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List of Illustrations | |
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Prologue: Rocket | |
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concerning ten thousand years, a hundred lineages, and two revolutions | |
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Changes in the Atmosphere | |
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Concerning how a toy built in Alexandria failed to inspire, and how a glass tube made in Italy succeeded | |
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The spectacle of two German hemispheres attached to sixteen German horses | |
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And the critical importance of nothing at all | |
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A Great Company of Men | |
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Concerning the many uses of a piston | |
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How the world's first scientific society was founded at a college with no students | |
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And the inspirational value of armories, Nonconformist preachers, incomplete patterns, and sniffing valves | |
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The First and True Inventor | |
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Concerning a trial over the ownership of a deck of playing cards | |
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A utopian fantasy island in the South Seas; one Statute and two Treatises | |
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and the manner in which ideas were transformed from something one discovers to something one owns | |
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A Very Great Quantity of Heat | |
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Concerning the discovery of fatty earth | |
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The consequences of the deforestation of Europe | |
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The limitations of waterpower | |
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The experimental importance of a Scotsman's ice cube | |
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And the search for the most valuable jewel in Britain | |
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Science in his Hands | |
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Concerning the unpredictable consequences of sea air on iron telescopes | |
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The power of the cube-square law | |
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The Incorporation of Hammermen | |
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The nature of insight | |
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And the long-term effects of financial bubbles | |
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The Whole Thing was Arranged in my Mind | |
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Concerning the surprising contents of a Ladies Diary | |
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Invention by natural selection; the Flynn Effect | |
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Neuronal avalanches | |
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The critical distinction between invention and innovation | |
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And the memory of a stroll on Glasgow Green | |
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Master of Them All | |
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Concerning differences among Europe's monastic brotherhoods | |
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The unlikely contribution of the brewing of beer to the forging of iron | |
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The geometry of crystals | |
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And an old furnace made new | |
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A Field that is Endless | |
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Concerning the unpredictable consequences of banking crises | |
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A Private Act of Parliament | |
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The folkways of Cornish miners | |
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The difficulties in converting reciprocating into rotational motion | |
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And the largest flour mill in the world | |
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Quite Splendid with a File | |
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Concerning the picking of locks | |
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The use of wood in the making of iron, and iron in the making of wood | |
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The very great importance of very small errors | |
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Blocks of all shapes and sizes | |
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And the tool known as "the Lord Chancellor" | |
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To Give England the Power of Cotton | |
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Concerning the secret of silk spinning | |
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Two men named Kay | |
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A child called Jenny | |
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The breaking of frames | |
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The great Cotton War between Calcutta and Lancashire | |
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And the violent resentments of stocking knitters | |
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Wealth of Nations | |
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Concerning Malthusian traps and escapes | |
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Spillovers and residuals | |
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The uneasy relationship between population growth and innovation | |
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And the limitations of Chinese emperors, Dutch bankers, and French revolutionaries | |
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Strong Steam | |
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Concerning a Cornish Giant, and a trip up Camborne Hill | |
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The triangular relationship between power, weight, and pressure | |
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George Washington's flour mill and the dredging of the Schuylkill River | |
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The long trip from Cornwall to Peru | |
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And the most important railroad race in history | |
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Epilogue: The Fuel of Interest | |
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Acknowledgments | |
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Notes | |
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Index | |