The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.84 (960 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1596914122 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 560 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-05-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. The steam engine, the incandescent bulb, the electric motorinventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The power revolution is not a tale of machines, however, but of men: inventors such as James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs such as George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen such as J.P. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, tumultuous, and ferocious battles in the marketplace.In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The dramatic story of the "power revolution" that turned America from an agrarian society into a technological superpower, and the dynamic, fiercely competitive inventors and entrepreneurs who made it happena riveting historical saga to rival McCullough's The Great Bridge or Larson's Thunderstruck.Maury Klein, author of Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929, is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and industry. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yetthe "power revolution" that transformed American life in the cours
Five Stars Amazon Customer I am very happy with this book. It's Tough Translating a Technical Subject into Simple Langauge Book is very good, although the explanations of early alternating current pilots and preliminary designs are a jumble of technical accuracy and layman's language. Not much different from the experiences of a college freshman in a second semester physics class.I also tripped over the use of expressions like "in the limelight", I struggling with whether that was intentional or. A Fine Read I was born and raised in Schenectady, New York, at a time when the locals still proudly, if a bit ruefully, referred to it as "The City That Lights and Hauls the World" because it was home to both the sprawling General Electric Company and the then-diminishing American Locomotive Company. But I didn't realize until reading this superb book that I never really understood how
He is especially strong when exploring the confounding engineering feats needed to make electricity a commercially feasible commodity. B&w illus. (June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. . From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Klein's descriptions of the science of steam power, beginning with James Watt, and electricity are clear and detailed. Along the way Klein brings dramatically to life the triumphs and disappointments, both human and technical, as the fledging electric companies sought to service American homes and businesses. In a well-written and satisfying acco