How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines
In How Invention Begins, Lienhard reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for instance, the way in which thousands of people applied their combined inventive genius to airplanes, railroad engines, and automobiles. As he does so, it becomes clear that a collective desire, an upwelling of fascination, a spirit of the times--a Zeitgeist--laid its hold upon inventors.
Renaissance scientists paved the way for modern-day scientific thinking -- scientists didn’t just read about or discuss theories, they studied and challenged established principles and beliefs and conducted hands-on experiments to better understand how and why things happen. Renaissance Science & Invention explores the people, ideas and inventions behind the major scientific breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, anatomy and mathematics, from the engineering
Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization—home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code was only part of a rich juridical culture from 2200–1600 BCE that saw the invention of writing and the development of its relationship to law, among other remarkable firsts.
