Public-domain ebook
The Boy's Book of New Inventions
Language: en1,129 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Children & Young Adult Reading·History - Modern (1750+)·Science - Physics
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #46232.
About this book
Harry E. Maule’s The Boy’s Book of New Inventions is a survey of recent technological breakthroughs written expressly for a youthful audience. The opening pages explain that the author has selected inventions that have entered general use within the last decade, focusing on the human stories behind the machines as well as their scientific principles. Chapters range from the aeroplane and its rapid development to Nikola Tesla’s wireless power, motion‑picture cameras, the Tesla turbine, concrete construction, and the latest gasoline engines. Each topic is introduced with a narrative of a curious boy and his scientist friend exploring laboratories, models, and field tests, giving readers a guided tour of the inventions that shaped the early twentieth century.
The work reflects the enthusiastic, didactic tone of early‑1900s popular science, blending factual description with vivid anecdote. Its language is straightforward yet lively, peppered with the optimism of an era that saw the sky become a highway and electricity promise limitless power. Readers who enjoy historical overviews of engineering marvels, especially those with a penchant for aviation, early cinema, or the pioneering exploits of figures like the Wright brothers and Tesla, will find this book both informative and engaging.
Who appears in The Boy's Book of New Inventions
- Nikola TeslaTall slender man, sharp cheekbones, slicked dark hair, waxed mustache, Victorian suit with high collar
- Wilbur WrightYoung engineer, short wavy hair, clean‑shaven, round spectacles, crisp early‑1900s work shirt and waistcoat
- Orville WrightLean figure, short cropped hair, slight stubble, leather flight jacket, goggles perched on head
The opening · free to read
In the preparation of this book the author has tried to give an interesting account of the invention and workings of a few of the machines and mechanical processes that are making the history of our time more wonderful and more dramatic than that of any other age since the world began. For heroic devotion to science in the face of danger and the scorn of their fellowmen, there is no class who have made a better record than inventors. Most inventions, too, are far more than scientific calculation, and it is the human story of the various factors in this great age of invention that is here set forth for boy readers.
New discoveries, or new applications of forces known to exist, illustrating some broad principle of science, have been the chief concern of the author in choosing the subjects to be taken up in the various chapters, so that it has been necessary to limit the scope of the book, except in one or two instances, to inventions that have come into general use within the last ten years. In "The Boy's Book of Inventions," "The Second Boy's Book of Inventions," and "Stories of Invention," Mr. Baker and Mr. Doubleday have told the stories of many of the greatest inventions up to 1904, including those of the gasoline motor, the wireless telegraph, the dirigible balloon, photography, the phonograph, submarine boats, etc. Consequently for the most part the important developments in some of these machines are treated briefly in the final chapters, while the earlier chapters are devoted to new inventions, which, if made before 1904, did not receive general notice until after that time.
Although the subjects treated in the earlier chapters are here spoken of as new inventions, all of them are not recent in the strictest sense of the word, for men had been working on the central idea of some of them for many years before they actually were developed to a stage where they could be patented and sent out into the world.
H. E. M.
I. THE AEROPLANE 3 How a Scientist Who Liked Boys and a Boy Who Liked Science Followed the Fascinating Story of the Invention of the Aeroplane.
II. AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENT 49 How the Inventors Carried On the Art of Aviation Until It Became the Greatest of All Sports and Then a Great Industry.
III. AEROPLANES TO-DAY 91 Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look Over Modern Aeroplanes and Find Great Improvements Over Those of a Few Years Ago. A Model Aeroplane.
IV. ARTIFICIAL LIGHTNING MADE AND HARNESSED TO MAN'S USE 129 Our Friends Investigate Nikola Tesla's Invention for the Wireless Transmission of Power, by Which He Hopes to Encircle the Earth With Limitless Electrical Power, Make Ocean and Air Travel Absolutely Safe, and Revolutionize Land Traffic.
V. THE MOTION PICTURE MACHINE 164 Machines That Make Sixteen Tiny Pictures Per Second and Show Them at the Same Rate Magnified Several Thousand Times. Motion Pictures in School. Our Boy Friend Sees the Whole Process of Making a Motion Picture Play.
VI. ADVENTURES WITH MOTION PICTURES 195 Perilous and Exciting Times in Obtaining Motion Pictures. How the Machine Came to Be Invented and the Newest Developments in Cinematography.
VII. STEEL BOILED LIKE WATER AND CUT LIKE PAPER 224 Our Boy Friend Sees How Science Has Turned the Greatest Known Heats to the Everyday Use of Mankind.
VIII. THE TESLA TURBINE 263 Dr. Nikola Tesla Tells of His New Steam Turbine Engine, a Model of Which, the Size of a Derby Hat, Develops More Than 110 Horse Power.
IX. THE ROMANCE OF CONCRETE 288 The One Piece House of Thomas A. Edison and Other Uses of the Newest and Yet the Oldest Building Material of Civilized Peoples, Seen By the Boy and His Scientific Friend.
X. THE LATEST AUTOMOBILE ENGINE 320 Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look Over the Field of Gasoline Engines and See Some Big Improvements Over Those of a Few Years Ago.
XI. THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH UP TO THE MINUTE 332 The Scientist Talks of Amateur Wireless Operators. The Great Development of Wireless That Has Enabled It to Save Three Thousand Lives. Long Distance Work of the Modern Instruments.
XII. MORE MARVELS OF SCIENCE 352 Color Photography, the Tungsten Electric Lamp, the Pulmotor, and Other New Inventions Investigated by Our Boy Friend.
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