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Author Uglow, Jennifer S.

Title The lunar men : five friends whose curiosity changed the world / Jenny Uglow.

Imprint New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 2nd Floor Stacks  609.2242 Ug6l 2002    ---  Available
 Axe Special Collections Whitehead  609.2242 Ug6l 2002 c.2  ---  Lib Use Only
Edition 1st American ed.
Description xx, 588 p. : ill. (some col.), 1 map ; 25 cm.
Note Originally published in 2002 by Faber and Faber, Great Britain as: The lunar men : the friends who made the future.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p. 511-558) and index.
Contents 1. Earth, Elston & electricity -- 2. Toys -- 3. Scotland -- 4. The doctor's bag -- 5. Pots -- 6. Heading for Soho -- 7. Ingenious philosophers -- 8. Reaching out -- 9. Steam -- 10. They build canals -- 11. Painting the light -- 12. Magic & mechanics -- 13. Derbyshire explorata -- 14. Chemical reactions -- 15. Trials of life -- 16. Rousseau & romance -- 17. Vases, Ormolu, silver & frogs -- 18. Running the show -- 19. Eddies -- 20. Experiments on air -- 21. 'What all the world desires' -- 22. 'Bandy'd like a shuttlecock' -- 23. Plants & passions -- 24. Conquering Cornwall -- 25. Dull earth & shining stones -- 26. Creative copying -- 27. Sons & daughters -- 28. Bringing on the artists -- 29. From the nation to the land -- 30. Fire -- 31. Boulton's blazing skies -- 32. The Linnaean row -- 33. Protecting our interests -- 34. Family & feeling -- 35. Grand projects -- 36. Turning -- 37. Riots -- 38. Handing on -- 39. 'Fire engines & Sundry works' -- 40. 'Time is, time was.
Summary "In the 1760s a group of amateur experimenters met and made friends in the English Midlands. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the center of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world. Among them were the ambitious toymaker Matthew Boulton and his partner James Watt, of steam-engine fame; the potter Josiah Wedgwood; and the larger-than-life Erasmus Darwin, physician, poet, inventor, and theorist of evolution (a forerunner of his grandson Charles). Later came Joseph Priestly, discover of oxygen and fighting radical." "With a small band of allies - the chemist James Keir, the doctors William Small and William Withering (the man who put digitalis on the medical map), and two wild young followers of Rousseau, Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Thomas Day - they formed the Lunar Society of Birmingham, so called because it met at each full moon, and kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Blending science, art, and commerce, the Lunar Men built canals; launched balloons; named plants, gases, and minerals; changed the face of England and the china in its drawing rooms; and plotted to revolutionize its soul."--BOOK JACKET.
Subject Inventors -- Great Britain -- Biography.
Scientists -- Great Britain -- Biography.
Inventions -- Great Britain -- History.
Science -- Great Britain -- History.
Lunar Society of Birmingham (England)
ISBN 0374194408 (hc : alk. paper)
9780374194406 (hc : alk. paper)
Standard No. YDXCP 1965347
YDXCP 1869051
NZ1 6971261
AU@ 000023645403
IG# 9780374194406

 
    
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