Full name: Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life

Author: Gaby Wood Year: 2002 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Science Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Amazon LibraryThing ISBNs: 9781400031580 0679451129

During the eighteenth century, the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that seemingly could digest and excrete its food. A few decades later, Europeans fell in love with "the Turk," a celebrated chess-playing machine built in 1769. Thomas Edison was obsessed for years with making a talking mechanical doll, one of his few failures as an inventor. In our own time, scientists at MIT are trying to build a robot with emotions of its own. What lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In Edison's Eve Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history. Similar books: Connections by James Burke The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke The Knowledge Web by James Burke The Riddle of the Compass by Amir D. Aczel How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson The Pinball Effect by James Burke Origin Story by David Christian Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes Flat Earth by Christine Garwood The Difference Engine by Doron Swade The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick The House of Wisdom by Jim Al-Khalili The Code Book by Simon Singh The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert Cod by Mark Kurlansky Salt by Mark Kurlansky The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough