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Published Mar 2010
320 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
What began as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the battery. From Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800 to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs, science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our lives.
Volta's first battery not only settled the frog's leg question, it also unleashed a field of scientific research that led to the discovery of new elements and new inventions, from Samuel Morse's telegraph to Alexander Graham Bell's telephone to Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. And recent advances like nanotechnology are poised to create a new generation of paradigm-shifting energy sources.
Schlesinger introduces the charlatans and geniuses, paupers and magnates, attracted to the power of the battery, including Michael Faraday, Guglielmo Marconi, Gaylord Wilshire, and Hugo Gernsback, the publisher and would-be inventor who coined the term "science fiction." A kaleidoscopic tour of an ingenious invention that helped usher in the modern world, The Battery is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
"Combining enormous learning with a lively and entertaining style, this book deserves a wide general readership." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Schlesinger's modest technical explanations may not satisfy sophisticated science buffs, but he delivers high-quality popular-science writing." - Kirkus Reviews
"Just as a cracker-size battery powers a cell phone for days, so does Schlesigner's wit enliven an unlikely topic--The History of the ever-shrinking, ever more potent Battery." - Richard Zacks, author of An Underground Education and best-seller The Pirate Hunter
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Henry R. Schlesinger is a journalist and author specializing in science and emerging technologies. He has written extensively for Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, MIT's Technology Review, and Smithsonian magazine. The coauthor of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda, he lives in New York City.
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