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This contains a list of books about contested innovations and unknown innovators. And the individual wrongly credtied with an innovation.
Major innovations of contention that come to mind are:
Major unknow innovators that came to mind:
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The Last Lone Inventor : A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television (Paperback)
by Evan I. Schwartz
"FROM CLEAR ACROSS THE POTATO FIELD, LEWIS FARNSWORTH COULD see that his son was in danger…"
From Library Journal
This is a lively and engaging account of the conception and invention of
both television and the system of network broadcasting in the United
States. Schwartz (Digital Darwinism, Webonomics) tells the stories of
Philo T. Farnsworth, who essentially invented television before he was
30, and David Sarnoff, the founder of NBC, who essentially invented the
business of broadcasting before he was 30. These two men were at
tremendous odds with each other for decades, and the nature of their
conflict helped determine the shape of the U.S. broadcasting industry.
While many other works document the beginnings of broadcast media, they
tend to be overviews, offering less of a personal story. This book
complements D. Godfrey and C. Sterling's Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father
of Television, which takes a drier, more academic approach to the
inventor's life and work and should be of interest to academic
libraries, particularly those with a technology or engineering
department. Schwartz's well-researched biography is sure to appeal to
anyone who has ever dreamed of coming up with "the next big thing."
Recommended for public libraries and academic or special libraries with
a media or technology focus. Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ.,
Brooklyn
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
This story of the invention of television is essentially the biography
of two men. Philo T. Farnsworth was a genius who envisioned the concept
of television at the age of 15 while plowing the family potato field and
patented the device only five years later in 1927, creating the
technology that is still used today. David Sarnoff was a poor
Russian-Jewish immigrant who rose to fame in the radio broadcasting
industry and as head of RCA became obsessed with stealing Farnsworth's
invention so that he could go down in history as the man who brought
television to the world. In this age of burgeoning corporations, the
lone inventor was a dying breed, as big companies began to be the only
ones with the resources needed to research, develop, and market new
inventions. The teams hired by corporations would give up all patent
rights to the organization, however, with very little compensation.
Farnsworth, determined to control his patent rights, ultimately faced a
showdown with Sarnoff and powerful RCA in this suspenseful account of
the unknown man who influenced the world.
David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television (Hardcover)
by Daniel Stashower
"By the spring of 1923, the Radio Corporation of America had put the
finishing touches on a magnificent broadcasting tower on the roof of a…"
Amazon.com
American culture celebrates inventors as heroes: Alexander Graham Bell,
Edison, Henry Ford. In the fascinating The Boy Genius and the Mogul,
Daniel Stashower adds a new name to the pantheon: Philo T. Farnsworth,
inventor of TV. "The general public has only the vaguest notion of
how--or by whom--television was created," writes Stashower, who feels
the story has been mistold, depriving the boy genius from rural Idaho of
due credit. Stashower, a mystery novelist and biographer of Arthur Conan
Doyle, uncovers the hidden history of Farnsworth's "image dissector." If
RCA's David Sarnoff (the "mogul" of the title) had chosen to work with
Farnsworth, the young man would have become a household name. But
Farnsworth lost his chance at fame, mentally collapsed, and spent his
last years bitterly disappointed. Watching the moon landing on a picture
tube less than two years before his death, however, he turned to his
wife and said, "This has made it all worthwhile."
--John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
The book jacket asserts that it will tell the story of television's
"real" inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth, a 14-year-old Idaho farm boy. It's
a clever and accurate hook, since no one inventor can take credit for
the magic black box. What makes Farnsworth unique aside from an
intuitive leap while mowing a hayfield in 1922 is that he outlasted
everyone else in his patent battle against RCA's David Sarnoff, who
famously said, "RCA doesn't pay royalties. It collects them." Sarnoff
makes a good foil: both men struggled up from poverty, Sarnoff by
climbing the corporate ladder and Farnsworth by convincing financial
backers to fund his research.
Unfortunately for Farnsworth, "the era of
the solitary inventor was quickly fading." Large, well-funded corporate
laboratories were taking their place in the 1930s and reducing the
inventor to a contract engineer. Stashower, a journalist and Edgar
Award-winning biographer (for Teller of Tales), is also the author of
three murder mysteries. He ends every chapter with a cliffhanger, which
gets monotonous. However, his flair for storytelling does help move the
book along through the necessary passages of technical jargon. Instilled
with the glories of Edison, Ford and Gates, the public still
romanticizes the genius in the attic, while recognizing that the spoils
generally go to the rich and powerful.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Philo Farnsworth and the Invention of Television(Robbie Readers) (Library Binding)
by Russell Roberts
"One day in 1921, Philo (FY-low) Taylor Farnsworth was cutting hay on a farm…"
Book Description
While cutting hay, Philo Farnsworth figures out how television could
work. It took him several years to get the money to build the first
television and send the first television picture using electricity.
