Science and Techology: The Engines of Our Ingenuity

Succinct essays on the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them by Dr. John Lienhard, M.D. Anderson Professor of Mechanical Engineering Emeritus at the University of Houston and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Acoustics

721 In which Ray Dolby invents more than a hiss suppressor
[electronics, acoustics, Indian music, tape recorders, digital]

Advertising

711 In which Old Joe Camel get his nose under the tent
[drugs, DiFranza, cigarettes, advertising, law, legal, courts, scientific method]

1231 In which automobile advertising mirrored the public
[Dorris, Lexington, Ford, General Motors, Plymouth, Olds, Barnum, bicycles, merchandising]

African Americans

127 Black American inventors before the Civil War
[McCormick, Whitney, cotton gin, reaper, Davis, Blair]

158 Lewis Latimer, a Black pioneer of electric lighting
[Edison, Maxim, Bell]

146 Garrett A. Morgan: a Black American inventor
[traffic, safety]

154 Charles Richard Drew and the development of blood banks
[Black, plasma, medicine]

182 Black and White in pre-revolutionary Virginia
[Jefferson, religion]

231 The real McCoy
[Black inventor, lubrication, railroads]

236 Norbert Rillieux and multistage evaporation
[Black inventor, agriculture, thermodynamics, Civil War]

371 Martin Luther King shows us how the inventive mind works
[Black, race relations, nonviolence]

516 The Tuskegee Airman help desegregate the Army, and win WW-II
[flight, war, Black, airplane]

517 Sojourner Truth: A slave reshapes America
[Black, women, segregation, slavery, Civil War, Lincoln, Douglas, Garrison, Stowe, King, religion, abolitionist]

518 Colonial slaves teach us about smallpox inoculation
[Cotton Mather, Boston, Black, medicine, Franklin]

519 Benjamin Banneker, The Black "Poor Richard"
[almanacs, Black, Franklin, Jefferson, Washington DC, Rush]

520 Great Zimbabwe: A once great African city state
[Black, Rhodesia, iron age, architecture, masonry, archaeology]

521 Black soldiers in the Civil War: Defining freedom
[war, military]

618 Black Americans and salt: a fable about racial superiority
[medicine, heart disease, kidney, metabolism, anatomy, sugar, sickle cell anemia, Darwinian advantage, Diamond]

620 Phillis Wheatley: a Colonial slave prodigy writes poetry
[Black women, Hancock, slavery, literature, Colonial America]

659 Percy Julian, grandson of a slave, invents pharmaceuticals
[chemistry, Black, drugs, hormones, cortesone, DePauw, Glidden]

997 Gene Bullard and his SPAD: The first Black pilot
[WW-I, flight, war, military, airplanes]

987 William J. Powell seeks racial equity in the skies
[Black, transportation, race, flying, airplanes, flight, war, military, Tuskegee Airmen, Coleman]

988 The remarkable tale of Bessie Coleman, first Black woman to fly
[Black women, flight, flying airplanes, race, Texas]

1076 Slave Inventors and question, "Who owns an idea?"
[Davis, Stewart, Ned, Montgomery, patents, Donne, invention, Black, propellors, cotton]

1521 John P. Parker, slave, freedom-fighter, inventor, and businessman
[Uncle Tom's Cabin, Civil War, slavery, abolitionists, Rankin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, iron, agriculture, Black]

1533 The Triple Nickel: the first Black paratroopers become smoke jumpers
[Japanese balloon bombs, parachutes, Black paratroopers, African Americans, Oregon, forest firefighting, military, race prejudice, integration, WW-II]

1624 Garrett A. Morgan: Black American inventor
[African American, gas mask, traffic signals, safety, hair straightener, invention, sewing machines]

1709 Cap Wigington
[Cap Wigington, Percy Zachary, John Marshall High School, Webster School, architecture, St. Paul, Minnesota, Black architect, racism, African American]

Air Conditioning

684 Midgely invents ethyl gas and Freon -- a Pyhrric triumph
[Lowell, Kettering, Ethyl, Freon, chemistry, periodic table]


688 Willis Carrier wields the witchcraft that conditions our air
[Milam Building, air conditioning, psychrometry, refrigeration, Newcomen Society]

Amusement Parks

508 Ferris' Great Wheel: Thrust out into the sky!
[Chicago World's fair, roller coaster, consciousness, Jaynes, bicameral, Eiffel]

908 The Carousel, the Roller Coaster, and Ferris' great Wheel
[amusement parks, Coney Island, Chicago Columbia Exposition, Bartholomew Fair, Jonson, Midway]

Anesthesia

211 Anesthesia, another "Who got there first?" question
[medicine, chemistry, Long, Wells, Victoria, Morton]

Animals

807 Dromedary camels in Texas, a lost ecological experiment
[Marsh, Jefferson Davis, Smithsonian Institution, military, army, dromedary, Civil War, Mexican American War, cavalry]

Architecture

61 The skyscraper and the great Chicago fire
[elevator, steel, Chicago, design, iron]

77 Napoleon Bonaparte and iron construction in France
[Ecole, bridges, Eiffel, monuments]

779 Balloon-frame houses: the first unique American architecture
[Chicago, construction, Taylor, Snow, houses]

813 Thomas Jefferson falls in love, and gives Monticello its dome
[Cosway, painting, art, architecture, invention, America, Williamsburg, France, Colonial, music]

