The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee tells the story of innovation and enterprise creation in Milwaukee during the Century of Progress--the hundred years starting after the conclusion of the US Civil War. It was a remarkable era. Milwaukee was one of the principal centers of industrial innovation in the United States and became known as "the Machine Shop of the World."As the name of the book implies, the book features the incredible machines built in the Milwaukee area during this period. In the process, it highlights the engineers who created these machines and summarizes the history of the numerous companies that helped the greater Milwaukee area achieve prominence in industrial design and manufacturing.In telling the story of Milwaukee's industrial history, the book discusses over one-hundred engineering accomplishments, summarizes individual stories of over seventy early Milwaukee companies, provides the biographies of dozens of engineering innovators, and discusses the significance of their engineering achievements. Richly illustrated, the book contains hundreds of photographs and drawings to help tell the story of industrial Milwaukee.The stories of industrial Milwaukee are not just of historical curiosity. The engineering innovation that occurred during this period resulted in commerce that was essential to the development of the City and to the livelihood of thousands of its citizens. Many of these companies survive and several have grown to become major international firms. Their stories reveal important characteristics that may help to point the way toward enhanced innovation and commerce in the future.As noted by John Gurda, Milwaukee writer and historian, "Until the Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, the stories of these innovations and the men behind them had been told largely in fragmentary fashion--an article here, a scholarly reference there. Tom Fehring has assembled the entire cast of characters in a single book that is a testament to talent, an ode to ingenuity, and a singular contribution to the history of American industry."

The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee tells the story of innovation and enterprise creation in Milwaukee during the Century of Progress-the hundred years starting after the conclusion of the US Civil War. It was a remarkable era. Milwaukee was one of the principal centers of industrial innovation in the United States and became known as "the Machine Shop of the World." As the name of the book implies, the book features the incredible machines built in the Milwaukee area during this period. In the process, it highlights the engineers who created these machines and summarizes the history of the numerous companies that helped the greater Milwaukee area achieve prominence in industrial design and manufacturing. In telling the story of Milwaukee's industrial history, the book discusses over one-hundred engineering accomplishments, summarizes individual stories of over seventy early Milwaukee companies, provides the biographies of dozens of engineering innovators, and discusses the significance of their engineering achievements. Richly illustrated, the book contains hundreds of photographs and drawings to help tell the story of industrial Milwaukee. The stories of industrial Milwaukee are not just of historical curiosity. The engineering innovation that occurred during this period resulted in commerce that was essential to the development of the City and to the livelihood of thousands of its citizens. Many of these companies survive and several have grown to become major international firms. Their stories reveal important characteristics that may help to point the way toward enhanced innovation and commerce in the future. As noted by John Gurda, Milwaukee writer and historian, "Until the Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, the stories of these innovations and the men behind them had been told largely in fragmentary fashion-an article here, a scholarly reference there. Tom Fehring has assembled the entire cast of characters in a single book that is a testament to talent, an ode to ingenuity, and a singular contribution to the history of American industry."

The Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee tells the story of innovation and enterprise creation in Milwaukee during the Century of Progress-the hundred years starting after the conclusion of the US Civil War. It was a remarkable era. Milwaukee was one of the principal centers of industrial innovation in the United States and became known as "the Machine Shop of the World." As the name of the book implies, the book features the incredible machines built in the Milwaukee area during this period. In the process, it highlights the engineers who created these machines and summarizes the history of the numerous companies that helped the greater Milwaukee area achieve prominence in industrial design and manufacturing. In telling the story of Milwaukee's industrial history, the book discusses over one-hundred engineering accomplishments, summarizes individual stories of over seventy early Milwaukee companies, provides the biographies of dozens of engineering innovators, and discusses the significance of their engineering achievements. Richly illustrated, the book contains hundreds of photographs and drawings to help tell the story of industrial Milwaukee. The stories of industrial Milwaukee are not just of historical curiosity. The engineering innovation that occurred during this period resulted in commerce that was essential to the development of the City and to the livelihood of thousands of its citizens. Many of these companies survive and several have grown to become major international firms. Their stories reveal important characteristics that may help to point the way toward enhanced innovation and commerce in the future. As noted by John Gurda, Milwaukee writer and historian, "Until the Magnificent Machines of Milwaukee, the stories of these innovations and the men behind them had been told largely in fragmentary fashion-an article here, a scholarly reference there. Tom Fehring has assembled the entire cast of characters in a single book that is a testament to talent, an ode to ingenuity, and a singular contribution to the history of American industry."

Thanks to the city's large industrial base, factories quickly retooled and mobilized for wartime production. Locals sacrificed their lives for the cause. Through past interviews and archival materials, author Meg Jones reveals these and other patriotic stories.

From City Hall to the Pabst Theater, reminders of the past are part of the fabric of Milwaukee. Yet many historic treasures have been lost to time. Blocks of homes and apartments replaced the Wonderland Amusement Park. A quiet bike path now stretches where some of fastest trains in the world previously thundered. Today's Estabrook Park was a vast mining operation, and Marquette University covers the old fairgrounds where Abraham Lincoln spoke. Author Carl Swanson recounts these stories and other tales of bygone days.

The gripping history of electricity and how the fateful collision of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.