Power, speed, and form : engineers and the making of the twentieth century
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Power, speed, and form : engineers and the making of the twentieth century
Princeton University Press, c2006
- : hbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Power, Speed, and Form is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939--the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the long-span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete. Beginning with Thomas Edison's system to generate and distribute electric power, the authors explain the Bell telephone, the oil refining processes of William Burton and Eugene Houdry, Henry Ford's Model T car and the response by General Motors, the Wright brothers' airplane, radio innovations from Marconi to Armstrong, Othmar Ammann's George Washington Bridge, the reinforced concrete structures of John Eastwood and Anton Tedesko, and in the 1930s, the Chrysler Airflow car and the Douglas DC-3 airplane. These innovations used simple numerical ideas, which the Billingtons integrate with short narrative accounts of each breakthrough--a unique and effective way to introduce engineering and how engineers think. The book shows how the best engineering exemplifies efficiency, economy and, where possible, elegance.
With Power, Speed, and Form, educators, first-year engineering students, liberal arts students, and general readers now have, for the first time in one volume, an accessible and readable history of engineering achievements that were vital to America's development and that are still the foundations of modern life.
Table of Contents
List of Sidebars ix List of Figures xi Preface xv Acknowledgments xxi Chapter One: The World's Fairs of 1876 and 1939 1 Chapter Two: Edison, Westinghouse, and Electric Power 13 Chapter Three: Bell and the Telephone 35 Chapter Four: Burton, Houdry, and the Refining of Oil 57 Chapter Five: Ford, Sloan, and the Automobile 79 Chapter Six: The Wright Brothers and the Airplane 103 Chapter Seven: Radio: From Hertz to Armstrong 129 Chapter Eight: Ammann and the George Washington Bridge 155 Chapter Nine: Eastwood, Tedesko, and Reinforced Concrete 176 Chapter Ten: Streamlining: Chrysler and Douglas 199 Appendix: The Edison Dynamo and the Parallel Circuit 220 Notes 223 Index 257
by "Nielsen BookData"