The Problem With Early Navigation Tools (Bloopers of Invention)

Nagelhout, Ryan

ISBN 10: 1482427788 ISBN 13: 9781482427783

Publisher: Gareth Stevens Pub, 2015

Synopsis

Discusses the history of navigation, detailing some of the blunders of such early navigational apparatus as lead lines, astrolabes, and magnetic compasses.

About this title

From School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-Though he embeds some humorous missteps-each headed with an eye-catching "OOPS!"-into this set of reasonably coherent highlight reel-style accounts of how selected technological developments got their starts, Nagelhout makes more than a few problematic choices. Characterizing Otto Lilienthal's fatal crash and the Hindenburg disaster in Early Flying Machines as "bloopers" seems fatuous, for instance. Other entries seem shoehorned in, such as the abacus (accompanied by text describing the practice of counting on fingers as an "OOPS!"). Moreover, the author phones in a history of photography in Early Cameras, commenting that the first Kodak film was made from "something called cellulose" and quaintly warning that "if you lose a memory card or your computer breaks, you could lose all your digital photos." VERDICT Though readers hoping for disaster-centric edutainment will be disappointed, these histories do offer good overviews of their subjects, with a well-chosen mix of period photos and labeled diagrams to illustrate each high (or low) point.α(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gareth Stevens Pub
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1482427788
• ISBN 13: 9781482427783
• Binding: Library Binding
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 24