Published: Berlin, 1907 Like yesterday’s featured book, today’s arrived at MIT as part of the Vail Collection just five years after it was published.  But while our 1906 selection was a popularized account of the “wonders of electricity,” Häntzschel’s book provides a much more technical review of everything anyone might want to know about the applications of electricity.  For the visual learners among his audience – in case countless drawings, plans, and photographs aren’t enough – the author has provided two colored diagrams with movable parts, one of an electric automobile motor and another of a steam turbine.  The reader […]

Published: London, 1906 “The present generation, having grown up amidst all these and other wonders, has almost ceased to marvel at them.”  The author here is speaking of the wonders of electricity, but the same sentiment has been expressed about the generations that grew up with radio, with talking pictures, with television, and with computers.  Although electricity was still in its relative infancy in 1906, the technology was already making startling improvements in everyday life.  As Gibson notes, cities could be illuminated, friends could speak across great distances, and motors could be manufactured to run any number of appliances. It’s […]

Published: Leipzig, 1905 Today’s selection is a work of such monumentality that there is essentially nothing new to be said about it. Most people are surprised, though, to learn that it’s a mere three pages long. Albert Einstein was still working as a patent examiner when, in 1905, he experienced his annus mirabilis or “miracle year,” during which he published four history-changing papers in the Annalen der Physik. This is the last of the four, and the briefest. Although the notation itself is different, it is in this paper that Einstein first expressed what’s come to be regarded as the […]

Published: Paris, 1904 In science, the appearance of success can be illusory, and what seems to be a startling achievement may end in embarrassment. Such is the sad case of the N-ray, a particle “discovered” in 1903 by René Blondlot, a distinguished French physicist. Blondlot (1849-1930) published this book as well as 23 separate articles on his exciting discovery. At the time, X-rays were still a fairly recent phenomenon, having been detected and named by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895 — an achievement that earned Röntgen the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. There was glory in the discovery of […]

Published: New York, 1903 “There are two superpowers in the world today …  There’s the United States and there’s Moody’s Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, and  Moody’s can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me, it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful” – Thomas Friedman on PBS’ NewsHour, 1996 John Moody (1868-1958) was a pioneer in bringing financial information and analysis to the investment world. In 1900 he published his first edition of Moody’s Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities (shown below) which provided investors with background and basic statistics on […]

Published: New York, 1902 “The sign of the times point most distinctly to a rapidly approaching era in which Man will return to his original food, and by so doing enter into a much happier and more peaceful state of existence upon this planet.” — Stephen H. Beard It’s hard to believe that this idealistic plea for vegetarianism was written in Britain in 1902 rather than, say, California in the 1970s, but it’s true.  At the turn of the 20th century, Britain was in the midst of a food reform movement.  Vegetarianism, once the domain of fringe religious and political […]

Published: Bristol, England, 1901 MIT was founded on the idea that an excellent education, based on a solid foundation in the sciences, was the surest road to technological and industrial innovation. A century ago, England’s Association of Technical Institutions was thinking along the same lines, and recognizing that the overall health and success of the nation was tied to the robustness of its industry. This pamphlet published by the Association opens with a stern warning: “ … it is a matter of life and death for us to maintain our position as a great industrial nation … we cannot do […]

Published: New York, 1900 The nineteenth century teemed with technological developments, and the enthusiasm of the age shines forth in the introduction to Flame, Electricity and the Camera: “As we hear the whir of the dynamo or listen at the telephone, as we turn the button of an incandescent lamp or travel in an electromobile, we are partakers in a revolution more swift and profound than has ever before been enacted upon earth.” Published in 1900 — at the close of a century that witnessed the Industrial Revolution, the advent of electric power, and the development of photography — Iles’ […]

Published: New York, Edinburgh, and London, 1899 The term “wireless telegraphy” conveys more than just its single, literal meaning. Although it describes a tremendous leap forward in communication technology, it’s a phrase – not unlike “horseless carriage” – that can’t quite leave the past behind. The Morse telegraph had transformed human communication in the mid-19th century by making it possible, for the first time, for humans to communicate instantly across long distances, via signals traveling between two points connected by wire. Telegraphy marked an unprecedented break with the past: information could now be transmitted from one place to another, day […]

Published: Philadelphia, 1898 The Spanish-American War was different from all of America’s previous wars: it was brief, it was fought entirely offshore, and it was, according to this book’s author, “a missionary war … the act of a great nation that, having won for itself the blessings of freedom … was generous enough and brave enough to take up the gage of battle in behalf of another people struggling to be free.” The war ended with Spain brought to its knees, and with the United States not only triumphant but in control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. The […]