Mad Science

January 7, 2013
An eclectic calendar of scientific breakthroughs, this compilation of WIRED magazine's "This Day in Tech" feature is, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag. Meant less to be read straight through than to be dipped into at random, the book feels a little bit like a less capacious version of Wikipedia's "random article" function (and with, it must be said, about equal odds of landing on something both interesting and well-written). A sampling of entries from solstices and equinoxes would include "Columbia's Microgroove LP Makes Albums Sound Good" (June 21st, 1948), "The Curies Discover Radium" (December 21st, 1898), "Twitter Takes Flight" (March 21st, 2006), and "1792: Day One of Revolutionary Calendar" (September 22nd 1792). With a proliferation of questionable science and technology writing particular to our cultural moment, it's difficult not to feel a little assaulted by constant, unsubstantiated appeals to the faculty of wonder; then again, it's difficult to speak badly of such a good-natured little anthologyâits slightness is part of its charmâan amusing novelty, mostly fascinating.

November 1, 2012
A mostly entertaining, random assemblage of inventions or discoveries (the safety pin, the Internet) sorted by day and year, reflecting advances that led to patents or widespread adoption. This diary of deeds comes to print via the Wired blog This Day in Tech and includes some 40 contributors' pun-filled entries that have been edited (and shortened) by Alfred, with additional notes of what else of technological interest happened on that day or in that year. The result may invoke in readers a combination of feel-good and gee-whiz sentiments. The subjects are widely varied: The Phillips screwdriver invented to automate screw turning on an assembly line (July 7, 1936), the debut of the first Horn and Hardart automat (June 9, 1902), the installation of the first jukebox (November 23, 1889, in San Francisco), the patent for the automatic railroad couple (April 29, 1873), the invention of commercial spam (April 12, 1994). The entries also record famous birthdays (Tesla, Heisenberg), major events (Einstein's 1905 papers, the Curies' discovery of radium), but much of the collection's charm lies in the more mundane: the Mason jar, the Thermos flask and the internal combustion engine. Archaeology, space science, medicine and surgery get their due, as do advances in weaponry that have led to bigger and better killing machines. This is not a text to be read in one sitting since there is no continuity from page to page, but one can imagine how useful those pages could be as a calendar in a classroom, where each day's entry could spark a lively discussion of the science behind the discovery. Edifying bathroom reading.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 15, 2012
Math whizzes will already have deduced from the book's subtitle that there are 365 inventions and discoveries represented here. That's no accident: the book is designed like a desktop calendar in which each page tells you something new. Such as January 3, 1957, was the debut of the battery-powered watch, after more than a decade of development. And, on April 10, 1849, the safety pin was patented (revolutionizing, among many other things, the way babies' diapers are changed). And, on October 31, 1951, pedestrian crossings were introduced in Britain (they call them zebra crossings due to their black-and-white stripes). Drawn from Wired magazine's blog This Day in Tech, this endlessly fascinating book is simply presented: each page contains a primary subject, a brief discussion of its history and importance, and one-sentence mentions of some other important things that happened on the same date. Its only drawbackthough no drawback at all for librariesis that, unlike a typical desktop calendar, you can't tear off one page when it's time to move on to the next.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)