818 The porch glider: America looks outward for a season
[interior design, architecture, comfort, motion sickness, inner ear, Frank Lloyd Wright]

820 The shotgun house: an African technology, more important than you thought
[Black, architecture, sociology, slavery]

836 The brief day of the cast iron building
[Haviland, Bogardus, Derby, Coalbrookdale, Chicago Fire, architecture, art, elevators, skyscrapers, Swinbourne, Ruskin]

903 White Tower/Castle: architecture and five cent hamburgers
[food, nutrition, economics, the Great Depression]

975 Gas stations: a fading American icon
[transportation, gasoline pumps, Ford, mimetic architecture, automobiles, service]

978 Grain elevators: a new wind in American architecture
[Le Corbusier, agriculture, silos, farming]

1218 Galveston's alleys and the democratization of low incomes
[architecture, city planning, urban archaeology, sociology, Beasley, hurricane, slavery]

1234 The biggest domed structure before the Houston Astrodome
[architecture, spas, hotels, Sinclair, Pantheon, St. Peter's]

1278 The Quonset hut: a design with remarkable staying power
[WW-II, war, material, logistics, architecture, Pyle]

1426 The skyscraper: a Phoenix out of the great Chicago Fire
[elevator, steel, Chicago, design, iron]

1589 Pluto: We finally reach the outer fringe of the Solar System
[astronomy, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, telescopes, Galileo, Tombaugh, Transneptunian Objects, Asteroid Belt, Pioneer 10, planets]

1605 The brief race to build very tall buildings: 1885 to 1931
[skyscrapers, Chicago Fire, Louis Sullivan, Lang, Metropolis, elevators, load bearing walls, Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Home Insurance Building, steel frame construction]

1606 The Skycity: a concept struggling against its own Gothic weight
[Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Wannamaker's department store, skyscraper, skypricker, Gillette, architecture, urban planning, construction, sociology, socialism, Utopias]

1706 The Two Eiffel Towers
[Statue of Liberty, France, construction, Iron, steel, 1889 Paris Exhibition, esthetics, architecture, Gustave Eiffel Tower]

Arts

590 Frederic Remington, naive maker of the Western American icon
[art, sculpture, Spanish-American War, military, Custer, illustration, painting]

831 In which the invention of tubes for oil paints changes art
[painting, Van Gogh, cameras, impressionists, alchemy, medicine, pharmacology, impasto, invention]

838 The Armory Art Show and 20th century revolution
[modern painting, sculpture, unions, armory, impressionist]

842 In which John James Audubon is redeemed by his birds
[art, painting, ornithology, zoology, biology, nature, Cuvier, France, French Revolution]

906 George Stubbs and Leonardo's ghost: of horses and anatomy
[art, anatomy, Burton, forceps, midwifery, Gothic art, dissection, physiology, painting, Darwin]

971 Maya Lin: a cool young girl designs the Vietnam Memorial
[architecture, sculpture, women, Eiffel Tower, Perot]

1314 Amistad, art and revolution: artists join the fight for freedom
[slavery, painting, Cinque, Africa, law, Sengbe Pieh, Jocleyn, abolitionist, color lithography, race relations, Black]

1366 Rain, Steam, and Speed: Turner's vision of modern times
[art, painting, railways, trains, steam locomotives, Trevethick, Bury, Innes, transportation, Brunel, machine as metaphor]


1594 The Mad Scientist -- he keeps coming back
[Frankenstein, Faust, Marlowe, Shelley, literature, Goethe, science, technology, science fiction, Ingolstadt, Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stephenson]

1595 In which Alfred Stieglitz and 291 anticipate Modern
[art, photography, O'Keefe, painting, modern art, Picasso, Cezanne, Rodin, Talouse-Lautrec, Matisse, sculpture, Photo-Secession, Steichen, Armory Art Show, reality]

1690 The Arts and Crafts Movement reflected in a book for young people
[handicrafts, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Morris, John Ruskin, model airplanes, education, leanring]

Astronomy

98 George Everett Hale and BIG telescopes
[Palomar, optical, optics, astronomy]

168 The Lunar Society and 18th century revolution
[Darwin, Watt, Priestley, Boulton, Wedgwood, Herschel, Smeaton]

1006 Discovering Neptune: whom, if anyone, should we credit?
[astronomy, Airy, Challis, Adams, scientific priority, LeVerrier, Galileo, Herschel, solar system]

1461 George Everett Hale and BIG telescopes
[Palomar, optical, optics, astronomy, lenses, Mt. Polomar, Mt. Wilson, Yerkes]

1726 The Lunar Society and eighteenth century revolution
[Darwin, Watt, Priestley, Boulton, Wedgwood, Herschel, Smeaton, Benjamin Franklin, revolution, Lunar Society]

Automobiles, Carriages, and Motorcycles

125 On finding the first internal combustion-engine driven auto
[Benz, de Rochas, Marcus, invention, transportation]

133 How the 1903 Cadillac brought American cars to England
[automobile, transportation, interchangeable]

921 The motorcycle: a metaphor for motion and menace
[transportation, internal combustion, Otto, Daimler, bicycle, Harley-Davidson, flight, automobiles]

961 In which Henry Ford forgets how he got there
[automobiles, cars, transportation, Rivera, assembly line, unions, production, Greenfield Village]

