Written by exhibition curators, each part of the book focuses on the central thesis that invention is everywhere and fueled by unique combinations of creative people, ready resources, and inspiring surroundings. Like the locations it explores, Places of Invention shows how the history of invention can be a transformative lens for understanding local history and cultivating creativity on scales of place ranging from the personal to the national and beyond.
Cooper's book provides a photographic guide to significant sewing machines and patent models in the collections of the National Museum of American History. Out of print for many years, it was originally digitized and made available online in 2004.
the smithsonian book of invention
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We are delighted to announce that Grace Rogers Cooper's 1976 classic, The Sewing Machine: Its Invention and Development, long out of print, is once again accessible to researchers and the public. The Smithsonian Institution's mission of "diffusion of knowledge" is well suited to this web publication of a museum reference work. This pairing with the sewing machine trade literature already available on the Smithsonian Libraries Website (Sewing Machines: Historical Trade Literature in Smithsonian Collections) adds the documented history of sewing machines to its paper ephemera. Cooper's book provides a photographic guide to significant sewing machines and patent models in the collections of the National Museum of American History. This website gives easy access to Smithsonian collections for researchers and collectors to pursue their own research questions.
Like many inventions, firecrackers fireworks were created by accident... and by the search for immortality. Around 200 BC, the Chinese unintentionally invented firecrackers by tossing bamboo into fire, but it took another thousand years before true fireworks came alive. As the story goes, around 800 AD, an alchemist mixed sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (a food preservative) hoping to find the secret to eternal life. Instead, the mixture caught on fire, and gunpowder was born! When the powder was packed into bamboo or paper tubes and lit on fire, history had its first fireworks!
If you watch a fireworks show this Fourth of July, you will witness over 2000 years of danger, invention, and beauty wrapped into a simple package. From exploding bamboo to parcels of gunpowder and metals, our science -- and our world -- have come a long way in the past millennia! Even the most common science often has a wonderful and fascinating history. Who knows what the future will bring next?
Find out about the greatest inventions, inventors, and ideas from ancient history to the modern day. Inventions: A Visual Encyclopedia explores and explains discoveries throughout the ages, and introduces their inventors. From fire, stone tools, and the wheel to ploughs and paper, discover the first inventions that shaped societies and grew mighty civilizations and empires such as those in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and ancient China. Read about era-defining moments during the Digital Revolution, such as the first website developed by Tim Berners-Lee, and the growth in the use of robotics in industry and at home.
Guiding Jefferson while patents came to him for review was the belief that patents should be given to particular machines, not to all possible applications or uses of them; that mere change in material or form gave no claim; and that exclusive rights of an invention must always be considered in terms of the invention's social benefit.[8]
1790 June 27. (Jefferson to Benjamin Vaughan). "An act of Congress authorising the issuing patents for new discoveries has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. Being an instrument in granting the patents, I am acquainted with their discoveries. Many of them indeed are trifling, but there are some of great consequence which have been proved by practice, and others which if they stand the same proof will produce great effect."[9]
How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It (or The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots invention of the Modern World) is a non-fiction book written by American historian Arthur Herman. The book examines the origins of the Scottish Enlightenment and what impact it had on the modern world. Herman focuses principally on individuals, presenting their biographies in the context of their individual fields and also in terms of the theme of Scottish contributions to the world.
The book was published as a hardcover in November 2001 by Crown Publishing Group and as a trade paperback in September 2002. Critics found the thesis to be over-reaching but descriptive of the Scots' disproportionate impact on modernity. In the American market, the trade paperback peaked at #3 on The Washington Post bestseller list, while in the Canadian market it peaked at #1.
