Book Description: Invention--that single leap of a human mind
that gives us all we create. Yet we make a mistake when we call
a telephone or a light bulb an invention, says John Lienhard. In
truth, light bulbs, airplanes, steam engines--these objects are
the end results, the fruits, of vast aggregates of invention.
They are not invention itself. In How Invention Begins, Lienhard
reconciles the ends of invention with the individual leaps upon
which they are built, illuminating the vast web of individual
inspirations that lie behind whole technologies. He traces, for
instance, the way in which thousands of people applied their
combined inventive genius to airplanes, railroad engines, and
automobiles. As he does so, it becomes clear that a collective
desire, an upwelling of fascination, a spirit of the times--a
Zeitgeist--laid its hold upon inventors. The thing they all
sought to create was speed itself. Likewise, Lienhard shows that
when we trace the astonishingly complex technology of printing
books, we come a