Places Of Invention

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Places of Invention

Author : Arthur P. Molella
Publisher : Smithsonian Institution
ISBN 13 : 1935623680
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (356 download)

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Book Synopsis Places of Invention by : Arthur P. Molella

Download or read book Places of Invention written by Arthur P. Molella and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The companion book to an upcoming museum exhibition of the same name, Places of Invention seeks to answer timely questions about the nature of invention and innovation: What is it about some places that sparks invention and innovation? Is it simply being at the right place at the right time, or is it more than that? How does “place”—whether physical, social, or cultural—support, constrain, and shape innovation? Why does invention flourish in one spot but struggle in another, even very similar location? In short: Why there? Why then? Places of Invention frames current and historic conversation on the relationship between place and creativity, citing extensive scholarship in the area and two decades of investigation and study from the National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The book is built around six place case studies: Hartford, CT, late 1800s; Hollywood, CA, 1930s; Medical Alley, MN, 1950s; Bronx, NY,1970s; Silicon Valley, CA, 1970s–1980s; and Fort Collins, CO, 2010s. Interspersed with these case studies are dispatches from three “learning labs” detailing Smithsonian Affiliate museums’ work using Places of Invention as a model for documenting local invention and innovation. Written by exhibition curators, each part of the book focuses on the central thesis that invention is everywhere and fueled by unique combinations of creative people, ready resources, and inspiring surroundings. Like the locations it explores, Places of Invention shows how the history of invention can be a transformative lens for understanding local history and cultivating creativity on scales of place ranging from the personal to the national and beyond.

Temple of Invention

Author : Charles J. Robertson
Publisher : Scala Arts Publishers Incorporated
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (319 download)

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Book Synopsis Temple of Invention by : Charles J. Robertson

Download or read book Temple of Invention written by Charles J. Robertson and published by Scala Arts Publishers Incorporated. This book was released on 2006 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This richly illustrated volume traces the history of this landmark building, documenting its varied functions and evolving architecture with rarely seen photographs and architectural plans.

The Invention of the Land of Israel

Author : Shlomo Sand
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1844679462
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (446 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of the Land of Israel by : Shlomo Sand

Download or read book The Invention of the Land of Israel written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

The Spirit of Invention

Author : Lemelson Center for the Study of Inventi
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061231894
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (612 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spirit of Invention by : Lemelson Center for the Study of Inventi

Download or read book The Spirit of Invention written by Lemelson Center for the Study of Inventi and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated appreciation of america's spirit of invention, which introduces unique characters whose insistence on change for the better made america what it is today The Spirit of Invention is a fascinating examination of innovation as a driving characteristic of Americans from all eras and all walks of life. In this book we meet Gertrude Forbes, a sickly widow so poor she had to live in her aunt's attic, who overcame the odds to invent, among other things, an adjustable ironing board cover. We follow Cromwell Dixon, a fifteen-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, whose dreams of finding a way to fly inspired him to invent a bicycle-powered airship. We see John Dove, an African-American inventor, originating concepts integral to the compact disc. We learn about Purdue University, one of the earliest educational institutions to promote invention and engineering ideas. We eavesdrop on Thomas Edison in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and also find out about the beginnings of film colorization, a controversial process that adds tint to film. And we read about Luther Burbank and how he revolutionized plant breeding. The book even reviews the invention of illegal devices such as the "light wand," which induced slot machines to pay out on every spin, and we are introduced to a poker player who invented a "holdout" that allowed him to conceal cards in a shirt sleeve during games. The Spirit of Invention is the tale of America's history of innovation, told in an engaging narrative style by a captivating historian and storyteller. Supported by a vast collection of archival material—photographs, newspaper clippings, and illustrations—Julie M. Fenster captures a group most Americans know nothing about: the dreamers and thinkers who found the need for a product, be it practical or fanciful, and saw it through to its creation. The book is an entirely fresh and fascinating examination of innovation as an innate force, inspiring unsung people to do magnificent things. In Fenster's own words, "Invention is more than just an occasional necessity for human beings; it is an impulse that helps to define the species. It emerges in the individual as a reaction to the splendid frustration of one's surroundings, a response as basic in most people as having children: to leave a mark and give a gift, perchance for the better, to the future." This is the inside story of the true innovators of our nation.

