Inventions: A Visual Encyclopedia

Find out about the greatest inventions, inventors, ideas, and discoveries from ancient history to the modern day.

From the humble wheel to electricity, computers to robots, Inventions: A Visual Encyclopedia covers a range of areas organized by theme: transportation (including cars and bicycles), communication (such as pens, TVs, phones, and cameras); home (from toilet paper to microwave ovens); work (the lathe and the microscope), health (including vaccinations and prosthetic limbs); and space (inventions that were made for astronauts and that are now used on Earth, such as smoke alarms and memory foam). The book also includes galleries that contain a collection of related inventions on one spread, while profile spreads explore the lives of prolific inventors, such as Thomas Edison, or key inventive ages, from Ancient China to the Digital Revolution. This also helps young readers–the innovators and "disruptors" of tomorrow–to understand how a particular invention made an impact on society at a particular time and in the years after it was first put to use.