Spring/Summer 1990

Volume 6, Issue 1

FEATURES

A Most Invented Invention

Polypropylene was invented by many people in many places almost simultaneously.

David B. Sicilia

Reckless Pioneer

Eliphalet Nott saw the future and tried to gamble his way there

George Wise

Technology Makes Music

A short, distortionfree history of high fidelity
David Lander

The Big Ship

The transatlantic ocean liner reached its ultimate refinement in the United States —when the age of international sea travel was already ending
Edward R. Crews

The Rise Of Silicon Valley

How a twenty-five-mile stretch of California farmland evolved —in the course of a century—to become the heart of America’s electronics industry
James C. Williams

The Shot Tower

How do you make perfectly round lead balls for shooting? With a truly simple technology that has hardly changed for centuries.

Walter Minchinton

“New, Useful, and Nonobvious”

An invention must be all three to get a patent, and even then it may have trouble. The story of two hundred years of U.S. patent law and its impossible but necessary task of defining what is an invention.

Steven Lubar

DEPARTMENTS

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