At the time of publication, the author was the coordinator of the Western Civilization Program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.[1] The book grew out of a class topic at the Smithsonian regarding intellectual life in Edinburgh in the 18th century.[2] Herman was impressed by the fact that so many prominent individuals who had a significant impact on modernity had come from such a specific geographic location and time-frame.[2]
The book is divided into two parts. The first part, Epiphany, consists of eight chapters and focuses on the roots, development, and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on Scotland and Great Britain. The roots come from an appreciation for democracy and literacy that developed from the Scottish Reformation, when John Knox brought Calvinist Presbyterianism to Scotland. He preached that God ordained power into the people and that it was for the people to administer and enforce God's laws, not the monarchy. For common people to understand God's laws they had to be able to read the Bible, so schools were built in every parish and literacy rates grew rapidly, creating a Scottish-oriented market for books and writers.
Herman wrote the book for an American audience which may not have been very familiar with Scottish history.[7] He provides a historical overview and short biographies of the most prominent Scots. The historical approach uses the Great Man Theory, that a historical narrative can be told through the lives of a few prominent figures.[1] Regarding this approach Michael Lynch of The Globe and Mail wrote, the biographies "reveal subtle but important links between these figures and their ideas, which Herman seeks to characterize, with some success, as a coherent body of distinctively 'Scottish' thought."[8]
One reviewer noted the book's "almost complete dependence on secondary sources".[7] Herman provides a section, at the end of the book, listing sources used and suggestions for further reading on each chapter. In this section, he notes that some of the most influential sources consulted included the works of Scottish historians Bruce Lenman, John Prebble, Thomas Devine, and Duncan Bruce, amongst others.
The book was published by Random House's Crown Publishing Group. The hardcover was released on November 27, 2001 and the trade paperback, published by the Three Rivers Press imprint, was released on September 24, 2002. In the US market the hardcover spent 3 weeks on The Washington Post bestseller list peaking at #5[9] followed by a 14-week run by the trade paperback, peaking at #3.[10] In the Canadian market, the trade paperback spent 80 weeks on The Globe and Mail bestseller list, peaking at #1.[11]
The British version re-titled the book The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots invention of the Modern World and released in the UK market by Fourth Estate, a HarperCollins imprint.[1] It was long-listed by the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.[12]
In The Scotsman, Graham Leicester writes that the "overblown rhetoric invites a sceptical reaction. But I suggest we just accept this extraordinary compliment graciously."[16] It was likely influenced by Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization[2][17] and the result of a marketing strategy.[1][8] Several reviewers found that Herman was successful in proving that Scots did have a disproportionate impact on modernity.[8][17][18] Herman continued this type of theme with his next book, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, published in 2004.[19]
Critics found the book well-written[1] and scholarly but with an over-reaching thesis.[15][20][21] The reviewer for the National Review defended Herman's use of the word "invented", writing that it has "an older meaning: to discover and understand. The [Scots] did not, like a number of their French counterparts, seek to construct a new world ... they instead tried to understand certain traditions and institutions that had spontaneously arisen in the course of man's work, but that were still misunderstood even by many intelligent observers."[22] In The Scotsman, reviewer George Kerevan wrote that Herman may have successfully proven his thesis but does not satisfactorily account for "why Scotland?"[23]
This ambitious book describes the many ways in which invention affects the environment (here defined broadly to include all forms of interaction between humans and nature). The book starts with nature itself and then leads readers to examine the built environment and then specific technologies in areas such as public health and energy.
Each part focuses on a single environmental issue. Topics range widely, from the role of innovation in urban landscapes to the relationship among technological innovation, public health, and the environment. Each part features an essay by a historian, an essay by a practitioner, and a "portrait of innovation" describing an individual whose work has made a difference. The mixture of historians and practitioners is critical because statements about the environment inevitably measure present and future conditions against those of the past. Early in the industrial revolution, smoke stacks were symbols of prosperity; at its end they were regarded as signs of pollution. Historical examples can also lead to the rediscovery of an old technology, as in the revival of straw bale construction. As it explores the history of invention for the environment, the book suggests many new ways to put the past to use for the common good. 2ff7e9595c
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