Frank Whittle (Icon Science)

Author: Andrew Nahum
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785782568
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
The story of the jet engine has everything: genius, tragedy, heroism, a world war, the individual vs. the state, and an idea that would change the world. Frank Whittle always maintained that he was held back by a lack of government support. At the very moment in 1943 when his invention was unveiled to the world, his company, Power Jets, was forcibly nationalised. Yet Whittle's brilliance, charm and charisma helped him recruit major support from the British government and the RAF, who gave him the green light to build a jet engine at a time when to do so made little sense. Here is a story of what pushing technology to its limits can achieve - and the effect that such achievement can have on those involved.

Frank Whittle

Author: Andrew Nahum
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 9781785782411
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The story of the jet engine has everything: genius, tragedy, heroism, a world war, the individual vs. the state, and an idea that would change the world. Frank Whittle always maintained that he was held back by a lack of government support. At the very moment in 1943 when his invention was unveiled to the world, his company, Power Jets, was forcibly nationalised. Yet, as Andrew Nahum shows in this brilliantly researched book, Whittle's innovative brilliance, charm and charisma helped him recruit major support from the British government and the RAF, who gave him the green light 'to build a jet engine' at a time when to do so made little sense. Frank Whittle: Invention of the Jet is a story of what pushing technology to its limits can achieve and the effect that such achievement can have on those involved. 'Read it and] learn more about what really happened.' Guardian

Knowledge is Power (Icon Science)

Author: John Henry
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785782517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Francis Bacon - a leading figure in the history of science - never made a major discovery, provided a lasting explanation of any physical phenomena or revealed any hidden laws of nature. How then can he rank as he does alongside Newton? Bacon was the first major thinker to describe how science should be done, and to explain why. Scientific knowledge should not be gathered for its own sake but for practical benefit to mankind. And Bacon promoted experimentation, coming to outline and define the rigorous procedures of the 'scientific method' that today from the very bedrock of modern scientific progress. John Henry gives a dramatic account of the background to Bacon's innovations and the sometimes unconventional sources for his ideas. Why was he was so concerned to revolutionize the attitude to scientific knowledge - and why do his ideas for reform still resonate today?

Turing and the Universal Machine (Icon Science)

Author: Jon Agar
Publisher: Icon Books
ISBN: 1785782533
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
The history of the computer is entwined with that of the modern world and most famously with the life of one man, Alan Turing. How did this device, which first appeared a mere 50 years ago, come to structure and dominate our lives so totally? An enlightening mini-biography of a brilliant but troubled man.

The Day of the Typhoon

Author: John Golley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781840371819
Category : Normandy (France)
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
This account of rocket Typhoon operations over Normandy in the weeks immediately following the D-Day Invasion of Europe aims to be all the more interesting for its authenticity. It is written by a former ground attack pilot who flew 73 missions with 245 Squadron over Northern France in 1944-45.

Constant Touch

Author: Jon Agar
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848315260
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
Mobile phones are a ubiquitous technology with a fascinating history. There are now as many mobile phones in the world as there are people. We carry them around with us wherever we go. And while we used to just speak into them, now mobiles are used to do all kinds of tasks, from talking to twittering, from playing a game to paying a bill. Jon Agar takes the mobile to pieces, tracing what makes it work, and puts it together again, showing how it was shaped in different national contexts in the United States, Europe, the Far East and Africa. He tells the story from the early associations with cars and the privileged, through its immense popular success, to the rise of the smartphone. Few scientific revolutions affect us in such a day-to-day way as the development of the mobile phone. Jon Agar's deft history explains exactly how this revolution has come about - and where it may lead in the future.

Written in Stone (Icon Science)

Author: Brian Switek
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 184831311X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
Darwin's theory of evolution was for more than a century dogged by a major problem: the evidence proving the connections between the main groups of organisms was nowhere to be found. By the 1970s this absence of 'transitional fossils' was hotly debated; some palaeontologists wondered if these 'missing links' had been so quick that no trace of them was left. However, during the past three decades fossils of walking whales from Pakistan, feathered dinosaurs from China, fish with feet from the Arctic Circle, ape-like humans from Africa, and many more bizarre creatures that fill in crucial gaps in our understanding of evolution have all been unearthed. The first account of the hunt for evolution's 'missing links', Written in Stone shows how these discoveries have revolutionised palaeontology, and explores what its findings might mean for our place on earth.

Science & Islam

Author: Ehsan Masood
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848311605
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th century Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Science and Islam tells the story of one of history’s most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science: the extraordinary Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400 CE.

Making Jet Engines in World War II

Author: Hermione Giffard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022638859X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
Our stories of industrial innovation tend to focus on individual initiative and breakthroughs. Hermione Giffard uses the case of the development of jet engines to offer a different way of understanding technological innovation, revealing the complicated mix of factors that go into any decision to pursue an innovative, and therefore risky technology.

Out Of Control

Author: Kevin Kelly
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 078674703X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 666

Book Description
Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.