About the Author
Russell Roberts has written and published books on a variety of
subjects, including Ten Days to a Sharper Memory, Discover the Hidden
New Jersey, and Stolen! A History of Base Stealing. He also wrote Pedro
Menendez de Aviles and Philo T. Farnsworth: The life of Television's
Forgotten Inventor for Mitchell Lane. He lives in Bordentown, New
Jersey, with his family and a remarkably lazy, yet fiesty calico cat
named Rusti.
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Copies in Seconds : How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company
Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg--Chester
Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine
by David Owen; Hardcover
From Publishers Weekly
As New Yorker staff writer Owen explains in this fast-paced account of
one inventor's hopes and dreams, the technology of copying is a
relatively modern phenomenon. He recounts the history of copying
documents from the scribal work of monks to the invention of the
printing press and lithography, to the process that eventually resulted
in today's Xerox machine. Owen narrates the life story of the man behind
the Xerox machine, Chester Carlson (1906Ð1968), and his lonely efforts
to find a way to reproduce documents. An inventive soul from a young
age, Carlson as a teenager sketched out concepts for a trick safety pin,
a new type of lipstick and a disposable handkerchief made of soft paper.
After he graduated from college, he went to work for Bell Laboratories
and continued his inventive ways. When he finally landed on an
electrostatic process that would act like both a printing press and a
camera, he began to shop the concept around and the Xerox machine was
born in the mid-'50s. Owen's sympathetic portrait of Carlson's life and
the difficulties and rewards inherent in the inventive process provide a
window into the birth of one of our most ubiquitous office machines.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The next time the copier jams, fill the downtime with Owen's
interesting, informative history of the contraption and its inventor. He
was Chester Carlson (1906-68), whose boyhood of depressing destitution
was brightened by science teachers who took seriously his dream to
invent something marvelous. In the late 1930s, Carlson worked by day as
a patent lawyer and by night and weekends on the problem of duplicating
documents, the historical lineage of which, from scriptorium to
mimeograph machine, opens Owen's work. The narrative then cascades from
Carlson's light-bulb moment when he read a technical article on light's
electrical effect on certain metals to his and an associate's
fabrication in 1938 of a rudimentary process of xerography (from the
Greek for "dry writing"). Owen then recounts Carlson's course through
the next gauntlet every inventor faces: convincing a business to develop
his gadget, in this instance, a two-decade-long ordeal that culminated
in the Xerox Corporation. While sensitively portraying Carlson's
self-effacing personality, Owen entertainingly presents the surprising
story behind an indispensable technology. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Chester Carlson and the Development of Xerography (Unlocking the Secrets of Science) (Library Binding)
by Susan Zannos
Book Description
Chester Carlson was determined to invent an easy, inexpensive method of
copying documents. In 1938, he invented the process of
"electrophotography," which later became known as "xerography." He would
work for more than 20 years in partnership (a royalty agreement) with
both the Battelle Institute and the Haloid Company (which would later
become the Xerox Company) to develop the first automatic, plain paper
copier. Despite years of failure (one machine required 39 steps to make
a copy; another machine caught fire each time a copy was made; the
machines were so large no one could move them; and the early models were
so expensive, no one could afford them), Carlson refused to give up. He
kept on going long after any reasonable person would have quit. Though
he was offered employment, he never worked for either the Battelle
Corporation, nor Haloid Xerox. In fact, he spent most of his years in
poverty. When the Xerox Model 914 was finally introduced in 1959 and
became a success, Carlson became a multimillionaire. But he was never
particularly interested in money and gave most of it away before he died
in 1968. Catherine Carlson, Chester's wife's adopted daughter, supplied
both photographs and insight into this story never told before for the
young adult reader.
About the Author
Susan Zannos has been a lifelong educator, having taught at all levels,
from preschool to college, in Mexico, Greece, Italy, Russia, and
Lithuania, as well as in the United States. She has published a mystery
Trust the Liar (Walker and Co.) and Human Types: Essence and the
Enneagram was published by Samuel Weiser in 1997. She has written
several books for children, including Paula Abdul and Cesar Chavez
(Mitchell Lane). Susan lives in Oxnard, California.
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Richard Pearse: Pioneer aviator (Unknown Binding)
by C. Geoffrey Rodliffe
From the "Chief Engineer Web Site
First to Fly?
