Product Description

Invention--that single leap of a human mind that gives us all we create. Yet we make a mistake when we call a telephone or a light bulb an invention, says John Lienhard. In truth, light bulbs, airplanes, steam engines--these objects are the end results, the fruits, of vast aggregates of invention. They are not invention itself.

In How Invention Begins, Lienhard reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for instance, the way in which thousands of people applied their combined inventive genius to airplanes, railroad engines, and automobiles. As he does so, it becomes clear that a collective desire, an upwelling of fascination, a spirit of the times--a Zeitgeist--laid its hold upon inventors. The thing they all sought to create was speed itself.

Likewise, Lienhard shows that when we trace the astonishingly complex technology of printing books, we come at last to that which we desire from books--the knowledge, the learning, that they provide. Can we speak of speed or education as inventions? To do so, he concludes, is certainly no greater a stretch than it is to call radio or the telephone an "invention."

Throughout this marvelous volume, Lienhard illuminates these processes, these webs of insight or inspiration, by weaving a fabric of anecdote, history, and technical detail--all of which come together to provide a full and satisfying portrait of the true nature of invention.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1018835 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Lienhard is enthralled with invention, how it happens and how inventions both shape and are shaped by culture. He posits that the quest for a single canonical inventor of a new technology is illusory, because all inventions are the sum of many contributors. To make his point, Lienhard (professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston and host of public radio's The Engines of Our Ingenuity) traces the development of airplanes and steam engines, among other technologies, in a lucid style filled with interesting forays into origins and biography. But the author is also fascinated by what is best described as the invention of the spread of knowledge. The second half of the book is an examination of how Gutenburg's printing press began a worldwide explosion of knowledge that traces its roots to the incunabula, books written between 1455 and 1500, and ends with the mass production of books for popular consumption. Lienhard also pays tribute to the development of the public library, museums, correspondence courses and universities as means of education. The author's personality permeates his writing, and it's impossible not to admire his optimism, his far-reaching knowledge and his enthusiasm for learning. 120 illus. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Leinhard agrees that any scientist or engineer who writes regularly for genarl consumption does so from a sense of mission. For him that boils down to a belief that technology isn't extrinsic to human nature. It's not something we can choose to employ or not. 'Technology,' he says, 'is what we are. We are the only species that cannot live without the fruits of our invention.'"--Houston Chronicle

"Lienhard is enthralled with invention, how it happens and how inventions both shape and are shaped by culture. He posits that the quest for a single canonical inventor of a new technology is illusory, because all inventions are the sum of many contributors. To make his point, Lienhard (professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at the University of Houston and host of public radio's The Engines of Our Ingenuity) traces the development of airplanes and steam engines, among other technologies, in a lucid style filled with interesting forays into origins and biography. ... The author's personality permeates his writing, and it's impossible not to admire his optimism, his far-reaching knowledge and his enthusiasm for learning."--Publishers Weekly

"Lienhard looks at the notion of invention and human creativity as a cultural phenomenon. He asserts that most inventions are not the work of one person or collaboration, but the result of the efforts of many people in many places over expanses of time. Almost all such efforts are undertaken to fulfill some human need."--cienceNews

"Lienhard, a graceful and perceptive writer, has produced a popular book that may well seduce the general public away from receieved hero myths without denigrating those myths."--Technology and Culture

"Watt's genius was in devising a practical engine; Lienhard's genius is in telling the real story of invention."-- New Scientist Magazine


"Watt's genius was in devising a practical engine; Lienhard's genius is in telling the real story of invention."--New Scientist Magazine
"Lienhard is enthralled with invention, how it happens and how inventions both shape and are shaped by culture. He posits that the quest for a single canonical inventor of a new technology is illusory, because all inventions are the sum of many contributors. To make his point, Lienhard (host of public radio's The Engines of Our Ingenuity) traces the development of airplanes and steam engines, among other technologies, in a lucid style filled with interesting forays into origins and biography.... The author's personality permeates his writing, and it's impossible not to admire his optimism, his far-reaching knowledge and his enthusiasm for learning."--Publishers Weekly
"Lienhard, a graceful and perceptive writer, has produced a popular book that may well seduce the general public away from receieved hero myths without denigrating those myths."--Technology and Culture
"This is an admirable book, of the sort I easily admire and would like to have written myself, if only I had the skill. Poised and lyrical prose supporting clear thinking and graceful presentation of a provocative and profound analysis of technological history."--Science Besieged
"This complete tour de force journey through the history of technology includes many philosophical observations, and is not at all technocratic in tone. It might well help to inspire the art of engineering to move away from its present static recycling."--Engine
"[Lienhard] has read widely and ecumenically, putting his findings together in unexpected, often delightful ways."--Dr. Arthur P. Molella


[Lienhard] writes eloquently... His account has the advantage of looking beyond the few heroic figures who grab all the headlines... His version of events is vastly more informative than alternative renditions. Martin Ince, THES

About the Author

John H. Lienhard is M.D. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and of History at the University of Houston. He is the author and host of The Engines of Our Ingenuity, a daily radio essay on invention and creativity heard nationally on Public Radio and internationally on the Armed Forces Network. He is also the author of the book The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture and Inventing Modern: Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins.

