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

and for the first time in history, their success was shaped by close links and rapid feedbacks between research and commercialization.

Airplanes fit perfectly into the class of achievements that distinguish that period from anything that preceded it: they came about only because of the combination of science, experimentation, testing, and the quest for patenting and commercialization.

In less than two decades after their commercialization, electric motors surpassed lights to become the single largest consumer of electricity in the United States.

Mechanization made mass production the norm in all modernizing economies as it began to deliver food surpluses and affordable consumer goods while cutting the labor hours and enhancing the quality of life.

even in the countries at the forefront of technical advances, the chores and challenges of everyday existence claimed inevitably much more attention than matters that, at least initially, appeared to have little bearing on everyday life.

mechanical wood pulp still accounts for about 20% of all pulp produced worldwide (FAO 2003). Its most important use is for newsprint, and it also goes into toilet paper, towels, cardboard, and building board.

The early history of car industry has inevitable parallels with the creation of an entirely new system for the generation, distribution, and conversion of electricity.

During the 1860s, most of the working women were employed as household servants,

this most common of all metallic elements is, after oxygen and silicon, the third largest constituent of Earth’s crust,