ISBN:
1280532580
,
9781280532580
,
1423784278
,
9781423784272
Language:
English
Pages:
Online Ressource (ix, 292 p.)
,
ill.
Edition:
Online-Ausg.
Parallel Title:
Print version Inventing modern
DDC:
303.483097309045
Keywords:
Lienhard, John H. 1930- Childhood and youth
;
Lienhard, John H Childhood and youth
;
Lienhard, John H Childhood and youth
;
Lienhard, John H
;
Technological innovations Social aspects
;
History
;
20th century
;
United States
;
Technology Social aspects
;
History
;
20th century
;
United States
;
Science Social aspects
;
History
;
20th century
;
United States
;
Material culture Social aspects
;
History
;
20th century
;
United States
;
Science Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Material culture Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Technology Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Technological innovations Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Material culture Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Science Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Technological innovations Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
Technology Social aspects 20th century
;
History
;
SCIENCE ; Philosophy & Social Aspects
;
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING ; Social Aspects
;
Civilization
;
Material culture ; Social aspects
;
Science ; Social aspects
;
Technological innovations ; Social aspects
;
Technology ; Social aspects
;
History
;
United States Civilization
;
20th century
;
United States Civilization 20th century
;
United States Civilization 20th century
;
United States
;
Electronic books
Abstract:
Modern is a word much used, but hard to pin down. In Inventing Modern, John H. Lienhard uses that word to capture the furious rush of newness in the first half of 20th-century America. An unexpected world emerges from under the more familiar Modern. Beyond the airplanes, radios, art deco, skyscrapers, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Buck Rogers, the culture of the open road-Burma Shave, Kerouac, and White Castles-lie driving forces that set this account of Modern apart. One force, says Lienhard, was a new concept of boyhood-the risk-taking, hands-on savage inventor. Driven by an admiration of recklessness, America developed its technological empire with stunning speed. Bringing the airplane to fruition in so short a time, for example, were people such as Katherine Stinson, Lincoln Beachey, Amelia Earhart, and Charles Lindbergh. The rediscovery of mystery powerfully drove Modern as well. X-Rays, quantum mechanics, and relativity theory had followed electricity and radium. Here we read how, with reality seemingly altered, hope seemed limitless. Lienhard blends these forces with his childhood in the brave new world. The result is perceptive, engaging, and filled with surprise.; Whether he talks about Alexander Calder (an engineer whose sculptures were exercises in materials science) or that wacky paean to flight, Flying Down to Rio, unexpected detail emerges from every tile of this large mosaic. Inventing Modern is a personal book that displays, rather than defines, an age that ended before most of us were born. It is an engineer's homage to a time before the bomb and our terrible loss of confidence-a time that might yet rise again out of its own postmodern ashes
Description / Table of Contents:
1846 : great-grandpa and manifest destinyShort-lived technologies : searching for direction -- "The irruption of forces totally new" -- A new genus of genius -- Remington to modern : finding the core on the fringe -- Fires and the high-rise Phoenix -- The titan city -- Automobile -- On the road : of highways and gasoline -- The back door into the sky -- Flying down to Rio -- A boy's life in the new century -- Inventing a better mousetrap -- War -- A funeral in the fifties -- After modern.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-283) and index. - Description based on print version record
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