1285 Carriages: A forgotten technology
[The Carriage Collection, Stony Brook Museums, gig, hack, shay, phaeton, coach, Studebaker, McAdamized roads, Holmes, Kocz]

1286 A steam-powered motorcycle, invented well before its time
[Roper, Stanley Steamer, automobile, transportation, Daimler]

1442 Walter Chrysler and the texture of fame
[The Chrysler Building, Chrysler Airflow, automobile design, Locomobile, mass production, Ziegfeld, transportation]

1444 In which ThrustSSC passes the sound barrier on land
[automobiles, Stanley Steamer, sound speed, transportation, Breedlove]

1520 In which automobile makers gradually learn aerodynamics
[transportation, design, Chrysler, cars, drag coefficient, Zeppelin]

1596 Looking for the "first" automobile
[internal combustion engine, steam car, de Rochas, Samuel Brown, Leonardo, Cugnot, Mercedes-Benz, Markus, Marcus, Shooter's Hill]

1693 Glenn Curtiss' motorcycles: before airplanes
[motorcycles, bicycles, California arrow dirigible, Charles Baldwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Sylvester Roper, Wright Brothers, engines, twin-vee, twist-grip, airplane design, Glenn Curtiss Jenny JN-4]

1713 George Seldon, Henry Ford, and Clyde Champion Barrow
[automobiles, transportation, Duryea, Gibbs, cars, Seldon, Henry Ford, Clyde Barrow, patent law, mass production, assembly line, Olds, Oldsmobile]

Bicycle

78 The development of the bicycle
[automobile, Macmillan, hobbyhorse, transportation]

1468 The evolution of the bicycle
[automobiles, macmillan, transportation, penny farthing, ordinary, safety bicycle, hobbyhorse, pedals, sprocket]

Books, Language, Libraries, and Publishing

491 Tom Swift: prophetic assembly line stories
[literature, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, invention]

981 The Library of Congress: how just over 3000 volumes shaped America in 1812
[books, printing, librarianship, cataloging, Jefferson, Madison, government]

1064 Words: not always a helpful reduction of language
[alphabet, linguistics, philology, Twain, speech, writing]

1115 New York Library's selection of the Books of the Century
[literature, censorship, intellectual freedom]

1451 Inventing the free public lending library: socialism in books
[labor movement, unions, Morrill act, Colonial America]

1636 Of books and learning in nineteenth-century America
[education, printing, paper production, textbooks, Morrill Act, libraries, Le Roy Cooley, Vassar College, teaching, science, physics]

Bridges

87 John and Washington Roebling, and the Brooklyn Bridge
[Hegel, suspension bridge, construction]

316 John, Washington, and Emily Roebling; and suspension bridges
[construction, wire rope, Lackawaxen]

1093 The sad tale of Eads' great bridge and caissons disease
[civil engineering, construction, the bends, medicine, scuba diving, piers, foundations, diving bells, Civil War]

1488 John, Washington, & Emily Roebling, and the Brooklyn Bridge
[Hegel, suspension bridges, cable, construction, women]

1517 The very odd bridge that Roebling almost built
[construction, Pittsburgh Steelers, suspension bridges, Brooklyn Bridge, statics, Three Rivers Stadium]

Business and Economics

177 Two wealthy men: Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller
[iron, steel, oil, business, money, industry]

1185 Adam Smith: of economics and natural law
[American Revolution, French Revolution, physiocrats, mercantilism, free trade, laissez faire, Industrialization]

1222 How two coincidences broke the AT&T monopoly
[MCI, Sprint, telephones, communications telephone, radio, business]

1512 The corner store: a retail outlet that is lost but not forgotten
[merchandising selling grocery store Galveston Beasley immigrants urban architecture]

1641 Aaron Montgomery Ward and the catalog that didn't belong in a store
[merchandising, selling, retail sales, wholesale sales, department stores, Sears and Roebuck]

Carbon-14 Dating

776 Carbon-14 rearranges history -- especially along the muddy Danube
[archaeology, chemistry, radiocarbon dating, Lepenski Vir]

1723 Paul Revere, The Shroud of Turin, The Vinland Map, and the problem of debunking
[Paul Revere, The Shroud of Turin, The Vinland Map, debunking, radio carbon 14 dating, chemistry, microscopy]

Cement

253 Gaining a concrete understanding of cement
[Eddystone Lighthouse, plaster, Smeaton, tuff]

Chemistry

86 The discovery of oxygen and scientific revolution
[Priestley, Lavoisier, Scheele, Kuhn, Dalton, chemistry]

933 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin builds molecular structures from Byzantine patterns of dots
[chemistry, archaeology, X-ray radiology, Thatcher, Bernal, Pauling, penicillin, vitamin B12, insulin, women, Nobel Prize, arthritis]

Children

247 Jean Piaget watches children analyze machines
[education, bicycles, psychology]

572 The Boy Scientist: A 1925 book for boys
[technology, education, engineering, Einstein, X-rays]

626 Maria Montessori, harded-headed apostle of the child's mind
[education, teaching, creativity, invention, religion, women]

1301 The Boy Mechanic: endangering boys seeking danger
[education, criminology, pipe bombs, flight, electricity, manual training]

1762 Camp Cooking and the Savage Boy Inventor
[YMCA camps, Boy Scouts, home economics, savage boy inventor, invention, cooking, food preparations, neurasthenia, Beard]

