A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900

by Thomas Kingston Derry, Trevor Illtyd Williams

Until the publication of this book, historians had largely neglected the effects of technology on the course of human history. Political, economic, and social factors had long been taken into account, but technological advances were not studied in the context of the history of the ages in which they occurred. It remained for the authors of this readable, profusely illustrated survey to relate technological developments to the history of each epoch.
Chronologically, the text is divided into two parts, the first telling the story up to ca. A.D. 1750 — the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain — and the second continuing it up to 1900. The book begins with a general historical survey of ancient civilizations, then goes on to consider such topics as food production, metalworking, building construction, early sources of power, and the beginning of the chemical industry. The second and lengthier portion of the text focuses on the development of the steam engine, machine tools, modern transport, mining coal and metals, the rise of the modern chemical industry, textiles, the internal combustion engine, electricity, and more.
To help relate the technology to the age, each section is preceded by a historical introduction and the book concludes with a series of tables designed to show the interrelation of events names in the text. Profusely illustrated and brimming with factual data, A Short History of Technology will appeal equally to students, scholars, historians of technology, and general readers.

Genres: History, Science, Technology, Nonfiction, Engineering, Architecture

816 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1985

Reviews

[Noel Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broken into two sections, the period from antiquity to 1750 AD and then from 1750 to 1900, this is a great overview of technological history. Many parts are necessarily short whether due to the lack of information on the origins of ancient technologies (and a few recent ones like crop rotation) or the limited space available to throughly cover each technology but it’s broken up in a sensible way and each major section begins with an historical survey to keep each topic in perspective.

The pace of technology is such that covering 1900 to modern times would probably take an equivalent sized book so it’s good that they cut off were they did. Despite the arbitrary cutoff point there is some mention of 20th century technologies where continuity trumps limits and keeps the topics well covered without straying too far from the proper timeframe.

[Redsteve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part of the problem with a book like this, is that the author has to cover a ridiculous amount of information (Even at almost 800 pages, this is really only scratching the surface of the subject). "Technology" also includes such seemingly basic things as language and writing. As a result, none of the topics are dealt with in any way approaching "in-depth." This is fine for a popular history of such a broad topic, but, unfortunately, it ends up being neither a fun nor comprehensive read. In addition, this book is written almost entirely from a Western perspective - the rest of the world is is only mentioned when a particular piece of technology clearly originated there. I would have also appreciated a few more diagrams (although the period woodcuts are pretty cool looking), as some of the verbal descriptions just weren't clear to me. The book is pretty much split into two -sections: 1750-1900 and everything else. Since I'm not a huge fan of the history of steam power, this made the second half of the book a bit of a slog. 2.5 stars.

[aotel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great up to 1900. Can anyone recommend a survey of technology for the first fifty years of the 20th century?

[Mark White · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a lot of great information in this book but unfortunately its scope is so broad that there's not enough detail, the writing so dry and stilted that it's a struggle to get through and the illustrations so poorly chosen that they are often confusing rather than clarifying. As example of the poor illustrations, the flying shuttle (p107) has a picture of the shuttle, which is effectively the same as a non-flying shuttle. They should have included a picture of the mechanism that makes it fly. Add to this the book's a product of the 1950s and thus misses a lot of the technology that affects our lives today and it's more of a curiosity than a help.

If you get any value out of this book it will be by dipping into it as questions arise, using it as a launch pad for further inquiry. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the snippets of related information that pop up. My favourite is that during the Napoleonic wars the French smuggled in boots, great coats and regimental insignia from England. Makes you think about the effects of world trade.