Showing titles in History

Alan Meckler was the first person to start a venture in the commercial internet space in October, 1990. There were few means to connect to the internet back then. Yet Meckler anticipated that the internet would be a "black swan event" and that it would revolutionize all aspects of personal and commercial life. The book is a history, but also a very personal memoir of a career entrepreneur and all the difficulties one encounters with raising funds, dealing with cash flow shortages, personnel, and getting people to believe in the next big thing.

Matthew Crain gives internet surveillance a much-needed origin story by chronicling the development of its most important historical catalyst: web advertising. Profit over Privacy uses the 1990s as its backdrop to show how the massive data-collection infrastructure that undergirds the internet today is the result of twenty-five years of technical and political economic engineering. 

This history of medieval inventions, focusing on the 11th to the 14th centuries, vividly portrays a thriving era of human ingenuity, and the results are still being felt to this day. From the mechanical clock to the first eyeglasses, both of which revolutionized society, many of the commonplace devices we now take for granted had their origin in the Middle Ages. Divided into 10 thematic chapters, the accessible audiobook allows the listener to sample areas of interest or listen to the book from beginning to end for a complete historical overview.

Rivers in the Desert follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere, bringing water from the mountains to support a large city. This "fascinating history" chronicles Mulholland's dramatic ascension to wealth and fame - followed by his tragic downfall after the sudden collapse of the dam he had constructed.

The Periodic Table of Ideas is a collection of pivotal concepts in history spanning the disciplines of business, economics, philosophy, psychology, science, and technology. These ideas represent the pinnacle of human thought and achievement. They are among the most ingenious and enduring ideas you will ever encounter.

It is progress that guarantees existence. Without engineering, mankind would be an already extinguished species. Between mathematics, physics, chemistry, technique, and technology, from Archimedes of Syracuse to Samantha Cristoforetti, from Leonardo da Vinci to Larry Page, this is an extraordinary story of innovations and achievements. Nothing of what’s built nowadays by men, in any part of the world and space, would have been possible if there were no engineers.

In the years surrounding WWI, the basic models of many technologies we use today were invented and introduced en masse. Some organizations anticipated these changes and were able to adapt, but other organizations ignored them at their peril. The iconic British television series Downton Abbey provides a glimpse into this period of societal change. Whether you are a fan of the television series or not, the examples in this audiobook provide practical advice to effectively manage technological and cultural change.

From the printing press to the television, social movements have leveraged communications technologies to advance change. In this moment of rapidly evolving communications, it's imperative to assess the role that the internet, mobile devices, and social media can play in promoting social justice. But first, we must look to the past, to examples of movements throughout American history that successfully harnessed communications technology, thus facilitating positive social change.

De toute éternité, les communications à distance, les télécommunications, se sont avérées essentielles pour les humains. Selon les époques, elles ont fait appel à l'imagination ou à l'ingénierie, et toujours de manière industrieuse. Ainsi, les trompettes, les tambours, la fumée ou le langage sifflé transmettaient des messages aux populations locales bien avant l'avènement du télégraphe optique, du télex ou de la téléphonie.

The Tunnel Under the Lake recounts the gripping story of how the young city of Chicago, under the leadership of an audacious engineer named Ellis Chesbrough, constructed a two-mile tunnel below Lake Michigan in search of clean water. Benjamin Sells narrates in vivid detail the exceptional skill and imagination it took to save this storied city from itself.

Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and 14th centuries. E. R. Truitt traces the different forms of self-moving or self-sustaining manufactured objects from their earliest appearances in the Latin West through centuries of mechanical and literary invention. This original and wide-ranging study reveals the convergence of science, technology, and imagination in medieval culture.

Charles E. Hires and the Drink That Wowed a Nation chronicles the humble origin and meteoric business success of this extraordinary entrepreneur. Author Bill Double uses published interviews, correspondence, newspaper reports, magazine articles, financial data, and a small family archive to tell this story of native ingenuity. Here, the rough-hewn capitalism of the gilded age, the evolution of the neighborhood drugstore, the rise of advertising in creating mass markets, and the emerging temperance movement all come together in a biography that fizzes with entrepreneurial spirit.

In 1940, with German U-boats blockading all commerce across the Atlantic Ocean, a fireball at the Crown Cork and Seal factory lit the sky over Baltimore. The newspapers said you could see its glow as far north as Philadelphia and as far south as Annapolis. Rumors of Nazi sabotage led to an FBI investigation and pulled an entire industry into the machinery of national security as America stood on the brink of war. David Taylor traces this fascinating story through the lives of three men and their families, who were all drawn into this dangerous intersection of enterprise and espionage.

The lucrative world of cryptocurrency no longer has to be a mystery. This book will shock you. Secret strategies are revealed. Discover what cryptocurrency is all about and how to make a lot of money investing and trading in them. This book covers the topic of investing and trading of cryptocurrency, and will teach you everything you need to know before you delve into this potentially highly lucrative world. You will learn what cryptocurrency is and how to decide which one to deal with.

Between 1817 and 1898, New York City evolved from a vital Atlantic port of trade to the center of American commerce and culture. Although this important urban transformation is well documented, the critical role of select Union soldiers turned New York engineers has, until now, remained largely unexplored.

Understand the history of bitcoin. Bitcoin is a revolutionary new currency...the future of money. Bitcoin is a network protocol and software that makes the currency work. But it is also much more than either of those. Bitcoin is a community with a shared history and experience that new users can't just buy on an exchange or download onto their smartphone. That history and those experiences are vital to understanding the advice given to new users, potential investors, and curious onlookers.

This is the story of how America's first women soldiers helped win World War I, earned the vote, and fought the US Army. In 1918 the US Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, demanded female "wire experts" when he discovered that inexperienced doughboys were unable to keep him connected with troops under fire.

The summer of 1969 saw astronauts land on the moon for the first time and hippie hordes descend on Woodstock for a legendary music festival. For Neil M. Maher, the conjunction of these two era-defining events is not entirely coincidental. With its lavishly funded mandate to send a man to the moon, Apollo became a litmus test in the 1960s culture wars.

In 1954, the US Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world's first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance from the perspective of WS-117L.

Rockets and Revolution offers a multifaceted study of the race toward space in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how the Russian, European, and American pioneers competed against one another in the early years to acquire the fundamentals of rocket science, engineer simple rockets, and ultimately prepare the path for human spaceflight.