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

society relying on steam engines and draft horses, whose nights would be sparsely and dimly lit by kerosene and coal gas, whose dominant metal would be brittle cast iron, and whose best means of long-distance communication would be a telegraphic message.

Willis Haviland Carrier (1876–1950) designed his first air conditioning system in 1902 after he realized that air could be dried by saturating it with chilled

he did not start by offering the lowest priced car in order to generate subsequently large production volumes, but he kept increasing the volume of production and converting the higher productivity into lower prices.

There were no fundamental obstacles to prevent the discovery of high-frequency electromagnetic waves years, even decades, before Hertz did so.

high temperatures (between 1,600°C and 1,700°C) generated by this process will easily remove any impurities from mixtures of wrought iron scrap and cast iron charged into the furnaces.

The highest conversion efficiencies of modern fossil-fueled plants are now up to 40–43% (compared to just 4% in 1890) and can be raised further by resorting to combined generation cycles.

These new dynamos, after additional improvements during the 1870s, were essential in order to launch the electric era

Adding the inevitable electricity losses in generation and transmission and energy costs of bauxite mining, production of alumina and electrodes, and the casting of the smelted metal raises the total rate to almost 200 GJ/t, and well above that for less efficient producers. This is an order of magnitude more than producing steel from blast-furnace

people alive in 1913 were further away from the world of their great-grandparents who lived in 1813 than those were from their ancestors in 1513.