Turning Point Inventions: The Lightbulb - Hardcover

Wallace, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689828160 ISBN 13: 9780689828164

Publisher: Atheneum, 1999

Synopsis

This book details Thomas Edison's invention of the lightbulb during a time when people lived by oil and gas lamps, and the dramatic evolution of his invention into today's fiber optic technologies.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Wallace is the author of ten previous books, including The American Museum of Natural History's Book of Dinosaurs and The Autobiography of Baseball. He lives in New York with his wife and two children.

Reviews

Grade 5-9-These well-written and interesting titles discuss the stages of development for each invention in a detailed yet understandable manner. The type size and layout of the main texts are attractive and easy to read, and a good mix of full-color and black-and-white photos and reproductions are well placed throughout. The captions are informative, but the small fine print is somewhat difficult to read. A stunning fold-out page of illustrations in each volume summarizes the development of the invention. The Lightbulb traces the history of lighting from earliest times through modern day, and the work of Thomas Edison is discussed in detail. While much of this material can be found elsewhere, this title provides an especially appealing source that includes developments in lighting since Edison. The Telephone is more advanced than Jeanne Bendick's Eureka! It's a Telephone (Millbrook, 1993; o.p.), and covers similar ground, but has more visual appeal than Naomi Pasachoff's Alexander Graham Bell (Oxford Univ., 1996). Both books conclude with a chapter on the future of the technology.
Marilyn Long Graham, Lee County Library System, Estero, FL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In an entry in the Turning Point Inventions series, Wallace invites readers to consider the drawbacks of earlier forms of artificial daylight, from wooden torches to arc lamps, then retraces Thomas Edison's intense, deliberate search for a practical electric light. Edison, inspired by a book of science experiments to become an inventor, combined a searching intellect with bulldog stubbornness, and can be credited not just with the light bulb itself, but also with the far more difficult accomplishment of engineering public acceptance of electricity in order to create a market for his invention. As much a readable character portrait as it is an account of the origin of a now-ubiquitous widget, Wallace's book is generously illustrated with contemporary black- and-white and full-color photographs and views, and capped by a fold-out look at a lightbulb's parts and assembly. Illuminating, of course. (bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-11) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689828160
• ISBN 13: 9780689828164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Welles Toby
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80