Customer Reviews

More than academic
For a while, I was a member of SHOT, the Society for the History of Technology. Although I found a few things of interest, the overwhelming view I gained was of earnest left wing intellecutuals trying to deconstruct everything into nothing. Here is a book that can meet the academic muster but contains more of substance than warmed over social theory.

The basic structure of the book is based on the development of...... the book itself, starting from Gutenberg and moving to the mass produced book of today. Along the way two main ideas are explored. First, that necessity is not the mother of invention, desire is the mother of invention. This point is well argued and sensibly made. Second, that every invention is a concantenation of inventions that led to the tipping point when something reached a critical point in which it became the recognizable thing of history. At that tipping point is found the famous or named inventor whose role should neither be slighted or exaggerated.

In making these two points as well as developing an approach to the statistics of inventional progress, Lienhard digresses from bookmaking to steam engines, railroads, the role of women and the development of schools. All these digressions are perfectly entertaining and thoughtful.

All in all, I fully recommend the book. For my personal taste I would have liked more math in it, like the little bit in the notes at the back that explains why we can blow both cold and hot with our breath. The book is wonderfully illustrated with many illustrations from historic texts.

Interesting aspects, but doesn't quite gel (3.75 stars)
This is a very attractive book to pick up, because it's richly illustrated with period illustrations (mostly engravings and patent diagrams) of old inventions. And reading it offers many moments of interest, especially in Part I of the book, where John Lienhard (JL) discusses the ambiguous notion of priority of inventorship, i.e., who was the first to invent something. But the whole doesn't quite stick together.

The book was written when JL was already an emeritus professor. The choice of topics jumps around -- the priority theme is shifted somewhat in part II, which focuses on "steam and speed", then gets blurred even more in Part III, on the rise of texts and scientific illustration, before returning in the last chapter. This structure, together with JL's many personal reminiscences, makes it feels like a rather relaxed amble through miscellaneous topics and themes that intrugued JL during the years, rather than a tightly-structured argument. Not that some of the ambles and rambles aren't interesting -- I especially enjoyed learning about early flying machines and how the Wright Brothers pitched their propellers, and an anecdote JL tells in the last chapter about dropping a glass rod makes a very nice practical point about the relationship between mathematical models and reality.

However, I was frustrated by some other aspects of the book. Most of the historical topics, such as the history of printing technology and its social impact, are far better-treated in other books. A three-page mini-history of computing (@159-162) lapsed into the same teleological narrative that JL is at pains to criticize elsewhere in the book; e.g., he claims that the idea of "creating a machine to execute a string of instructions ... appeared not to have crossed anyone's mind until Charles Babbage proposed it in 1834" (@159), thereby ignoring centuries of music boxes and other automata dating back to the time of Archimedes.

Also, some of the scientific explanations, especially in Part II, were so rushed-through that I found them hard to understand even when I had some familiarity with the subject. Lots of diagrams, such as of Watt's steam engine, are labelled with letters indicating their components, but JL almost never refers to these, leaving it to the reader to figure out which thingamajig most looks like what JL is describing. Or consider this passage, from a description of the connection between atoms and thermodynamics (making the point that the 18th Century's phlogiston theory wasn't so crazy):

"Every molecule is held together by powerful electronic forces. It requires energy to pull those atoms apart. If we burn carbon in oxygen, we dismantle the O2 molecules to form two atoms of oxygen. Then those two atoms combine with one carbon atom to form carbon dioxide, CO2. Since it takes more energy to pull CO2 apart than it does O2, the net effect of burning carbon in oxygen is to *release* energy." (@75; emphasis in the original.)

I re-read this several times before I realized that JL skipped mentioning that the combination of a carbon atom with 2 oxygen atoms to make CO2 releases energy -- and specifically, more energy than what's needed for breaking up oxygen molecules. But that fact is an empirical one, not a matter of logical necessity; omitting to mention it just leaves the attentive reader scratching his or her head in puzzlement.

All told, the book feels midway between an agglomeration and a synthesis, like a cake that needs about another 20 minutes in the oven. I'd have liked JL to have followed up on some his most intriguing observations, e.g. the implications for the patent system of his comments about fuzzy priority, and the notion of "invented qualities", which appears only in a throwaway remark at the end of a chapter (@115; JL mentions speed, efficiency and accuracy as examples). Maybe this is too much to expect. But a proper bibliography is not. The book exemplifies an unfortunate trend of discourtesy to readers (perhaps on the part of the Oxford U Press, not JL) by including only footnotes but no comprehensive list of references. For this I deduct an additional 1/4-star from the 4 stars for the rest of book, net 3.75 stars.

Invention is rebellion against the status quo.
Very well written summary of the arc of invention that leads to significant advances. Mr. Lienhard discusses many of the contributing refinements that lead to the development of flight, steam engines, printing, education, libraries and other significant advancements. His premise is that no invention is developed in a vacuum. Many actors contribute to the eventual creation of an invention. Those actors have different motivation and endure considerable hardships on their way to participating in the discovery. These inventors seem to share an underlying theme or notion which Mr. Lienhard identifies with this quote:

Inventing means violating some status quo. If we do not exert some freedom from rebellion we do not invent. It might be freedom from external proscription, or it might e freedom from chains forged in our own minds. Al the great inventive epochs of the world have been marked by climates of increased personal liberty.

This book is a wonderful read.