Visual Timeline of Inventions

Traces the history of inventions throughout time, from 3500 BC to the technological advances of today, in an indispensible guide that provides students with a vast array of essential information and makes learning enjoyable.

Grade 5-9?Unlike many similar books on the topic, this volume manages to convey a sense of how the passage of time affects creative design. Inventions are organized into five categories (world events, travel and conquest, agriculture and industry, daily life and health, and measurement and communication) and are presented concurrently in a timeline that starts in 600,000 B.C. and proceeds, with each turn of the page, to the present. This approach allows readers to note coincidences in creativity. Short captions fill in information about the inventions, but for good explanations of their significance or definitions of terms, readers will have to look elsewhere. The full-color photographs are varied and interesting. What's more, this book teaches a sophisticated form of literacy similar to skills students learn when they interact with multimedia resources?reading both text and pictures?and provides a third understanding, that of juxtaposition.?Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 3-6. As in many other books published by Dorling Kindersley, the visuals here (clear photographs or drawings set against a bright white background) will attract readers. A time line of world events anchors each page, with the remainder of the page divided into four sections: "Counting & Communication"; "Daily Life & Health"; "Agriculture & Industry"; and "Travel & Conquest." There are, however, gaps in the visual history. For example, although the Huang He (Yellow River) of China is listed as one site of early settlement, the accompanying map doesn't show it. Still, despite the limitations noted, books of this kind are fascinating to browse, with this one leading readers on a sweep through history extending from the discovery of fire and the making of the wheel to the invention of virtual reality. Mary Harris Veeder