Ask HN: What are your favorite books on the history of ideas and inventions?

14 points·filippp··8 comments

I read Dealers of Lightning some time ago and I find myself wanting more (not necessarily in the field of computing). Any recommendations?

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"Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology is a history of science by Isaac Asimov, written as the biographies of over 1500 scientists."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Biographical_Encyclop...

fuzz

Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty spectacular. He takes a travel writer's eye to the history of science and puts together an incredibly accessible and compelling tour.

Thumbs up fir Bryson. To take it a step further, Boorstin's "The Discoverers" is a longer, more encompassing version of scientific discoveries.

Also, "Empires of Light" is a great chronology of events and people(Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse, JP Morgan) leading to the modern, electric world.

One more, "The Idea Factory" is a history of Bell Labs. It is surprisingly light on programming but makes up for it in the hardware/electronics topics.

An unusually good read - James Dyson's quest to reinvent, build, and then successfully market his vacuum cleaner > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

I read The Most Powerful Idea in the World by William Rosen last year and really enjoyed it.

Ostensibly its about the steam engine, but the idea referenced in the title is really patents.

Dyson: Turing's Cathedral Feyerabend: Against Method

iWoz was really interesting

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