From NZEdge.com
Richard Pearse: First Flyer
From Scoop Independent News
Three replica engines at Pearse Centenary Pageant
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Wings over Waitohi: The story of Richard Pearse (Unknown Binding)
by C. Geoffrey Rodliffe
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Tesla : Man Out of Time (Paperback)
by Margaret Cheney
"Promptly at eight o'clock a patrician figure in his thirties was
shown to his regular table in the 'Palm Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel…"
Review
Product Details
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Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius(Citadel Press Book) (Paperback)
by Marc J. Seifer
From Publishers Weekly
Seifer's vivid, revelatory, exhaustively researched biography rescues
pioneer inventor Nikola Tesla from cult status and restores him to his
rightful place as a principal architect of the modern age. Based largely
on firsthand documents including Tesla's writings, his patents and those
of competitors, it credits the Croatian-born Serb, who moved to New York
in 1884, with the invention of the induction motor, long-distance
electrical power distribution, fluorescent and neon lights, the first
true radio tube and remote control, besides making vital contributions
to the technology underlying television, wireless communication,
robotics, lasers, the facsimile machine and particle-beam weaponry
anticipating the space-based "Star Wars" defensive shield.
Though often depicted as a recluse, flamboyant nouveau-riche Tesla (1856-1943) lived in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for two decades, and hobnobbed with architect Sanford White, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, conservationist John Muir, mogul John Jacob Astor III, Swami Vivekananda. Yet the electronic wizard, who competed fiercely with Marconi and with his one-time employer Edison, became swamped in debt, abandoned by a world he helped create, ending his days in seedy poverty, a bitter, anorexic eccentric obsessed with feeding pigeons and avoiding germs.
Seifer, who
teaches psychology at Community College of Rhode Island, attributes
Tesla's downfall partly to his megalomaniacal, neurotic,
self-destructive tendencies, partly to a quagmire of litigation and also
to his Faustian pact with his ambivalent benefactor, Wall Street
financier J. Pierpont Morgan, to whom he relinquished control of several
patents. Morgan, suggests Seifer, stymied Tesla's visionary scheme for a
global, wireless power-distribution system because, if realized, it
would jeopardize electrical, lighting and telephone monopolies. Seifer
provides the fullest account yet of Tesla as an entrepreneur,
experimental physicist and inventor. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Nikola Tesla is credited by many as the inventor of radio and should
have received most of the credit for the development of modern
electricity. Yet there is considerable confusion about his technical
contributions and even more about his personal life. This book, by a
professor of psychology at Bristol Community College and a member of the
International Tesla Society, painstakingly documents Tesla's
wide-ranging contributions. Born in Croatia, Tesla emigrated to the
United States in 1884 and almost immediately began work on alternatives
to what was then accepted as standard electrical technology.
This
brought him into conflict with Edison and later Westinghouse. The
pattern of conflict continued for nearly 60 years, partially because
Tesla was far ahead of his time, partially because he was erratic and
off-beat, and partially because he was not an astute business partner.
Seifer has analyzed extensive sources, many not previously used by other
Tesla biographers, to provide a detailed interpretation of his life, but
the fact that he also incorporates extensive handwriting analysis to
arrive at several of his conclusions will certainly cause some reader
concern. For larger science and biography collections?
Hilary Burton,
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Josiah Willard Gibbs: The History of a Great Mind (Paperback)
by Lynde Phelps Wheeler
Reviewer: Dr David J Bottomley (near Tokyo, Japan)
Wheeler has written a comprehensive review which goes into considerable
detail about Gibbs's scientific accomplishments, without using
unnecessarily complicated language or mathematics. As a former student
of Gibbs, Wheeler is well-placed to provide a detailed biography of a
man of whom he had first-hand experience. But this closeness must raise
questions as to how objective this book is: at times the biography might
be overly-eulogistic. This book was first published in 1951. What is
needed now is a modern, more objective work. Amongst Gibbs's
contemporaries, for example, Lords Raleigh and Kelvin were critical of
Gibbs's thermodynamics. This is not mentioned by Wheeler.
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The Early Work of Willard Gibbs in Applied Mechanics (Hardcover)
by Josiah Willard Gibbs,
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Josiah Willard Gibbs (Unknown Binding)
by Rudolph Ernest Langer
Availability: Out of Print--Limited Availability
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Philipp Reis, inventor of the telephone (Telecommunications) (Unknown Binding)
by Silvanus Phillips Thompson
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Das Telephon von Philipp Reis. Eine Apparategeschichte (Book on Demand) (Paperback)
by Rolf Bernzen
Availability: THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE. If you would like to purchase
this title, we recommend that you occasionally check this page to see if it has become available.
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Bhilipp Reis: Formen, Phasen und Motivationen der Auseinandersetzungen
mit dem Telephon : Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme (Berliner BeitrŠge
zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik) (Unknown Binding)
by Rolf Bernzen Out of Print--Limited Availability
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Language Notes
Text: German
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Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist (Hardcover)
by Albert E. Moyer
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