1763 Child labor, dangerous companion of economic emergence
[economics, Victorian England, Child Labor laws, Great Britain, industrialization, education]

Circus

1399 The passing of the classical circus.
[Barnum, Ringling Brothers, Astley, Hughes, animal acts, horses]

Clocks

1368 Edmund Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe: of clockwork and convervatism
[clock-making, Sam Slick, Eli Terry, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, satire, Canada, balance of trade, Big Ben, bell towers, church politics]

Colonial America

286 The musical instrument shop in Colonial Williamsburg
[violin, harpsichord, tools]

733 The Bay Psalter: Mrs. Glover and our country's first press
[Colonial America, printing, Daye, Day, Dunster, Green, Indians, Pilgrims, religion, women, Bay Psalm Book]

924 Two women: America's first and last Colonial Printers.
[printing, Jefferson, tobacco, American Revolution, Rind, Glover]

1035 Martha Ballard: memoirs of an 18th century midwife
[medicine, Colonial America, gynocology, obstetrics, women, pharmocology, abortion]

1037 Rye ergot and witches, more widespread than we thought
[medicine, witchcraft, pharmacy, agriculture, Salem, plague, Black Death, The Great Awakening, Kipling, psychology]

1146 Early Massachussetts: a cultural beachhead, not yet a new country
[water wheels, fulling mills, Atheneaum, Colonial America, education, land grant colleges, pioneers]

1317 The first iron-smelting in Colonial America: Hammersmith on the Saugus
[metal smelting, Jamestown, John Smith, John Winthrop, pig iron, cast iron, wrought iron, nails, Braintree]

1365 Colonial America, 1776: A new nation of glorious amateurs
[Fitch, Barlow, Jefferson, Monticello, Franklin, Hopkinson]

1463 An old pig iron smelter in the New Hampshire underbrush
[metallurgy, iron smelting, Colonial industry, architecture, stonework, Blake]

1471 Some thoughts about immigrants, depression, suicide & Jamestown
[Colonial America, medicine, psychology, serotonin, law]

1609 Benjamin Franklin's experiments in thermal radiation
[heat transfer, thermodynamics, light, science, radiation, thermal emissivity of skin]

1611 Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather: ideologies diverge and converge
[Colonial America, smallpox vaccination, inoculation, Poor Richard's Almanac, Boston Philadelphia, Puritans, Thomas Bond, hospitals]

Computers

2 The Jacquard loom and the invention of the computer
[weaving, Babbage, cards, textile]

27 Vannevar Bush and the great Rockefeller Differential Analyzer
[analog, digital, computer]

152 John Atanasoff's invention of the digital computer
[Sperry, design, Honeywell, Mauchly, ENIAC]

243 What ever became of Babbage's Analytical Engine?
[computer]

401 Herman Hollerith streamlines the 1890 Census and starts IBM
[computer, business, invention]


685 Vannevar Bush tries to predict our world in 1945
[digital computer, analog computer, analogue, NACA, future, information storage, library, books]

1059 The computer invents itself -- despite our best efforts
[Kilby, Noyce, IBM, Fairchild, Texas Instruments, INTEL, Integrated circuits, microprocessors, Babbage, chip, microcomputer, software, Dummar, DEC, innovation]

1145

Jacquard, Babbage, Hollerith, IBM: from weaving to computers
[textiles, census, analytical engine]

1297 Ramon Verea's calculating machine: inventing to make a point
[computers, Hispanic, Spanish, calculator, Jaquard, Mercantile economy, engineering, Hispanic]

1319 Vannevar Bush and the great Rockefeller Differential Analyzer
[analog computers, digital computers, MIT, Compton]

1753 In which Vannevar Bush cannot cross his Jordan River
[Vannevar Bush, Science, government, Modern technology, space program, moon landing, digital, analog, information storage, information access]

Consumerism

315 The 1909 Sears-Roebuck catalog and 20th century America
[Montgomery-ward, manufacturing, typewriter, phonograph]

346 America learns consumerism
[advertising, design, retail sales]

1755 A consumer report: lowbrow means to a better life
[consumers, consumerism, consumer reports, fast foods, cheap housing, supermarkets, design, econonomics, spending]

Constitution

709 The US Constitution: A mirror of the Iroquois Nation
[American Indians, Native Americans, government, Canassatego, constitution, political science, Franklin]

1003 Engrossing -- and dramatizing -- the US Constitution
[printing, government, political science, Washington, Franklin, law, legal documents]

1078 Thoroughbreds designed by a committee: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the King James Bible
[Jefferson, cooperation, Chesterton, literature]

Criminology

71 The Guillotine and the democratization of death
[execution, France, Rumford, Lavoisier, death]

179 On the Invention of the electric chair
[death, Tesla, Edison, Faust, electricity]


374 The Cubitt treadmill: a prison "reform" that failed in America
[power, penology, sociology, mills]

1034 Sing Sing prison: an ongoing early American experiment in penology
[penal system, Lawes, jail]

1448 The Guillotine and the democratization of death
[Guillotin, Lavoisier, death, execution, France, Rumford, capital punishment, beheading, capitis amputatio, torture]

1622 Fingerprints, crime detection, and identification
[forensic, evidence, Alphonse Bertillion, retinal scans, photography, DNA, FBI, identification, fingerprinting]

