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Eight essays on the history of Bath
Gunpowder studies are still in their infancy despite the long-standing civil and military importance of this explosive since its discovery in China in the mid-ninth century AD. In this second volume by contributors who meet regularly at symposia of the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC), the research is again rooted in the investigation of the technology of explosives manufacture, but the fact that the chapters range in scope from the Old World to the New, from sources of raw materials in south-east Asia to the complications of manufacture in the West, shows that the story is more than the simple one of how an intriguing product was made. This volume is the first...
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A fundamental problem in studying early modern Russian history is determining Russia’s historical development in relationship to the rest of the world. The focus throughout this book is on the continuity of Russian policies during the early modern period (1450–1800) and that those policies coincided with those of other successful contemporary Eurasian polities. The continuities occurred in the midst of constant change, but neither one nor the other, continuities or changes alone, can account for Russia’s success. Instead, Russian rulers from Ivan III to Catherine II with their hub advisors managed to sustain a balance between the two. During the early modern period, these Russian ruler...
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The story of the science, the technology, the politics and the military applications of saltpeter - the vital but mysterious substance that governments from the Tudors to the Victorians regarded as an 'inestimable treasure'.
In The Story of N, Hugh S. Gorman analyzes the notion of sustainability from a fresh perspective—the integration of human activities with the biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen—and provides a supportive alternative to studying sustainability through the lens of climate change and the cycling of carbon. It is the first book to examine the social processes by which industrial societies learned to bypass a fundamental ecological limit and, later, began addressing the resulting concerns by establishing limits of their own The book is organized into three parts. Part I, “The Knowledge of Nature,” explores the emergence of the nitrogen cycle before humans arrived on the scene and the chang...
Presents essays concerning about the technical problems confronting different societies and periods, and also the measures taken to solve them. This book deals with the history of technical discovery and change, and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic.
Over the last 2,000 years, critical innovations have transformed small regions into global powers. But these powers have faded when they did not embrace the next big innovation. Gerard J. Tellis and Stav Rosenzweig argue that openness to new ideas and people, empowerment of individuals and competition are key drivers in the development and adoption of transformative innovations. These innovations, in turn, fuel economic growth, national dominance and global leadership. In How Transformative Innovations Shaped the Rise of Nations, Tellis and Rosenzweig examine the transformative qualities of concrete in Rome; swift equine warfare in Mongolia; critical navigational innovations in the golden ages of Chinese, Venetian, Portuguese and Dutch empires; the patent system and steam engine in Britain; and mass production in the United States of America.