Edison

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1. eatonphilJul 2023
   Here are some histories of specific industries I've read recently and supremely enjoyed:

   - The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

   - The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry

   - Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World

   - Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (of all of these not the most amazing but still interesting)

   - The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War

   And then you can learn a lot by reading about the people who built the industries too. Here are a few I've been reading about recently that I recommend:

   - Edison by Edmund Morris (Just read it backwards, you'll see.)

   - Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

   - The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts

   - Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

   I also got some interesting suggestions asking a similar question on Twitter a bit ago.

   https://twitter.com/eatonphil/status/1668625835350454273

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2. HamptonFoundersJul 2023
   Not sure if this is helpful, but a friend fed this conversation through ChatGPT and had it summarize for easier reading:

   -The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy -Bigger by Marc Levinson

   -The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos

   -Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World by Erik Larson

   -Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard -White

   -The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War by William Manchester

   -Edison by Edmund Morris

   -Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

   -The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts

   -Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

   -The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage

   -The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

   -Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael S. Malone

   -The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester

   -The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

   -Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Jr.

   -The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

   -Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics by Eric H. Chaney

   -Early Electrical Communication by A. F. Marland

   -Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism by Silvanus P. Thompson

   -Electric Science: Its History, Phenomena, and Applications by J. J. Fahie

   -The History and Present State of Electricity by Andrew Ure

   -https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

   -De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola

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3. eatonphilJul 2023
   Yep, that's where I stumbled onto this. The Victorian Internet was fun but way too short.

   A few chapters in David Nasaw's Andrew Carnegie and Edmund Morris's Edison go into telegraph history a bit.

   I got into the subject after reading both those books (they both got their start as telegraph operators), and noticing the similarity in meritocracy and culture between programmers today and telegraph operators back then.

   I'd love to read more. Two other books on my list are Lincoln In The Telegraph Office (1907) and Submarine Telegraphy (1898). All the in-depth books on the telegraph seem to have been written 100 years ago basically.

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