Penguin Technology Survey 1966 [antikvár]

Man has lived on this planet for perhaps a million years. His early history is largely one of finding means of coming to terms with his environment, which is one definition of the word technology, although the word did not appear in English until 1615. Most of man's early history is still categorized in terms of his technological achievements. We divide periods into neat groups like the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, each representing another stage in technological development. By the time of the Roman Empire, man was technically advanced. Then there was a decline and progress was slight for fifteen hundred years. In fact London at the beginning of the eighteenth century had few of the technical advantages enjoyed by Pompeii. Man needed power. Some emancipation from the drudgery of muscle power had taken place with the development of the water- wheel and the windmill, but each of these was restricted to per- haps ten horse power and in neither case was power available where it was wanted and when it was wanted. This was to change with dramatic suddenness. In less than a century the steam engine was conceived, developed, and perfect- ed. It germinated in the West Country of England where the Cornish tin mines needed pumps to remove fioodwater. Thomas Savery made the first workable steam pump, The Miner's Friend\ and Newcomen, a Devonian, the first steam engine. James Watt, the traditional 'inventor9 of the steam engine, became interested in steam because as an instrument maker at Glasgow University he was given a model Newcomen engine to repair. But Watt's contributions to the steam engine made it a practical source of power and so changed the face of the world« Watt's first engines went to work in the year that America declared her independence. Their effect on history was indubitably much greater than the formation of the United States, In fact it may well be that the new