medicine, Surgery, Dentistry, Steam and Steam Engines, Engineering and Transportation, Electricity, Hidraulics, etc... Combined system of drilling, ploughing and cultivating. He sowed different seeds from the same machine, and arranged that they might be covered at different depths. Tull's machines were much improved by James Cooke, a clergyman of Lancashire, England; and also in the last decade of the eighteenth century by Baldwin and Wells of Norfolk, England. Invent and experiment with seeding machines. The nineteenth century found the great mass of farmers everywhere sowing their wheat and other grains by throwing them into the air by hand, to be met by the gusts of wind and blown into hollows and on ridges, on stones and thorny places.

Excerpt from Inventions in the Century IN treating of the subject of Inventions it is prop er to distinguish them from their scientific kindred Discoveries. The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances made by man for practical purposes. The history of scientific discoveries is the record of new things found in Nature, its laws, forces, or materials, and brought to light, as they exist, either singly, or in relation, or in combination. Thus Galileo invented the telescope, and Newton discovered the law of gravitation. The practical use of the invention when turned to the heavenly bodies served to confirm the truth of the discovery. Discovery and invention may be, and often are, united as the soul is to the body. The union of the two produces one or more inventions. Thus the in vented electro-telegraph consists of the combina tion of discoveries of certain laws of electricity with an apparatus, by which signs are communicated to distances by electrical influence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.