Showing titles in History

The first-ever inside look at DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars

America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical garages - fiddling with everything from solar-powered cars to space elevators. In Bunch of Amateurs, Jack Hitt visits a number of different garages and has written a fascinating book that looks at America’s current batch of amateurs and their pursuits. Beginning with Ben Franklin’s kite and leading all the way to the current TV hit American Idol, Hitt argues that the nation’s love of self-invented obsessives has always driven the country to rediscover the true heart of the American dream.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, transportation in the United States underwent an extraordinary transformation. In The American Transportation Revolution, Aaron W. Marrs explores the cultural influence of steamboats and railroads, which fascinated Americans across the country.

In 1954, the US Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world's first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance from the perspective of WS-117L.

Taking listeners back to the days of TaB cola, dot matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era for which fans have a lot of nostalgia.

In 1919, in the wake of the First World War, a group of extraordinary women came together to create the Women's Engineering Society. They were trailblazers, pioneers and boundary breakers, but many of their stories have been lost to history. To mark the centenary of the society's creation, Magnificent Women and Their Revolutionary Machines brings them back to life.

In Archaeology from Space, Sarah Parcak shows the evolution, major discoveries, and future potential of the young field of satellite archaeology. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field's biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting, but urgently essential to the preservation of the world's ancient treasures.

The Wireless World sets out a new research agenda for the history of international broadcasting, and for radio history more generally. It examines global and transnational histories of long-distance wireless broadcasting, combining perspectives from international history, media and cultural history, the history of technology, and sound studies. Bringing together their knowledge of a wide range of different countries, languages, and archives, the coauthors show how broadcasters and states deployed international broadcasting as a tool of international communication and persuasion.

Are you fascinated with the Titanic? Have you wondered what it must have been like to work in those hot boiler rooms, or as a maid to a first class passenger? What about what it would have been like to actually be a first class passenger?

Television is probably something we nowadays take for granted. There is a TV in almost every home, a TV in almost every public building - basically, where there is a signal, there is a TV. Found in millions of homes, it is probably difficult to imagine that the first television was created less than a century ago. In such a short time, we managed to go from silent moving images to 3D lifelike images on a flat screen.

The Civil War was the first "modern war." Because of the rapid changes in American society, Abraham Lincoln became president of a divided United States during a period of technological and social revolution. Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time. No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation. An eager student of technology, Lincoln had to learn to use the power of electronic messages.

In a race against time, the Apollo program challenged our scientific capabilities and redefined the boundaries of humanity. To celebrate NASA’s 60 years of exploration, Seeker went back in time to relive each Apollo mission. Listen along as Seeker dives into the whole story from its WWII origins to its present day possibilities available for the first time in audio.

The Tunnel Under the Lake recounts the gripping story of how the young city of Chicago, under the leadership of an audacious engineer named Ellis Chesbrough, constructed a two-mile tunnel below Lake Michigan in search of clean water. Benjamin Sells narrates in vivid detail the exceptional skill and imagination it took to save this storied city from itself.

Noted systems developer, Lars Nielsen reveals the dynamic combination of innovation, competition and, often eccentric, entrepreneurship that went to shape today's tech landscape. From the military's ENIAC of 1946 to the ripening of the Web and e-commerce, Nielsen's Computing: A Business History details the evolution of computing as it has impacted the models and practices of markets and professional services around the globe.

Rivers in the Desert follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere, bringing water from the mountains to support a large city. This "fascinating history" chronicles Mulholland's dramatic ascension to wealth and fame - followed by his tragic downfall after the sudden collapse of the dam he had constructed.

Before the podcast and the smartphone, there was the cassette tape and the Walkman—two devices that, although not considered much today, were revolutionary. They were recordable, rewritable, spliceable, compact, and mobile. For the first time, they allowed you to move through the world and listen to a voice speaking only to you. These cassette tapes brought us together, pulled us apart, and forever changed how we say those three simple words, ‘I love you.’ In five episodes from around the world, Mixtape explores the impact the cassette had and continues to have today.

Microsoft: First Generation uncovers the range of surprising success secrets behind the upstart company that defined the Age of Information - and reveals, once and for all, exactly what makes Microsoft tick.

En esta monumental historia, Vaclav Smil ofrece una impresionante panorámica de cómo la energía ha impulsado el progreso cultural y económico de las sociedades humanas durante los últimos diez mil años, desde los primeros grupos de cazadores-recolectores hasta la civilización fósil, pasando por las sociedades agrícolas tradicionales y la "gran transición" que lo cambió todo.

If you've replaced a computer lately - or a cell phone, a camera, a television - chances are, the old one still worked. And chances are even greater that the latest model won't last as long as the one it replaced. Welcome to the world of planned obsolescence - a business model, a way of life, and a uniquely American invention that this eye-opening book explores from its beginnings to its perilous implications for the very near future.

Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, this book tells the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it