The Evolution of the Machine

by Ritchie Calder
Product Group: Book
Publisher: McClelland and Stewart Limited / Smithsonian Institute (1968)
ISBN: B002BWVCQ6
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 159 pages
Edition: 1st
SKU: 1001100001
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: This book has no Dust Jacket. It has minor wear to edges and corners. I has a name and date stamped very neatly on inside front cover. The binding is tight and all pages ar intact, clean and unmarked. Will ship to Canada, U.S. and Internationally.

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
WHAT does The Machine, deified with capital letters, mean to each of us? ... To some it is just the 'one-armed bandit' of the gambling casino. It can be a high-powered automobile or a rocket blasting off Cape Kennedy at an incredible velocity. It can be a supersonic jet, a pencil sharpener, a giant earth-mover, or a communications satellite relaying television pictures from the other side of the globe. It may also be an automatic shoe cleaner competing with a shoe-shine-boy, or a completely automated factory doing the work of hundreds of workers. In more grandiloquent terms, it can be the Great Liberator of human drudgery. But it can also be the monster of Doctor Frankenstein's genius." So writes author Ritchie Calder in introducing the machine, which is the main character of this lively work and a vital and inescapable part of all our lives. In its simplest definition, a machine is any arrangement for absorbing a definite form of energy, modifying it, and delivering it in a more suitable form-a definition as applicable to the latest electronic device as to the first bow and arrow. Calder makes the workings of our many machines come alive, and in language that is both enlightening and intelligible. A persistent and pertinent theme in this volume is the impact of environment on technological breakthroughs and subsequent world history. The availability of natural resources and power supplies have been key factors in the genealogy of the machine. So, too, have the dramatic "mutations" inspired by great leaps of imagination in the minds of such gifted giants in the history of technology as Thomas Watt, Madame Curie, Thomas Edison, or the men of the Manhattan Project. As machines become ever more prevalent and complex, the more difficult it becomes to understand the "how" of them. If we are to live with them without fear or worship, it is best to have a grasp of their "why." That is what this brightly written book is all about.

Our Price:CAN$15.25