Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Energy and Civilization: A History > Status Update

The growth in the size and capacity of jet airliners (with the Concorde as an outlier), as power to mass ratios of engines improved.

Tesla's critical AC patents, which are the foundation of the modern electrical grid.

The development of electricity as a primary energy source. Edison's light bulb, the transformer, and the War of the Currents.

The development of flight, which is heavily dependent upon compact, lightweight energy sources. The new gasoline engine proved perfect for this job. But even with all these new applications for ICE's, the steam engine did not vanish altogether.

The beginnings of the modern car -- and how it would remain an elite item until Henry Ford produced his Model T, and in the process created the modern assembly line.

The maturation of the steam engine, and the development of the internal combustion engine, particularly as petroleum provided a more energy-dense fuel than producer gas or other alternatives.

Barriers on the development of steam transportation.

The earliest versions of the steam engine, and how James Watt made the modifications that produced the practical steam engine design which would be the basis of all further steam engines,

From metallurgy to warfare, and how until the introduction of gunpowder, all weapons (save fire) were muscle-powered -- the source of our expression "arms" for weapons, because the arm that wielded the sword or lance powered it. Even bows and catapults were powered by human energy put into a mechanism, be it a length of wood under tension or a coiled rope.

Early iron smelting. The blooming furnace, which produces a mass of iron that can be subsequently worked to beat out the impurities -- but uses so much charcoal that whole regions are deforested to produce relatively small numbers of iron weapons and tools. And then the beginnings of the modern blast furnace and pig iron (the origin of the expression "sweat like a pig" -- it's an ingot, not an animal).