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علم و ماجراهای علمی #8
بزرگترین ناگفتههای شگفتانگیز علمی
آیا میخواهید بیشتر بدانید ؟ بنابراین خوب کتابی را انتخاب کردهاید . این کتاب از سری مجموعه کتابهای بزرگترین ناگفتههای تاریخ علم است که پر از داستانهای ماجراجویانه ، اتفاقات مسرتبخش ، دغدغههای مادامالعمر و جرقههای خیرهکنندة نبوغ است . داستانهای واقعی که اختراعات و اکتشافاتی را تصویر میکند که از دو هزار سال پیش به این سو انجام شده است و شخصیتهای مشهور مانند اسحاق نیوتن ، توماس ادیسون و یا شخصیتهای گمنامتری مانند آلبرت پارک هاوس (مخترع رختآویز فلزی ) در آن به چشم میخورند . مبادا تصور کنید که مطالعة تاریخچه علوم ، بحث خشک و کسلکنندهای است ، به شما اطمینان میدهیم که عکس این مسئله درست است . در داستانهای این کتاب ، ناپدیدشدن اسرارآمیز ، جدالی مرگبار ، زلزله و حتی بازی گلف هم وجود دارد ! بعضی صحنهها چنان تکان دهندهاند که گویی از فیلم سینمایی برگرفته شده است . مانند دویست راهبی که با گرفتن دستهای یکدیگر ، دایره بزرگی را تشکیل دادند و همزمان به آنها شوک الکتریکی وارد شد . مجلد دیگری از علم و ماجراهای علمی که نویسنده هدف از نگارش آن را مطالعه و کشف نکات بیبدیل علمی میداند تحت عنوان بزرگترین ناگفتههای شگفتانگیز علمی راهی بازار نشر شده است
چاپ ۱۳۸۹
چاپ ۱۳۸۹
216 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2009
About the author
Rick Beyer
11 books44 followersRick Beyer is a best-selling author, an award-winning filmmaker and long-time history enthusiast. His newest book, Rivals Unto Death traces the thirty-year rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
Beyer has also produced documentary films for The History Channel, A&E, National Geographic, the Smithsonian and others. He is the author of The Greatest Stories Never Told series of history books published by Harper Collins, and described by the Chicago Tribune as “an old fashioned sweetshop full of tasty morsels.”
Beyer has shared his unique take on history in interviews on CBS, MSNBC, CNN, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, NPR, Fox News, and audiences around the country. He has also worked as a radio reporter, a TV news producer, an ad agency creative director, and a janitor (not in that order). And here's a few other things he's done.
•Camp for ten days in the mosquito-infested Siberian Wilderness
•Flee New Orleans the day before Katrina
•Interview Jimmy Carter in the White House
•Climb Mt. Washington 5 times
•Get called stupid by David Brinkley
•Be consoled by Mary Tyler Moore
•Marry a beautiful woman during a lightning storm
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Beyer lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife, Marilyn Rea Beyer (see above about the lightning storm!)
"In this fascinating dual biography, Beyer brings these two towering figures to vivid life on the page." --New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides.Beyer is the co-author (with Elizabeth Sayles Sayles) of the New York Times bestseller The Ghost Army of World War II How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks Sound Effects and Other Audacious Fakery. Beyer has spent nearly a decade researching this story. His award-winning documentary film about the unit, The Ghost Army premiered on PBS in 2013. The San Francisco Chronicle called the film “mesmerizing,” while TV Guide referred to it as “entrancing.”
Beyer has also produced documentary films for The History Channel, A&E, National Geographic, the Smithsonian and others. He is the author of The Greatest Stories Never Told series of history books published by Harper Collins, and described by the Chicago Tribune as “an old fashioned sweetshop full of tasty morsels.”
Beyer has shared his unique take on history in interviews on CBS, MSNBC, CNN, The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, NPR, Fox News, and audiences around the country. He has also worked as a radio reporter, a TV news producer, an ad agency creative director, and a janitor (not in that order). And here's a few other things he's done.
•Camp for ten days in the mosquito-infested Siberian Wilderness
•Flee New Orleans the day before Katrina
•Interview Jimmy Carter in the White House
•Climb Mt. Washington 5 times
•Get called stupid by David Brinkley
•Be consoled by Mary Tyler Moore
•Marry a beautiful woman during a lightning storm
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Beyer lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife, Marilyn Rea Beyer (see above about the lightning storm!)
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 24, 2020
Very nice overview that lives up to its title. I’m stunned by how many of these scientists had other incredible accomplishments. I’m also stunned how many took their own lives and/or lived in financial difficulties, I enjoyed the back-stories, would have just liked more about times and years that events occurred, I read this in one day, it’s a quick read.