Ghetto

Author : Mitchell Duneier
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1429942754
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghetto by : Mitchell Duneier

Download or read book Ghetto written by Mitchell Duneier and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of 2016 Winner of the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize On March 29, 1516, the city council of Venice issued a decree forcing Jews to live in il geto—a closed quarter named for the copper foundry that once occupied the area. The term stuck. In this sweeping and original account, Mitchell Duneier traces the idea of the ghetto from its beginnings in the sixteenth century and its revival by the Nazis to the present. As Duneier shows, we cannot comprehend the entanglements of race, poverty, and place in America today without recalling the ghettos of Europe, as well as earlier efforts to understand the problems of the American city. Ghetto is the story of the scholars and activists who tried to achieve that understanding. As Duneier shows, their efforts to wrestle with race and poverty cannot be divorced from their individual biographies, which often included direct encounters with prejudice and discrimination in the academy and elsewhere. Using new and forgotten sources, Duneier introduces us to Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, graduate students whose conception of the South Side of Chicago established a new paradigm for thinking about Northern racism and poverty in the 1940s. We learn how the psychologist Kenneth Clark subsequently linked Harlem’s slum conditions with the persistence of black powerlessness, and we follow the controversy over Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the black family. We see how the sociologist William Julius Wilson redefined the debate about urban America as middle-class African Americans increasingly escaped the ghetto and the country retreated from racially specific remedies. And we trace the education reformer Geoffrey Canada’s efforts to transform the lives of inner-city children with ambitious interventions, even as other reformers sought to help families escape their neighborhoods altogether. Duneier offers a clear-eyed assessment of the thinkers and doers who have shaped American ideas about urban poverty—and the ghetto. The result is a valuable new estimation of an age-old concept.

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

Author : Eric S. Hintz
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262542587
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D by : Eric S. Hintz

Download or read book American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D written by Eric S. Hintz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions. During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary "garret inventor" as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. In this book, Eric Hintz argues that lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Earl Tupper (Tupperware) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, Hintz explains how independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation. Focusing on the years from 1890 to 1950, Hintz documents how American independent inventors competed (and sometimes partnered) with their corporate rivals, adopted a variety of flexible commercialization strategies, established a series of short-lived professional groups, lobbied for fairer patent laws, and mobilized for two world wars. After 1950, the experiences of independent inventors generally mirrored the patterns of their predecessors, and they continued to be overshadowed during corporate R&D's postwar golden age. The independents enjoyed a resurgence, however, at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple's Steve Jobs and Shark Tank's Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. By recovering the stories of a group once considered extinct, Hintz shows that independent inventors have long been—and remain—an important source of new technologies.

The Invention of Yesterday

Author : Tamim Ansary
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610397975
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of Yesterday by : Tamim Ansary

Download or read book The Invention of Yesterday written by Tamim Ansary and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories--to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

The Greatest Invention

Author : Silvia Ferrara
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374601631
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis The Greatest Invention by : Silvia Ferrara

Download or read book The Greatest Invention written by Silvia Ferrara and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.

Metropolis

Author : Ben Wilson
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385543476
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Metropolis by : Ben Wilson

Download or read book Metropolis written by Ben Wilson and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations. “A towering achievement. . . . Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first time—dazzling.” —The Wall Street Journal During the two hundred millennia of humanity’s existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new professions, new forms of art, worship and trade—that they kick-started civilization. Guiding us through the centuries, Wilson reveals the innovations nurtured by the inimitable energy of human beings together: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Époque Paris. In the modern age, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page-turning, irresistible, and rich with engrossing detail, Metropolis is a brilliant demonstration that the story of human civilization is the story of cities.

Invention

Author : Norbert Wiener
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262731119
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Invention by : Norbert Wiener

Download or read book Invention written by Norbert Wiener and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's view of the history of discovery and invention.

The Great Invention

Author : Ehsan Masood
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1681771810
Total Pages : 173 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (817 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great Invention by : Ehsan Masood

Download or read book The Great Invention written by Ehsan Masood and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s principal measure of the health of economies is gross domestic product, or GDP: the sum of what all of us spend every day, from the contents of our weekly shopping to large capital spending by businesses. GDP also includes the myriad things that our governments pay for, from libraries and road-line painting to naval dockyards and nuclear weapons.The Great Invention reveals how in just a few decades GDP became the world’s most powerful formula: how six algebraic symbols forged in the fires of the 1930's economic crisis helped Europe and America prosper, how the remedy now risks killing the patient it once saved, and how this fundamentally flawed metric is creating the illusion of global prosperity—and why many world leaders want to be able to ignore it but so far remain powerless to do so. Drawing on interviews, firsthand accounts, and previously neglected source materials, The Great Invention takes readers on a journey from Capitol Hill to Whitehall—on the trail of theories made in Cambridge, tested in Karachi, and designed for global application—into the minds of unworldly geniuses seduced by the allure of power and the demands of politics.

Innovation in Real Places

Author : Dan Breznitz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197508138
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis Innovation in Real Places by : Dan Breznitz

Download or read book Innovation in Real Places written by Dan Breznitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of Balsillie Prize for Public Policy Winner of Donner Prize A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community. Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.

