David P Billington

A richly illustrated introduction to the engineering triumphs that made America modern In this age of microchips and deep space probes, it's hard to imagine life before electricity or passenger trains. An astonishing series of engineering innovations paved the way to the twentieth century, and transformed America into the world's mightiest industrial power. The Innovators tells the exciting story of the engineering pioneers whose discoveries so dramatically...

Power, Speed, and Form is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939--the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the long-span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete. Beginning with Thomas Edison's system to generate and distribute electric power, the authors explain the Bell telephone, the oil refining processes...