Cultural History of Technology

1600 Henry Adams ponders the Virgin and the Dynamo
[science, medieval architecture, Langley, 1900 Paris exhibition, Chartres cathedral]

Dentistry

1455 A brief history of dentistry and pain
[dentist, dentistry, medicine, anesthesia, teeth, tooth extraction]

Design

96 Streamlining the American public
[design, automobile, airfoil]

255 The Chrysler Airflow: the Car of the Future
[design, automobile, transportation]

592 Shaping the Shaker gift of simplicity
[religion, communal, communism, Civil War, architecture, design, buzz saw, table saw, clothespin, weaving, furniture, invention]

812 Running dogs and Thomas Jefferson help us invent comfort
[interior design, domestic, home, Rybczynski, psychology]

814 Charles and Ray Eames recreate furniture in a child's world
[architecture, art, interior design, sculpture, children's toys, play, furniture, chairs, Saarinen]
1480 Streamlining and the American public
[design, automobiles, airfoil, tailfins, fluid flow, art]

1759 Raymond Loewy, the man who made Modern
[Raymond Loewy, modern design, art nouveau, art deco, streamlining]

Disasters

103 Covering up Soviet technological disasters
[Russia, flight, safety]

282 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Failure -- the reenactment of an old disaster
[safety, suspension bridge, accidents]

1135 Trying to hold a river that doesn't want to be held
[Mississippi delta, Atchafalaya, flood control, Louisiana, silt, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, civil engineering]

a1138 Texas City, Roseburg, World Trade Center, Oklahoma City: a story of fertilizer and cigarettes
[industrial safety, terrorism, chemistry, logging]

1237 Why did the hindenburg really burn?
[pyrotechnics, accidents, disasters, flight, airships, balloons, blimps, transportation, Zeppelins, fire, chemistry]

1262 An 18-century environmental disaster in Brittany, France
[lead mining, ecology, environmental impact, flooding, Diderot, lawsuit, Duhamel]

1266 In which Mrs. O'Leary is absolved of the Great Chicago Fire
[fire fighting, urban, cities, women]

1325 The day Mulholland's St. Francis Dam broke
[civil engineering, construction, Los Angeles water supply, disaster, San Francisquito Creek, expertise]

1391 The Johnstown Flood. They didn't see it coming
[Carnegie, Barton, hydraulics, earth fill dams, civil engineering, construction, Bessemer steel, disasters]

Education

1708 The school system, and the father, that produced Louisa May Alcott
[education, Houston Teacher's Institute, Paul Cooke, Louisa May Alcott, teaching, school systems, creativity Emerson, Thoreau]

Electricity

171 Electric power comes to Telluride, Colorado
[generator, Edison, Pelton, mining]

174 Nikola Tesla -- another sort of creative mind
[Yugoslavia, Edison, Westinghouse, electricity, Rayleigh]

510 Ben Franklin, electricity, and revolution
[lightning rods, Louis XV]

1323 Fleming, the light bulb, and the vacuum tube
[Edison Effect, electricity, electronics, diode, fundamentalism, evolution]

1327 Electricity in Everyday Life in 1904
[electronic communication, mass media, telephone, radio, books, future prediction telegraph, electric motors, light bulbs, Gutenberg]

1570 GE, light bulbs, and the product-driven innovation cycle
[General Electric, invention, design, manufacturing, Langmuir, electric light bulb, heat transfer, cooling, argon, deposition]

1571 In which the author of Oz contemplates electricity
[L. Frank Baum, electrical, Edison, Tesla, Wonderful Wizard of Oz, future]

1656 Electric power comes to Telluride, Colorado
[electric generator, generating electricity, dynamo, Telluride Colorado, Westinghouse, Pelton wheels, gold mining, Keokuk Dam, technological change, American West, Edison, Pelton, direct current, alternating current]

Elevator and Escalator

250 Escalator: the magical stairways
[steam, exhibition, electricity, Otic, Reno]

279 The Smithsonian acquires a domestic hydraulic elevator
[Otis]

320 On providing and elevator for the Eiffel Tower in 1889
[construction, Otis, exhibition, buildings]

Engineering

189 The two Eiffel towers
[Statue of Liberty, France, construction, Iron]

765 Gustave Eiffel builds a Tower, a vision, and still more
[architecture, construction, structures, bridges, ironwork, Bloy, deMaupassant, radio, aerodynamics, Wright Brothers]

1608 Three scale models of structures, with vastly different weights
[Eiffel Tower, Washington Monument, Boeing 727, density of metals and stone, civil engineering, structural mechanics, steel frame construction, Chicago balloon frame, beam design, architecture]

Engines

64 Rudolf Diesel and his wonderful engine
[engine, power, priority, internal combustion]

1336 In which Diesel engines violate their own metaphor
[thermal efficiency, power plants, internal combustion, gasoline, transportation, ships, marine engines]

1435 Rudolf Diesel, his engine, and a look at invention
[power, priority, internal combustion, coal tar, synthetic fuels]

Environment and Environmentalism

446 The Mt. Graham red squirrel and the U. of Ariz. observatory
[environmentalists, telescope, biology, regulation, forest]

468 The Man-made Infestation of Starlings in America
[ecology, environment, birds, biology, Darwinian selection]

595 George Perkins Marsh, a pioneering environmental scholar
[ecology, camel, linguistics, philology, Vermont, pollution]