December 24, 2018
Interesting read. I liked that it was organized like a timeline. Each discovery was covered on two pages and included pictures and diagrams.
January 21, 2011
"The Greatest Science Stories Never Told"
-By Rick Beyer-
"The Greatest Science Stories Never Told" is the latest in a series seeking to bring the minutia of life to light that has been overlooked or consigned to the dustbin of history. In doing so, it mostly succeeds. From the story of President Lincoln's patent (the only president to hold one) for buoying vessels stuck on sandbars to Bette Graham Nesmith, who's horrible typing led her to invent Liquid Paper and thus become a millionaire to a selection of absurd patents, such as a turnable for pregnant women to lie on which would spin up to 7 Gs and thus propel the baby out of her body, many interesting scientific achievements are briefly discussed.
However, there in lies my major issue with this book and the series as a whole, the briefness of the entries. The scientific achievements, their pioneers, the events surrounding the invention and the repercussions are only barely touched upon. These entries are only introductions. I know, that that is probably the purpose of the book, but this goal could still be serviced with slightly longer essays. This could best be achieved by having the book be a regulation-sized hardcover book. Each incident could then be allotted 7 or 8 pages, plenty of room for more details, without forcing the book to be appreciably longer. It is not the subject matter that is at issue; in fact I want MORE subject matter.
But, if you are interested in having your appetite whetted for more scientific history and after closing the back cover desire to have the feeling of wanting more, than this book is for you. It treads new ground, but only very lightly. In the back though, there is a selection of source materials for all of the entries, so you will be able to do further research on those subjects that interested you. In short, "The Greatest Science Stories Never Told" is excellent for the casual reader and I found it nice to read a few entries before going to bed. But a serious historian of science or someone who prefers more intimate details, will be left unsatisfied. Though it might find fans among younger students, who for them and their short attention spans, the short essays are a perfect fit.
-By Rick Beyer-
"The Greatest Science Stories Never Told" is the latest in a series seeking to bring the minutia of life to light that has been overlooked or consigned to the dustbin of history. In doing so, it mostly succeeds. From the story of President Lincoln's patent (the only president to hold one) for buoying vessels stuck on sandbars to Bette Graham Nesmith, who's horrible typing led her to invent Liquid Paper and thus become a millionaire to a selection of absurd patents, such as a turnable for pregnant women to lie on which would spin up to 7 Gs and thus propel the baby out of her body, many interesting scientific achievements are briefly discussed.
However, there in lies my major issue with this book and the series as a whole, the briefness of the entries. The scientific achievements, their pioneers, the events surrounding the invention and the repercussions are only barely touched upon. These entries are only introductions. I know, that that is probably the purpose of the book, but this goal could still be serviced with slightly longer essays. This could best be achieved by having the book be a regulation-sized hardcover book. Each incident could then be allotted 7 or 8 pages, plenty of room for more details, without forcing the book to be appreciably longer. It is not the subject matter that is at issue; in fact I want MORE subject matter.
But, if you are interested in having your appetite whetted for more scientific history and after closing the back cover desire to have the feeling of wanting more, than this book is for you. It treads new ground, but only very lightly. In the back though, there is a selection of source materials for all of the entries, so you will be able to do further research on those subjects that interested you. In short, "The Greatest Science Stories Never Told" is excellent for the casual reader and I found it nice to read a few entries before going to bed. But a serious historian of science or someone who prefers more intimate details, will be left unsatisfied. Though it might find fans among younger students, who for them and their short attention spans, the short essays are a perfect fit.
November 13, 2022
Quite an interesting "Fact Book", with plenty of pics and single page stories for brain injection. Below are some of them for your enjoyment.
1719: Paper used to be made from cotton and linen rags until a French scientist observed a wasp nest made of wood pulp.
1769: Over 100 years before Henry Ford was born, a "steam wagon" drove down the streets of Paris. It ran for 20 minutes before "running out of steam".
1854: Elisha Otis did not invent the first elevator. He invented something more important...the elevator brake.
1860: Philip Reis invented the telephone, 15 years before A.G. Bell.
1879: More than 20 inventors came up with working light bulbs before Edison.
1886: Josephine Garis Cochrane decided to wash her own fine china because her servants were chipping too much of it. She hated the task, and set about to make a dish washing machine. The machine was a success in commercial settings. She died in 1912, but forty years later her company, KitchenAid, made the appliance available for the home kitchen.
