"A history of seven small inventions that rocked the world"
In Nuts & Bolts, engineer and broadcaster Roma Agrawal sets out to boil down the complex modern world of engineering into just seven fundamental inventions - the nail, spring, wheel, pump, magnet, lens and string.
It's an historical, geographical and scientific journey across centuries, continents (also space) and the world of physics, which is entertaining as well as enlightening. We learn how human ingenuity has found ways to manipulate light, gas and solid objects in such a way that they can improve our world, and Agrawal is not short of examples of the ways in which this has happened.
Each of her seven chapters examines the evolution of a different invention - to begin with, the transition of the basic nail to become the nut & bolt in (for example) the industry of shipbuilding; or the pump, at one time a device to support early irrigation in arid lands which came to achieve great things in the worlds of heart surgery and space exploration. Often, it seems, the early versions of these devices were popping up independently and coincidentally around the world to solve universal challenges, but as time has gone by it has been the individual genius of an inventor up against a specific niche problem that has led to a breakthrough.
By the end of the book, on the one hand I had come to realise how we take such simple but game-changing items for granted when at one time they would have seemed miraculous; and on the other hand I was reassured to discover that devices which for much of my life had seemed beyond understanding were actually basically simple in that they rely on the same basic physics.
The author concludes with the hope that the big win for the widespread demystification of technology, is that it may support the drive for sustainability through the fixing, repair or repurposing of much of what makes our lives tick. This is a great book for the kind of person who likes to take things to bits to see how they work - and an inspiring read for the young engineers out there who may one day apply these small things in their own moment of breakthrough brilliance.
| Primary Genre | Popular Science |
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Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale—and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump.Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments, Agrawal shows us how even our most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs. She explores an array of intricate technologies—dishwashers, spacesuits, microscopes, suspension bridges, breast pumps—making surprising connections, explaining how they work, and using her own hand-drawn illustrations to bring complex principles to life.Alongside deeply personal experiences, she recounts the stories of remarkable—and often uncredited—scientists, engineers, and innovators from all over the world, and explores the indelible impact these creators and their creations had on society. In preindustrial Britain, nails were so precious that their export to the colonies was banned—and women were among the most industrious nail makers. The washing machine displayed at an industrial fair in Chicago in 1898 was the only machine featured that was designed by a woman. The history of the wheel, meanwhile, starts with pottery, and takes us to India's independence movement, where making clothes using a spinning wheel was an act of civil disobedience.Eye-opening and engaging, Nuts and Bolts reveals the hidden building blocks of our modern world, and shows how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.
Nuts and Bolts features in the following genres: Popular Science, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, History, Inventions and inventors, History of engineering and technology, General and world history, Science: general issues, Mathematics and Science, Recommendations, History and Archaeology, Technology: general issues, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes
Nuts and Bolts is available in Paperback, Hardback
Nuts and Bolts was written by Roma Agrawal and published by W.W. Norton and Company an imprint of W. W. Norton & Company
Nuts and Bolts has 272 pages
£10.79
