inventors

Once upon a time, computers looked like big, alien vending machines. They had large screens, cryptic switches, huge boxes, and odd lights. But in 1975, a young engineering wizard named Steve Wozniak had an idea: What if you combined computer circuitry with a regular typewriter keyboard and a video screen? The result was the first true personal computer, the Apple I. Widely affordable and easily understood, Wozniak's invention has been rapidly transforming our world ever since. His life--before and after Apple--is a "home-brew" mix of brilliant discovery and adventure, as an engineer, a concert promoter, a fifth-grade teacher, a philanthropist, and an irrepressible prankster. From the invention of the first personal computer to the rise of Apple as an industry giant, iWoz presents a no-holds-barred, rollicking, firsthand account of the humanist inventor who ignited the computer revolution.--From publisher description.

A comprehensive account of creation and development of the first working machine gun in 1862 by Richard Jordan Gatling, the weapon Gatling hoped would shorten or eliminate war that actually opened a path toward modern gunnery.

Misfit hero and inventor Edgar Jones, who longs to fly, gets in trouble with his professor, an inventor, his father, and other people due to his inquisitiveness during the changes of the early nineteenth century, and when he builds something surprising, he puts himself and his family in danger.

Tells the personal stories of thirty-five American scientists, technologists, and researchers whose inventions have had a significant impact on life in the twentieth century in the areas of medicine and healthcare, consumer products, transportation, energy and the environment, and computing and telecommunications.

Profiles a man whose childhood interest in experimentation led him to create more than one thousand inventions, including the phonograph, moving pictures, and a storage battery.

A biography of the teacher and inventor best known for his work with the deaf and his invention of the telephone.

Profiles the lives of Orville and Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneers who invented the first successful airplane.

Providence the mouse travels through time to sixteenth-century Florence, Italy, where she shares an adventure with Leonardo da Vinci, the inventor she admires so much.

A brief biography of Benjamin Franklin, discussing his early life, his various careers and inventions, and his role as a Founding Father of the United States.