Draw the Lightning Down
Regular price
€31.99
18th century
A01=Michael Brian Schiffer
age of enlightenment
Author_Michael Brian Schiffer
benjamin franklin
Category=PDX
Category=PHK
electrical devices
electrical experiments
electrical science
electrical technology
electricity
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
historical
international community
inventions
inventors
lightning rods
lights
medical instruments
modern developments
modern world
motors
musical instruments
nonfiction
physicists
revolutionary experiments
science and culture
scientific developments
technological advancements
Product details
- ISBN 9780520248298
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Mar 2006
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Most of us know - at least we've heard - that Benjamin Franklin conducted some kind of electrical experiment with a kite. What few of us realize - and what this book makes powerfully clear - is that Franklin played a major role in laying the foundations of modern electrical science and technology. This fast-paced book, rich with historical details and anecdotes, brings to life Franklin, the large international network of scientists and inventors in which he played a key role, and their amazing inventions. We learn what these early electrical devices - from lights and motors to musical and medical instruments - looked like, how they worked, and what their utilitarian and symbolic meanings were for those who invented and used them. Against the fascinating panorama of life in the eighteenth century, Michael Brian Schiffer tells the story of the very beginnings of our modern electrical world. The earliest electrical technologies were conceived in the laboratory apparatus of physicists; because of their surprising and diverse effects, however, these technologies rapidly made their way into many other communities and activities.
Schiffer conducts us from community to community, showing how these technologies worked as they were put to use in public lectures, revolutionary experiments in chemistry and biology, and medical therapy. This story brings to light the arcane and long-forgotten inventions that made way for many modern technologies - including lightning rods (Franklin's invention), cardiac stimulation, xerography, and the internal combustion engine - and richly conveys the complex relationships among science, technology, and culture.
Michael Brian Schiffer is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. His many books include The Material Life of Human Beings (1999), Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America (1994), Technological Perspectives on Behavioral Change (1992), and The Portable Radio in American Life (1991).
