Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subjects including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.

A fascinating and insightful biography of one of the greatest composers of all time, Johann Strauss. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Taking an approach different from (hat of earlier biographers, A. Owen Aldridge examines Voltaire's literary and intellectual career chronologically, using the methods both of comparative literature and of the history of ideas. The resulting biography portrays a fascinating personality as well as a great writer and thinker. Voltaire is revealed not only through his correspondence, here extensively quoted, but through the statements others made about him in anecdotes, memoirs, and other contemporary documents. New information is introduced regarding Voltaire's sojourn in England, his later relations with English men of letters, his domestic turmoils at the court of Frederick the Great, and his contact with French contemporaries such as Montesquieu and Diderot. For the first time in any biography, attention is given to Voltaire's extensive knowledge of Spanish literature and its influence on his own work, particularly Candide. Voltaire is portrayed as a conscious participant in the Enlightenment. In his early years he was interested primarily in aesthetics and abstract philosophy; later, he passionately dedicated himself to humanitarian causes with ideological implications. Professor Aldridge brings forward evidence pointing to the contrast between these two periods in Voltaire's life. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Established by Congress in 1901, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has a long and distinguished history as the custodian and disseminator of the United States' standards of physical measurement. Having reached its centennial anniversary, the NBS/NIST reflects on and celebrates its first century with this book describing some of its seminal contributions to science and technology. Within these pages are 102 vignettes that describe some of the Institute's classic publications. Each vignette relates the context in which the publication appeared, its impact on science, technology, and the general public, and brief details about the lives and work of the authors. The groundbreaking works depicted include: A breakthrough paper on laser-cooling of atoms below the Doppler limit, which led to the award of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics to William D. Phillips The official report on the development of the radio proximity fuse, one of the most important new weapons of World War II The 1932 paper reporting the discovery of deuterium in experiments that led to Harold Urey's1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry A review of the development of the SEAC, the first digital computer to employ stored programs and the first to process images in digital form The first paper demonstrating that parity is not conserved in nuclear physics, a result that shattered a fundamental concept of theoretical physics and led to a Nobel Prize for T. D. Lee and C. Y. Yang "Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor," a 1995 paper that has already opened vast new areas of research A landmark contribution to the field of protein crystallography by Wlodawer and coworkers on the use of joint x-ray and neutron diffraction to determine the structure of proteins

First published in 1951 to coincide with the British Festival, this book explores the developments in science which had occurred since the Great Exhibition of 1851. Covering the full range of scientific development which had emerged in that time – from fundamental physics to evolution and genetics, and from geology to medical surgery – this accessible collection of essays charts with impressive comprehension and clarity the momentous changes which had occurred in the pursuit of science since the mid-nineteenth century, and ably demonstrates the appropriateness of citing the twentieth century as the advent of the scientific age. A Century of Science will appeal to those interested in the history of science, those wishing to ground their knowledge of specific scientific disciplines in a broader understanding of the subject, and also to the general reader who values scientific progress and the questions it continues to raise.

In this "Cook’s Tour" of developments in physics and realted fields, D. Allan Bromley, Science Advisor to President Bush during 1989-1983 and past president of the American Physical Society, conveys much of the excitement and wonder that research in physics generated in the 20th century and asks what new things are in store in the next century.