1893: The man in charge of the Chicago Exposition, Daniel Burnham, knew the draw of the tower built for the Paris Exposition by Louis Eiffel. His engineers started with several plans to make an even more spectacular tower. One engineer was laughed at and called "the man with wheels in his head". But this engineer finally got the approval for his idea and it was a hit. His name was George Ferris.
1901: H. Cecil Booth saw a demo of a new cleaning machine that blew dirt and dust out of cracks in a home...only to go all over. He asked the inventor why not create a machine to suck up the dirt. "No practical" he was told. A year later he invented his "Puffing Billy". It sat on the street and a hose was run through a window into the house that he was cleaning. During WWI there was a spotted-fever epidemic at the Crystal Palace, spread by dust and dirt. A fleet of Puffers sucked up 26 tons of dirt from the giant building's carpets and halted the spread of the disease virtually overnight.
1903: Albert Patterson returned to his job at a wire factory and found that all the coat hooks were taken and he didn't want to wrinkle his coat. He grabbed a piece of wire and twisted it around and made a "coat hanger" and hung it on a knob. After seeing it, his employer decided to patent the idea. Patterson earned nothing from his ingenious invention.
1911: Albert Gilbert won an Olympic gold medal in 1908. He also had a medical degree from Yale, and was an accomplished magician. Riding the railroad one day he was fascinated by the steel girders erected to hold the power lines. He thought it would be fun to have miniature girders to play with at home and build things. Kids for the next 75 years, including me, would be thankful for this invention, The Erector Set".
1920: Earl Dickson's wife Josephine seemed to cut herself in the kitchen often. Earl laid out a piece of surgical tape and put pieces of gauze on it, then rolled it back up again. If Josephine ever cut herself, she could cut off a piece and use it. Earl was a cotton buyer for Johnson & Johnson, and his co-workers urged him to tell management about his idea. Only 3000 Band-Aids were sold the first year. Then J&J gave them out free to the Boy Scouts one year as a publicity stunt, and it worked. Over 100 billion have been sold since.
1945: Engineer Percy Spencer was conducting tests on his radar system. When he sat down to take a break, he reached in his pocket for his chocolate bar snack and noticed it was melted. He wondered if the magnetron had caused it. He put some corn kernels in front of it and turned it on. This was the first-ever batch of microwave popcorn, and the invention of the Radar Range.
1956: Robert Adler, everyone's hero (Google it)
1719: Paper used to be made from cotton and linen rags until a French scientist observed a wasp nest made of wood pulp.
1769: Over 100 years before Henry Ford was born, a "steam wagon" drove down the streets of Paris. It ran for 20 minutes before "running out of steam".
1854: Elisha Otis did not invent the first elevator. He invented something more important...the elevator brake.
1860: Philip Reis invented the telephone, 15 years before A.G. Bell.
1879: More than 20 inventors came up with working light bulbs before Edison.
1886: Josephine Garis Cochrane decided to wash her own fine china because her servants were chipping too much of it. She hated the task, and set about to make a dish washing machine. The machine was a success in commercial settings. She died in 1912, but forty years later her company, KitchenAid, made the appliance available for the home kitchen.
1893: The man in charge of the Chicago Exposition, Daniel Burnham, knew the draw of the tower built for the Paris Exposition by Louis Eiffel. His engineers started with several plans to make an even more spectacular tower. One engineer was laughed at and called "the man with wheels in his head". But this engineer finally got the approval for his idea and it was a hit. His name was George Ferris.
1901: H. Cecil Booth saw a demo of a new cleaning machine that blew dirt and dust out of cracks in a home...only to go all over. He asked the inventor why not create a machine to suck up the dirt. "No practical" he was told. A year later he invented his "Puffing Billy". It sat on the street and a hose was run through a window into the house that he was cleaning. During WWI there was a spotted-fever epidemic at the Crystal Palace, spread by dust and dirt. A fleet of Puffers sucked up 26 tons of dirt from the giant building's carpets and halted the spread of the disease virtually overnight.
1903: Albert Patterson returned to his job at a wire factory and found that all the coat hooks were taken and he didn't want to wrinkle his coat. He grabbed a piece of wire and twisted it around and made a "coat hanger" and hung it on a knob. After seeing it, his employer decided to patent the idea. Patterson earned nothing from his ingenious invention.
1911: Albert Gilbert won an Olympic gold medal in 1908. He also had a medical degree from Yale, and was an accomplished magician. Riding the railroad one day he was fascinated by the steel girders erected to hold the power lines. He thought it would be fun to have miniature girders to play with at home and build things. Kids for the next 75 years, including me, would be thankful for this invention, The Erector Set".
