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An Entertainment for Angels

Author: Patricia Fara

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2009-09-03

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1840465549

Electricity was the scientific fashion of the Enlightenment, 'an Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men'. By demonstrating their control of the natural world, Enlightenment philosophers hoped to gain authority over society. And their stunning electrical performances provided dramatic evidence of their special powers. Using contemporary illustrations, Patricia Fara vividly portrays how Franklin and his colleagues struggled to understand the strange and exciting effects their experiments were producing.

Turing and the Universal Machine (Icon Science)

Author: Jon Agar

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-09-07

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1785782533

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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.

Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century (Icon Science)

Author: Iwan Rhys Morus

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-08-03

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1785782681

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The only scientist to ever appear on the British twenty pound note, Michael Faraday is one of the most recognisable names in the history of science. Faraday's forte was electricity, a revolutionary force in nineteenth-century society. The electric telegraph had made mass-communication possible and inventors looked forward to the day when electricity would control all aspects of life. By the end of the century, this dream was well on its way to being realised. But what was Faraday's role in all this? How did his science come to have such an impact on the lives of the Victorians (and ultimately on us)? Iwan Morus tells the story of Faraday's upbringing in London and his apprenticeship at the Royal Institution under the supervision of the flamboyant chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, all set against the backdrop of a vibrant scientific culture and an empire near the peak of its power.

The Comet Sweeper (Icon Science)

Author: Claire Brock

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-01-05

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1785781677

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Having escaped domestic servitude in Germany by teaching herself to sing, and established a career in England, Caroline Herschel learned astronomy while helping her brother William, then Astronomer Royal. Soon making scientific discoveries in her own right, she swept to international scientific and popular fame. She was awarded a salary by George III in 1787 – the first woman in Britain to make her living from science. But, as a woman in a male-dominated world, Herschel's great success was achieved despite constant frustration of her ambitions. Drawing on original sources – including Herschel's diaries and her fiery letters – Claire Brock tells the story of a woman determined to win independence and satisfy her astronomical ambition.

Knowledge is Power (Icon Science)

Author: John Henry

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-11-02

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1785782517

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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?

Frank Whittle (Icon Science)

Author: Andrew Nahum

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1785782568

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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.

Frankenstein's Science

Author: Jane Goodall

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1351935836

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Though Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has inspired a vast body of criticism, there are no book-length studies that contextualise this widely taught novel in contemporary scientific and literary debates. The essays in this volume by leading writers in their fields provide new historical scholarship into areas of science and pseudo-science that generated fierce controversy in Mary Shelley's time: anatomy, electricity, medicine, teratology, Mesmerism, quackery and proto-evolutionary biology. The collection embraces a multifaceted view of the exciting cultural climate in Britain and Europe from 1780 to 1830. While Frankenstein is all too often read as a cautionary tale of the inherent dangers of uncontrolled scientific experimentation, the essays here take the reader back to a period when experimenters and radical thinkers viewed science as the harbinger of social innovation that would counter the virulent conservative backlash following the French Revolution. The collection will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars specialising in Romanticism, cultural history, philosophy and the history of science.

Frankenstein's Science

Author: Christa Knellwolf King

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780754654476

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Frankenstein's Science contextualizes this widely taught novel in contemporary scientific and literary debates, providing new historical scholarship into areas of science and pseudo-science that generated fierce controversy in Mary Shelley's time: anatomy

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World

Author: James Delbourgo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-09-25

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1135899096

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Science and Empire in the Atlantic World is the first book in the growing field of Atlantic Studies to examine the production of scientific knowledge in the Atlantic world from a comparative and international perspective. Rather than focusing on a specific scientific field or single national context, this collection captures the multiplicity of practices, people, languages, and agendas that characterized the traffic in knowledge around the Atlantic world, linking this knowledge to the social processes fundamental to colonialism, such as travel, trade, ethnography, and slavery.

The Idea of the Brain

Author: Matthew Cobb

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2020-04-21

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 154164686X

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An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why -- despite technological advances -- the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery. "I cannot recommend this book strongly enough."--Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries. Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era's most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises? The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.