Mad Science: Einstein's Fridge, Dewar's Flask, Mach's Speed, and 362 Other Inventions and Discoveries that Made Our World
Math whizzes will already have deduced from the book’s subtitle that there are 365 inventions and discoveries represented here. That’s no accident: the book is designed like a desktop calendar in which each page tells you something new. Such as January 3, 1957, was the debut of the battery-powered watch, after more than a decade of development. And, on April 10, 1849, the safety pin was patented (revolutionizing, among many other things, the way babies’ diapers are changed). And, on October 31, 1951, pedestrian crossings were introduced in Britain (they call them zebra crossings due to their black-and-white stripes). Drawn from Wired magazine’s blog This Day in Tech, this endlessly fascinating book is simply presented: each page contains a primary subject, a brief discussion of its history and importance, and one-sentence mentions of some other important things that happened on the same date. Its only drawback—though no drawback at all for libraries—is that, unlike a typical desktop calendar, you can’t tear off one page when it’s time to move on to the next. --David Pitt