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Invention: The Master-key to Progress

Chapter 21: Transcriber's Notes
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About This Book

The author surveys the history and mechanics of invention from prehistoric stone tools and the harnessing of fire through developments in writing, printing, metallurgy, steam power, electricity, and chemistry, to modern communications, motion pictures, and military and medical technologies. The narrative links technological advances to social and political change, considers both beneficent outcomes and new dangers created by powerful inventions, and emphasizes the inventive mind as central to progress while urging encouragement and careful stewardship of widespread technological systems. The book concludes with reflections on civilization's dependence on machines and prospects for future invention.

Transcriber's Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Inconsistent hyphenation, e.g., "co-operation" and "cooperation", has been retained unless one form predominated.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 174: "and sheet force of will" is misprint for "sheer".

Page 249: Several colons would be semi-colons in modern practice.

Index was not well-alphabetized; corrected here. Diacriticals and ligatures have been alphabetized as plain letters.