Genre And The Invention Of The Writer

Author : Anis Bawarshi
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 0874214769
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Genre And The Invention Of The Writer by : Anis Bawarshi

Download or read book Genre And The Invention Of The Writer written by Anis Bawarshi and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2003-12-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a focused and compelling discussion, Anis Bawarshi looks to genre theory for what it can contribute to a refined understanding of invention. In describing what he calls "the genre function," he explores what is at stake for the study and teaching of writing to imagine invention as a way that writers locate themselves, via genres, within various positions and activities. He argues, in fact, that invention is a process in which writers are acted upon by genres as much as they act themselves. Such an approach naturally requires the composition scholar to re-place invention from the writer to the sites of action, the genres, in which the writer participates. This move calls for a thoroughly rhetorical view of invention, roughly in the tradition of Richard Young, Janice Lauer, and those who have followed them. Instead of mastering notions of "good" writing, Bawarshi feels that students gain more from learning how to adapt socially and rhetorically as they move from one "genred" site of action to the next.

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn

Author : Suleiman Osman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199830770
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn by : Suleiman Osman

Download or read book The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn written by Suleiman Osman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by young and idealistic white college graduates searching for "authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings, industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge from an increasingly technocratic society. Osman examines the emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or failure.

Invention & Reinvention

Author : Mary Lindenstein Walshok
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 080478888X
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Invention & Reinvention by : Mary Lindenstein Walshok

Download or read book Invention & Reinvention written by Mary Lindenstein Walshok and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating story of regeneration. Using a social history perspective over different periods, it offers a wonderful case study of urban reinvention.” —Shiri M. Breznitz, Economic Geography Formerly prosperous cities across the United States, struggling to keep up with an increasingly global economy and the continued decline of post-war industries like manufacturing, face the issue of how to adapt to today’s knowledge economy. In Invention and Reinvention, authors Mary Walshok and Abraham Shragge chronicle San Diego’s transformation from a small West Coast settlement to a booming military metropolis and then to a successful innovation hub. This instructive story of a second-tier city that transformed its core economic identity can serve as a rich case and a model for similar regions. Stressing the role that cultural values and social dynamics played in its transition, the authors discern five distinct, recurring factors upon which San Diego capitalized at key junctures in its economic growth. San Diego—though not always a star city—has been able to repurpose its assets and realign its economic development strategies continuously in order to sustain prosperity. Chronicling over a century of adaptation, this book offers a lively and penetrating tale of how one city reinvented itself to meet the demands of today’s economy, lighting the way for others. “This is an important, pioneering book that contributes to our unique understanding of how one place, San Diego, has achieved what most places want: the capacity to evolve and meet the challenges of a constantly changing global economic environment. Walshok and Shragge help us understand why some places thrive while others wither.” —David B. Audretsch, author of Everything in Its Place

Learn from the Past, Create the Future

Author : Maria de Icaza
Publisher : WIPO
ISBN 13 : 9280514318
Total Pages : 69 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (85 download)

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Book Synopsis Learn from the Past, Create the Future by : Maria de Icaza

Download or read book Learn from the Past, Create the Future written by Maria de Icaza and published by WIPO. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Inventions and Patents" is the first of WIPO's Learn from the past, create the future series of publications aimed at young students. This series was launched in recognition of the importance of children and young adults as the creators of our future.

Beyond Bakelite

Author : Joris Mercelis
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262538695
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Bakelite by : Joris Mercelis

Download or read book Beyond Bakelite written by Joris Mercelis and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The changing relationships between science and industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrated by the career of the “father of plastics.” The Belgian-born American chemist, inventor, and entrepreneur Leo Baekeland (1863–1944) is best known for his invention of the first synthetic plastic—his near-namesake Bakelite—which had applications ranging from electrical insulators to Art Deco jewelry. Toward the end of his career, Baekeland was called the “father of plastics”—given credit for the establishment of a sector to which many other researchers, inventors, and firms inside and outside the United States had also made significant contributions. In Beyond Bakelite, Joris Mercelis examines Baekeland's career, using it as a lens through which to view the changing relationships between science and industry on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He gives special attention to the intellectual property strategies and scientific entrepreneurship of the period, making clear their relevance to contemporary concerns. Mercelis describes the growth of what he terms the “science-industry nexus” and the developing interdependence of science and industry. After examining Baekeland's emergence as a pragmatic innovator and leader in scientific circles, Mercelis analyzes Baekeland's international and domestic IP strategies and his efforts to reform the US patent system; his dual roles as scientist and industrialist; the importance of theoretical knowledge to the science-industry nexus; and the American Bakelite companies' research and development practices, technically oriented sales approach, and remuneration schemes. Mercelis argues that the expansion and transformation of the science-industry nexus shaped the careers and legacies of Baekeland and many of his contemporaries.