Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Technical Revolutions and Their Lasting Impact)

open-hearth furnaces needed commonly half a day to finish the purification of the metal.

large category of dietary and culinary innovations whose introduction created entirely new consumption habits.

Edison was a holistic conceptualizer and determined solver of the problems associated with the growth of systems…Edison’s concepts grew out of his need to find organizing principles that were powerful enough to integrate and give purposeful direction to diverse factors and components.

and the largest farms could produce it with less than 10 hours of labor

initially slow growth accelerates and then slows down as it approaches a limit and eventually stops.

Germans turned the phosphoric slag into a fertilizer by simply grinding

Typical combustion efficiencies of household fireplaces and simple stoves were, respectively, below 5% and 15%. Steam engines, which were diffusing rapidly both in stationary industrial applications and in land and sea transportation, converted usually less than 5% of coal’s chemical energy into reciprocating motion, and small water turbines were t

But the first area where mechanization, and other new modes of production, made the greatest difference to an average consumer was in the production of food. The combination of better machines (inexpensive steel plows, efficient harvesters and threshers), increased fertilizer use, improved storage, and cheaper long-distance transportation brought s

On the destructive side of the technical ledger, chemistry moved from gunpowder to nitroglycerine and dynamite and beyond to even more powerful explosives.

Every now and again something happens—no doubt it’s ultimately traceable to changes in industrial technique, though the connection isn’t always obvious—and the whole spirit and tempo of life changes, and people acquire a new outlook which reflects itself in their political behaviour, their manners, their architecture, their literature and everythin