American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm - Softcover

Hughes, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140097414 ISBN 13: 9780140097412

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1990

Synopsis

This riveting story of America's love affair with technology provides remarkable portraits of the lives and times of the early inventors--Edison, Bell, the Wright brothers, and charts the changing modes of invention from the age of independent innovation to today's corporate research labs and vast technological systems. This is the powerful and dramatic tale of our nation's incessant impulse to invent and discover, and of our complex relationship with the fruits of this impulse--a relationship that finds us liberated, dependent, enthusiastic, and skeptical all at once.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The book that helped earn Thomas P. Hughes his reputation as one of the foremost historians of technology of our age and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, American Genesis tells the sweeping story of America's technological revolution. Unlike other histories of technology, which focus on particular inventions like the light bulb or the automobile, American Genesis makes these inventions characters in a broad chronicle, both shaped by and shaping a culture. By weaving scientific and technological advancement into other cultural trends, Hughes demonstrates here the myriad ways in which the two are inexorably linked, and in a new preface, he recounts his earlier missteps in predicting the future of technology and follows its move into the information age.

About the Author:

Thomas P. Hughes (1923-2014) was the Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hughes received honorary doctorates from Northwestern University and the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, and was a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He was the author or editor of eleven books, including American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0140097414
• ISBN 13: 9780140097412
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544