1211 Theodore Roosevelt and the mad Marquis create Medora ND
[National Forests, cattle, Nobel Peace Prize, agriculture, meat packing, railroads, American West]

Espionage

1496 Mrs. Greenhow, the first great Confederate spy
[Civil War, espionage, Manassas, Battle of Bull Run, women]

Evolution

494 Lysenko's mad Marxist evolutionary theory
[genetics, Russia, Soviet, McCarthy, communism, Lamark, Mendel]

617 Darwin: a racist champion of human rights
[evolution, Tahiti, missionary, Lincoln, slavery, science, Black, Gould]

750 Louis Agassiz founders on evolution in the Galapagos
[biology, Gould, James, Lowell, geology, creationism]

824 The Scopes trial: a sinister cloud behind a comic opera
[anthropolgy, evolution, Bryan, Darrow, creationism, intolerance, Dayton]

1260 Darwin boards the Beagle and sails into history
[Fitzroy, theory of evolution, Galapagos, biology, geology, Lyell, religion]

1371 The great evolution war at Oxford in 1860
[Darwin, religion, evolution, biology, Samuel Wilberforce, Darrow, Chambers, Owen, Darrow, Bryan, Scopes Trial, Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection]

Exploration and Mapping

43 Vespucci and the naming of America
[Columbus, Waldseemuller, exploration, geography, transportation]

932 In which Martin Frobisher looks for the Northwest Passage
[Drake, cartography, geography, sailing ships, navigation, Dee, Baffin Island, gold, Inuit Indians, risk]

1008 Who really were the discoverers of America before Columbus?
[Madoc, Celtic, Celts, Welsh, Wales, Columbus, Vikings, exploration, John Dee, St. Brendan, legends, myths]

1240 A search for the Northwest Passage gives cause to learn geography
[Frobisher, McClure, Hudson's Bay, Franklin, Arctic Ocean, exploration, Canada]

1241 The search for Franklin and the search for the Northwest Passage
[geography, Arctic exploration, Schwatka, Inuits, Canada, Stanley, Livingstone]

1350 Vespucci and the naming of America
[Columbus, Waldseemuller, exploration, geography, transportation, oxygen, Priestly, Scheele, Lavoisier]

1692 Charles Hall's star-crossed attempt to reach the North Pole
[Arctic Ocean exploration, Charles Hall, Baffin Ellesmere Islands, Greenland, North Pole, Polaris, survival, arsenic poisoning, Joe Ebierbing]

1767 Weighing the near and far wake of Lewis and Clark
[Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, slave York, Sacagawea, Sacargewea, Sacajawea, exploration, exploring, west, slavery, black, suicide, appendicitus, Missouri Territory, Louisianna Purchase, Jefferson, Indian Affairs, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Sergeant Floyd]

Fax

1433 The invention of the FAX, and the FAX newspaper
[Stewart, facsimile copies, telegraph, Korn, Finch, electronic communication, radio, Internet]

Fire

974 A visit to the fire station
[fire fighting museum, Beaumont, pumps, disasters, Chronkite, New London, explosions, earthquakes]

1524 The other great fire of 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin
[disasters, Chicago Fire, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, Michigan, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, news reporting]

Flight

21 Santos-Dumont, Zeppelin, and the great airships
[Giffard, dirigible, balloons, flight, airplane]

32 The Wright brothers battle for priority over Langley
[Aerodrome, Walcott, Curtiss, Abott, NASA, flight]

34 The Douglas DC-3: an airplane for all seasons
[transportation, flight, Rockne, Fokker triplane, DC-1, DC-2, Shang-Ri-La]

37 The first twenty years of transatlantic flights
[Zeppelin, Lindbergh, Alcock, Brown, Ortieg, transportation, Ryan]


39 Balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard, the first barnstormer
[flight, Franklin, transportation, Jeffries, Washington, Philadelphia]

67 The story of a failed airplane design -- the XP-75
[design, Ford, Berlin, General Motors, Loren, flight]

84 Thomas Sopwith's hundredth birthday
[flight, von Richtofen, transportation, war, aircraft]

85 The development of the helicopter
[Forlanini, da Vinci, aircraft, flight, transportation, Sikorsky, Cornu, autogyro]

112 The failure of the Comet jet-liner, and Nevil Shute's anticipation of it.
[literature, airplanes, safety, design]

114 The brief day of the great flying boats
[flight, transportation, Martin, Hughes, seaplanes]

118 The English and 18th century ballooning
[England, Lunardi, flight, transportation, invention]

162 Otto Lilienthal and Orville Wright -- one died and the other lived
[flight, gliders, Chanute]

172 Herbert J.L. Hinkler, Australian almost-hero of aviation
[flight, transportation, Australia]

184 Count von Zeppelin learns about flying in St. Paul, Minnesota
[balloons, dirigible, Hindenburg, flight, transportation]

188 We build a dirigible to get to the gold rush
[America, Giffard, balloon, transportation, flight, Porter]

254 Charlie Taylor builds the Wright Brother's engine
[flight, invention, design, Ford]

283 An 1869 Harper's article on flight
[transportation, ornithopters, Wright Brothers, internal combustion]

302 On the purpose pursued by airplane inventors
[war, Wright]

331 Greth's California Eagle and Baldwin's California Arrow fly over San Francisco
[flight, transportation, airship, dirigibles]

