Best of
Technology

1978

Connections


James Burke - 1978
    He untangles the pattern of interconnecting events, the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to major inventions of the world. Says Burke, "My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change in the past, looking in particular at eight innovations - the computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television - which may be most influential in structuring our own futures.... Each one of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the result of a sequence of closely connected events extending from the ancient world until the present day. Each has enormous potential for humankind's benefit - or destruction."

The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization


William Barrett - 1978
    

Lens Design Fundamentals


Rudolf Kingslake - 1978
    The reader is urged to follow the logic of these examples and be sure that he understands what is happening, noticing particularly how each available degree of freedom is used to control one aberration. Not every type of lens has been considered, of course, but the design techniques illustrated here can readily be applied to the design of other more complex systems. It is assumed that the reader has access to a small computer to help with the ray tracing, otherwise he may find the computations so time-consuming that he is liable to lose track of what he is trying to accomplish.

The Secret War (Pen & Sword Military Classics)


Brian Johnson - 1978
    Orginally a TV tie-in expanded from the BBC televison series, the book covers the behind-the-scenes aspects of the fight by the 'back room' scientists and technicians of WW2, including the battles against the Luftwaffe navigational beams, the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs, the development of radar, the battle against the u-boats, countering the magnetic mine, and the breaking of the codes produced by the Enigma machines.

The Complete Book of Tailoring


Adele P. Margolis - 1978
    In 1978 she released this, the revised and enlarged edition. BOOK DETAILS -- cloth over boards; released with dustjacket; 462 pp; b&w illustrations throughout. TABLE OF CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS -- Find the Fabric, Fabric and Pattern Coordinated, Tools, The Character of Cloth and How to Utilize It, Layout Logic, The Shape of Fashion, And Sew a Fine Seam, Special Fabrics, Henming Ways, Classic Tailoring is a Many-Layered Thing, Stripped-Down: Unstructured, Unlined.

The Wired Society


James Martin - 1978
    

The Rocket: The History And Development Of Rocket & Missile Technology


David Baker - 1978
    

Instrument Flying


Richard L. Taylor - 1978
    Fully updated, with everything the private pilot needs to know about flying IFR, such as handling emergencies, filing flight plans, understanding IFR communications, navigating, and flying more efficiently. Polish and improve your instrument-flight skills with the proficiency exercises. Glossary of aviation terms included.

Technics and Praxis: A Philosophy of Technology


D. Ihde - 1978
    In either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is at once distinctive, revealing and thought provoking. Typically, philosophy of technology has existed at, or beyond, the margins of the philosophy of science, and therefore the question of technology has come to be posed (when it is) either by historians of technology or by social critics. The philosophy of technology, as analysis and critique of the concepts, methodologies, implicit epistemologies and ontologies of technological praxis and thought, has remained underdeveloped. When philosophy does turn its attention to the insistent presence of technology, it inevitably casts the question in one or another of the dominant modes of philosophical interpretation and reconstruction. Thus, the logic of technological thinking and practice has been a subject of some systematic work (e. g., in the Praxiology of Kotarbinski and Kotarbinska, among others). And the question of technology's relation to science has been posed in the framework of the nomological model of explanation in the sciences - e. g."

Anatomy of Work: Labor, Leisure and the Implications of Automation


Georges Friedmann - 1978
    In The Anatomy of Work, George Friedmann elucidates the large and small questions raised by this evolutionary moment in human labor and development. Donald C. King's introduction to this new edition discusses the impact of Friedmann's work on later researchers and assesses its relative strengths and weaknesses in forecasting future trends, particularly in regard to automation. This is pioneering study on how work is organic to human identity.