"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 |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
As heard on Off Air with Fi and Jane!
Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple.
In Nuts and Bolts, award-winning Shard engineer and broadcaster Roma Agrawal deconstructs our most complex feats of engineering into seven fundamental inventions: the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump. Each of these objects is itself a wonder of design, the result of many iterations and refinements. Together, they have enabled humanity to see the invisible, build the spectacular, communicate across vast distances, and even escape our planet.
Tracing the surprising journeys of each invention through the millennia, Roma reveals how handmade Roman nails led to modern skyscrapers, how the potter's wheel enabled space exploration, and h
ow humble lenses helped her conceive a child against the odds. She invites us to marvel at these small but perfectly formed inventions, sharing the stories of the remarkable, and often unknown, scientists and engineers who made them possible. The nuts and bolts that make up our world may be tiny, and are often hidden, but they've changed our lives in dramatic ways.
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 Hodder & Stoughton
Nuts and Bolts has 320 pages