322 Marriot's Avitor airship and the California Gold Rush
[transportation, flight, balloons, dirigibles, Porter]

349 Morrel's California Ariel: a great forgotten dirigible failure
[flight, transportation, balloon, Zeppelin]

373 Flying like a bird: on mimicking life with machines
[biology, flight, airplane, design, invention, transportation]


391 Simplicity gives America its 1st jet fighter, the Lulu-Belle
[Skunk Works, airplane, flight, war, invention, design]

415 The chequered history of observation balloons
[Garnerin, Nero, Walpole, France, Franklin, Napoleon, McClellan]

432 John Montgomery's airplane and its prophet, Victor Loughead
[Lockhead, flight, transportation, Chanute, California, gliders]

507 Igor Sikorsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff make airplanes
[helicopters, airplanes, transportation, Pushkin, design, Russia, WW-I, WW-II, seaplanes, amphibians]

615 Learning to fly: a reflection on learning to fail
[invention, design, Wright Brothers, flight, transportation]

648 Orville Wright and Amelia Earhart try to read flight's future
[transportation, commercial airlines, seaplanes, women]

768 120 years of flight gives birth to the Wright Brothers
[Jeffries, Blanchard{'s balloon}, dirigible, Robertson, Lougheed, Lockheed, airplane, transportation]

827 German Zeppelins achieve failure in their success over London
[war, airships, airplanes, flight, bombing, transportation]

927 The Wright Brothers manage to fly when everyone else fails
[flight, transportation, invention, stability, control, airplane]

1062 In which Charles Lindbergh decides who to be
[transportation, ecology, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, flight, environment, Tasaday]

1070 Wrong Way Corrigan -- a last bit of fun before WW-II
[transatlantic flight, Lindbergh, radio, airplanes]

1120 George Cayley fathers modern aerodynamics in 1809
[flight, transportation, lift, drag, steam power, airfoils, Wright brothers, Newton, dimensional analysis, gliders, similitude, streamlining]

1129 In which Alphonse Penaud invents the model airplane
[psychology, flight, depression, suicide, aerodynamics, dyslexia, Giffard, helicopter, Wright brothers]

1142 The accumulation of empirical data in the legends of flight
[Daedalus, Icarus, Firman, Firnas, William of Malmesbury, Eilmer, Wright Brothers, aerodynamics]

1144 A Fokker D-VII mysteriously lands on an Allied airstrip
[air war, flight, WW-I, heraldry, von Beaulieu-Marconnay]

1209 Early fliers -- all seem to've been good-looking and literate
[Quenby, Coleman, Markham, Earhart, Johnson, Lindbergh, Gann, Shute, St. Exupery, Lincoln, literature, women, writing]

1223 Ghosts from the sky: a visit to the Oshkosh Fly-in
[aircraft, airplanes, aviation, flight, air exhibition, preservation, museums]

1225 Lincoln Beachey, first great daredevil of heavier-than-air flight
[aircraft, airplanes, exhibition flying]

1233 Baden-Powell flies in balloons, airplanes, and even kites
[flight, war, aeronautics, boy scouts, military]

1236 In which an old man finally flies in a B-17
[military, aerial warfare, flight, airplanes, bombers]

1335 Santos-Dumas, Zeppelin, and the great airships
[Aerodrome, Walcott, Curtiss, Abott, NASA, flight]

1342 The Wright Brothers' fight for priority over Langley
[Aerodrome, Smithsonian, Walcott, Curtiss, Abott, NASA, flight]

1351 Balloonists Jean-Pierre and Marie Blanchard, the first barnstormers
[flight, Franklin, transportation, Jeffries, Washington, Philadelphia, women]

1357 An airplane propeller test facility, twelve years before the Wright Brothers
[Maxim, aerodynamics, machine gun, flight, balloons, invention]

1362 The first twenty years of transatlantic flights
[Zeppelin, Markham, Lindbergh, Alcock, Brown, Ortieg, transportation, Ryan]

1409 The Douglas DC-3: an airplane for all seasons
[transportation, flight, Rockne, Fokker triplane, DC-1, DC-2, Shang-Ri-La]

1438 The story of a failed airplane design -- the XP-75
[design, Ford, Berlin, General Motors, Loren, flight, production]

1489 Inventing the helicopter: harder than it looked
[Forlanini, Sikorski, Cornu, Wright Brothers, Penaud, Leonardo da Vinci, aircraft, design, transportation, flight, autogyro]

1510 Thomas Sopwith's hundredth birthday
[flight, von Richtofen, transportation, Falklands, war, military aircraft, triplane, snipe, pup, Hawker Harrier]

1578 The brief day of the great flying boats
[flight, transportation, Martin M-130, Hughes, seaplanes, Boeing 314, Hercules, Spruce Goose, Yankee Clipper, Sikorsky, Fabre]

1579 Five years before we found out about the Wright Brothers!
[flight, transportation, Curtiss, Lilienthal, Chanute, gliders, Langley, Puck Magazine, Kitty Hawk, Dumont, technological acceptance, expectation, dirigibles, balloons]

1587 In which airplanes gradually learn to wage war
[military airplanes, World War I, design technological evolution, bombers, fighters, observation balloons, Manfred von Richthofen, synchronized machine gun]

