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Title: Ancient Inventions by Peter James, Nick Thorpe ISBN: 0-345-40102-6 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Maybe We Don't Have a Patent After All
Comment: Frequently I pause to marvel at something...something that we can do now that we couldn't do just ten years ago. Most often these things have something to do with computers or medicine.
_Ancient Inventions_ reminds me that a lot of things that we assume to be recent are really quite old. The ancient Egyptians used antibiotics contained in moldy bread to heal wounds. Maybe we moderns did not think of the idea first after all; maybe we don't have a patent.
And then there are some ideas that the ancients had that we moderns may have not thought of. We have bull fighting, but how about bull leaping? An ancient Greek picture shows a *female* athlete who has grabbed a bull by the horns, done a somersault over the bull's head onto its back, and then jumped off behind the bull. Move over bunji jumping.
_Ancient Inventions_ is a fascinating and easy to read book. Its twelve chapters cover just about every aspect of life from medicine to military technology to urban life (including plumbing) to communications. It is 620 just right pages for people who enjoy knowing about the discoveries and developments of times past.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fun for the lay "historian"
Comment: Ever wonder where the stuff you think of as everything came from? James & Thorpe have used a good range of experts and a fair amount of book reading to help them create an entertaining look at where ideas, activities, and objects come from. In 12 categories ranging from medicine to sex to sports, they look at 102 subcategories. The general introduction to the book explains why they've tackled this topic and each chapter has its own introduction that explains the categories and the reasons for including each subcategory. I wouldn't go as far as to call it "academic" or "scholarly" but its nice to see someone popularizing the periods of human history I love in a way that I can support.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fun book on the history of "things"
Comment: This was an entertaining volume on the history of some of the things we think of as "modern" inventions. Many of them were already known to me from other sources, where I came across them in preparing for my MA in history. Inventions like "Greek fire" the first flame thrower, the "Bagdad battery" a possible device for electroplating, and the early trepinning surgeries are some of those familiar to me. More surprising was the cataract surgery and plastic surgery to repair nose and ears practiced by the Romans and probably invented even earlier in India or Babylon. This is a great book for anyone who wonders "Who was the first to..."
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Title: Ancient Mysteries by Peter James, Nick Thorpe ISBN: 0345434889 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Ancient Engineers by Lyon Sprague De Camp ISBN: 0345320298 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1980 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Engineering in History by Richard Shelton Kirby, Richard Kirby ISBN: 0486264122 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Engineering in the Ancient World, Revised Edition by John G. Landels, J. G. Landels ISBN: 0520227824 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 04 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A History of Mechanical Inventions by Abbott Payson Usher ISBN: 048625593X Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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