100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs in History

by Peter Macinnis

Discovery of metal, writing, discovering the color spectrum, fire, and magnetism

Genres: History, Science, Technology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

During 2021, Macinnis has republished revised versions of all of his out-of-print books. The website listed above tells you how to get them. In 2024, he published The Lesser of Two Eagles, where you can learn that in an auction, you get something for nodding

Happy grandfather, travels, writes for adults and youngsters, mainly history or science. Published by the National Library of Australia (Australian Backyard Naturalist May 2012, another book Curious Minds October, 2012, Big Book of Australian History, 2013, 2015, 2017). Talks on ABC (RN), translated into 7 other languages. Winner of the W.A. Premier's Prize for Children's Literature 2013 and other awards.

Writing blog Old Writer on the Block. Google it and say g'day!

McManly on most social media. His Kokoda Track: 101 Days was a 2008 Eve Pownall Honour Book in the CBCA 'Book of the Year' awards. His Australian Backyard Explorer was the 2010 Eve Pownall Book of the Year (listed in 2011, in the prestigious international White Ravens list of children's literature). In 2012, his Australian Backyard Naturalist won a Whitley award, and the WA Premier's Children's Literature Award in 2013. After a few busy years doing other stuff, his Australian Backyard Earth Scientist won the long-winded Educational Publishing Awards Australia prize for best "Student Resource – Arts/Science/Humanities/Social Sciences/Technologies/Health and Physical Education/Languages ".

He has had half a dozen titles rated as "Notable Books" by the Children's Book Council of Australia: that's equivalent to short listing.

Reviews

[Peter Macinnis]

I wrote it, so my opinion would be biased! I will, however, add one note of explanation: the publisher wanted 100 to fit a common format. I chose the most enabling discoveries: the ones like glass and x-rays that allowed other advances. Glass gave us lenses, the thermometer and lab glassware, but it also allowed us to make the cathode ray tube, which was essential to generating x-rays that in turn allowed us to use x-ray diffraction to determine the total number of elements, the structure of DNA and much more.

[Dustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a way, this book was kind of irritating. While the concept is cool (take the 100 greatest scientific discoveries/inventions, and discuss both the paths that led to them, as well as what they lead onto), the format leaves a LOT to be desired.

First, each item gets maybe 2-3 pages, with lots of room for brightly colored pictures, some of which bear no obvious relation to the subject. So, for some of the more complex interactions, the reader is left with way more questions than they started with. Which could be cool, IF the reader were reading the book in front of a computer connected to wikipedia 24/7. I was not.

Secondly, and in NO way is this a slight on the author, the 100 chosen topics were not MY 100 most important discoveries, by a long shot. Some may have lead to really important things, but others were overshadowed by their descendants, which then receive only nominal mentions. However, included in the back of the book are another 100 which didn't quite make the cut, and most of my selections were there, at least showing that they had been considered before being dropped, which is better than nothing, i suppose...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because I thought it would be very interesting to see what people thought were 100 of the greatest discoveries and if I agreed with them (most of the time I did). This book is a fiction book as it discuses things that have and may happen here on Earth. I liked how it was easy to read becuase you didn't have to read every single page and it was cool just to look at some discoveries without haveing to read more than a couple of paragraphs. I didn't like however how he missed out some of what I thought was the most important discoveries. Though he did include them in the 100 that got cut from the book. I would reccomend this book to people who are interested in science or even people that just want an easy interesting read.