1588 The Nieuport 17, early harbinger of the finished WW-I fighter
[SPAD, Sopwith Camel, Fokker Triplane, Fokker D-VII, Nieuport 28, Fokker Eindecker, military airplanes, World War I, synchronized machine gun, monoplane, biplane, triplane]

1648 Building a dirigible to get to the California gold rush
[America, Giffard, balloon, transportation, flight, Rufus Porter, Zeppelins, Thoreau, airships, flight, California Gold Rush, dirigible]

1650 Learning about the stability of aeroplanes in 1916
[WW-I, aerodynamics, airplane design, engineering, Eliot, flying, flight]

1659 Otto Lilienthal and Orville Wright -- one died and the other lived
[flight, gliders, Chanute, typhoid fever, Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright, Lilienthal]

1682 Count von Zeppelin learns about flying in St. Paul, Minnesota
[balloons, dirigible, Hindenburg, flight, transportation, Minnesota, invention, military aviation]

1696 Harriet Quimby, first American woman licensed to fly
[Women, flight, flying, airplanes, transportation, Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, John Moisant, Matilde Moisant, English Channel, Bleriot, Titanic, Earhart]

1715 The first flight around the world -- in 175 days
[flight records, distance flying, Douglas Aircraft Company, Army Air Service, Liberty engines, around the world]

1727 Flying Down to Rio: Making flight safe; keeping flight dangerous
[musical comedies, movies, Flying Down to Rio de Janiero, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, DH-4, Ford Trimotor, DC-3, transportation, Wilbur Wright, barnstorming, daredevils]

1729 The wide angle lens: looking at earth from on high
[Le Corbusier, Lindbergh, airplanes, Balloons, aerial photography, urban design, fascism, WW-II, Nazis, ecology]

1737 A Reflection airplanes, war, and the Krupp Works
[Big Bertha, Dicke Bertha, artillery, howitzers, aerial warfare, Zeppelins, dirigibles, bombing, war, military, Nuremberg trials, Alfred Krupp, Bertha Krupp, Gustav Krupp]


1738 Maxim's airplane
[Ader, flight, transportation, Wright, invention, Maxim's aeroplane, airplanes, Maxim gun, Hiram Maxim, Hudson Maxim, war]

Food

1063 The democratization of ice cream
[food, sociology, women, dessert]

1080 Food in the old Republic of Texas ("The Republic of Porkdom")
[Houston, Santa Anna, nutrition, health, corn, diet]

1324 C rations: Armies trying to travel on their stomachs
[food, nurishment, nutrition, army, military, mess hall, MRE, field rations, C rations]

Genetics

629 Johann Gregor Mendel: the shy creator of modern genetics
[peas, chromosomes, biology, zoology, Darwin, science]

Geology

1049 Hugh Miller: a fundamentalist radicalizes 19th century geology
[Darwin, evolution, suicide, Bible, Genesis, mental illness]

Geography

1462 Jedidiah Morse, geographer and Samuel F. B. Morse's father
[cartography, mapmaking, Calvinism, religion, geography, Native Americans, Indians, telegraph]

Government Policy

823 The PWA shapes 21st century America -- a different view of government spending
[welfare, socialism, Hoover Dam, Holland Tunnel, music education, architecture, sanatoriums, Chaffey, construction]

980The G.I. Bill draws a whole generation back into the mainstream of American life
[education, government spending, military, handicaps]

Hispanics

963 How General Santa Anna went on from the Alamo to create the American chewing gum industry [frankincense, resin, tension, invention, psychology, serotonins, rubber, chicle, sapodilla, Adams]

History of Technology

49 Some technology that we don't see when we first look
[horn, gears, 3-M, invention]

55 How we name our machines
[flight, airplane, refrigerator, engine, machine, computer, steam engine, automobile]

65 Some summary thoughts after the first 64 episodes
[Einstein, Edison, education]

66 Technologies that put an end to record-setting
[speed, aircraft, microwave, transportation]

149 Thoughts on the extent of technological change in one generation
[generation, tecnological, change, information revolution]

193 A picture of New York Harbor painted in 1852
[artist, Lane, ships, steamboats, transportation, Gold Rush]

198 Dionysius Lardner looks at a rapidly changing world
[handbooks, power, steam, coal, conservation, water power]


202 A look at Edwardian patents: 1901-1902
[perpetual motion, Fleming, radio tube, flight]

203 The Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1768 to now
[dictionary, encyclopedia, Industrial Revolution]

356 The folly of naming the first inventor
[light bulb, Edison, Grove, electricity, steamboat, Fitch, Davy, invention, Swan, de la Rue]

447 Synthetic and real things in 1910 America
[production, Santayana, manufacturing, Chaplin, society, advertising, environment]

454 Arcana of Science and Art: Changing the world in 1832
[Industrial Revolution, vanadium, thermostat, flare, England, America, silk, invention, design, Babbage, Somerville, Blake]

471 Have I really seen technological change in my lifetime?
[technology, icebox, refrigerator, radio]

766 The American farm windmill: hi-tech fruit of 40 years work
[agriculture, power generator, Wheeler, Burnham, Halladay, Perry, Chicago World's Fair]

869 The American Centennial issue of Manufacturer and Builder
[magazines, science and technology, machinery, oleo margarine, Twain, 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition, metric system, Edison, Darwin, Bell, telephone, Scientific American]

1055 Reflections on roller skates, roller blades, and stability
[children,