1920: Earl Dickson's wife Josephine seemed to cut herself in the kitchen often. Earl laid out a piece of surgical tape and put pieces of gauze on it, then rolled it back up again. If Josephine ever cut herself, she could cut off a piece and use it. Earl was a cotton buyer for Johnson & Johnson, and his co-workers urged him to tell management about his idea. Only 3000 Band-Aids were sold the first year. Then J&J gave them out free to the Boy Scouts one year as a publicity stunt, and it worked. Over 100 billion have been sold since.
1945: Engineer Percy Spencer was conducting tests on his radar system. When he sat down to take a break, he reached in his pocket for his chocolate bar snack and noticed it was melted. He wondered if the magnetron had caused it. He put some corn kernels in front of it and turned it on. This was the first-ever batch of microwave popcorn, and the invention of the Radar Range.
1956: Robert Adler, everyone's hero (Google it)
March 13, 2019
Quick read. Very enjoyable.
January 6, 2010
This is a smart, fun overview of scientific history, especially good for people like me who really like science, but are too old and off the path to be reading science textbooks : ) Each discovery/invention/story includes a decent share of factual information, but reads quickly and enjoyably. It is a book that also belongs in the classroom; the stories could be easily adapted for just about any grade level, and would serve as terrific "bell-ringers" in a science or history class or as possible research topics for English and history papers.
I look forward to reading Rick Beyer's other titles as well!
I look forward to reading Rick Beyer's other titles as well!
March 31, 2010
This is the most fun I've had reading non-fiction in awhile. It contains interesting, humorous even weird stories about famous (and infamous inventors. Judging by the bibliography, The Greatest Science Stories Never Told seems to be well-researched. Did you know that Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, was a mathematician and considered to be the first computer programmer? Yes, I know that you nerds already knew that, but it was news to me! If you're just dying to know something cool about the invention of the zipper, the first windshield wiper, or x-rays, then run don't walk to your nearest library and check out this book.
November 6, 2016
This book is like a tasting contest of whatever food you happen to like. You get one bite and then move on. There are about 100 stories of (mostly) invention from (mostly) the 20th century and ever so brief snippets about how they came about. Some of the stories are not really obscure (such as Archimedes) and some require more documentation to make them totally believable. For someone who is truly interested in the story of invention and how it occurs, there are much better books out there. This one would be a good to keep in a doctor's waiting room to browse through waiting for the actual appointment.
July 11, 2013
Beyer does an excellent job of creating interesting snapshots of scientific discoveries throughout history. A few of these I had heard of before, but for the most part I learned new things. For example, the first car was invented 100 years before Henry Ford was born and the first coin-operated vending machine was in use in ancient Roman temples. I enjoyed this book for the information and for the humor throughout.
November 22, 2009
This book was an amazing look at parts of the history of science that are normally not told. As a PhD student in science, I found the tidbits about who actually did what extremely enlightening. It is amazing how history is somewhat rewritten over time and how some people are overlooked due to circumstances. A very interesting very fast read.
March 8, 2011
It's always fun to learn scientific/historical facts that you never knew. Though I will say that some of the stories I have heard before but some were science stories I had never heard. It's a good book to read a couple of pages from at a time.
December 17, 2011
Awesome anecdotes about some of the greatest minds, inventions and stories of the science world. Truly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it for anyone interested in a light and easy read. I have already cited numerous stories multiple times throughout the day. "Crowd pleaser" if you will.
January 4, 2013
Although many of the stories were familiar, many were new to me, and even the familiar tales usually had a new fact I didn't know. The stories are short, and more than once I went online to find out the full stories behind some of the more intriguing inventors.
January 3, 2011
This book consists of 1-2 page stories about inventions and inventors that are not well known. The stories are quick and easy to read. It is entertaining and informative.
October 14, 2010
I won this books on First Reads so I will write a complete review when I finish -
March 9, 2010
Fun, but too short. Each section is only one page long, which made me feel a little bit like I had ADD.
August 9, 2010
Bite-sized and interesting with helpful end notes.
July 12, 2018
I beg to differ with the "Never Told" part of the title--I'd heard about a third of them before, but still, fun to read.
January 28, 2014
very interesting :)
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June 27, 2015We used this in our homeschool 2014-2015 to explore science off the beaten track. It was a fun jumping off point to explored lots of related ideas.
June 29, 2014
I found some great stuff in this book for inspiring young people to think like a scientist.
October 3, 2017
This was a good book to read and get ideas for things you might want to read more about, like an event or a person. The book is based on a TV show, that was on the History Channel, the author also does documentaries.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews