The Perfection of the Paper Clip

The Perfection of the Paper Clip PDF Author: James Ward
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 1476799873
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Change the way you look at office supplies forever with this wonderfully enlightening and quirky exploration of the fascinating backstories of everyday objects, such as the humble and perfectly designed paper clip and the utilitarian, irreplaceable pencil. How many of humanity’s brightest ideas started out on a scrap of paper or in the margins of a notebook? In a delightfully witty and fresh voice, James Ward—cofounder of the Boring Conference and collector of the arcane—explores the secret histories of deskbound supplies, from pencils to fluorescent ink, and the gleaming reams of white paper we all take for granted, encouraging a deeper appreciation and fascination for the things that surround us each day. In the spirit of The Evolution of Useful Things and A History of the World in 100 Objects, Ward transforms the mundane into remarkable stories of invention, discovery, and even awe. The Perfection of the Paper Clip is “a hugely entertaining experience for the reader…this engaging book is an absolute must” (Booklist).

The Perfection of the Paper Clip

The Perfection of the Paper Clip PDF Author: James Ward
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 1476799873
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Change the way you look at office supplies forever with this wonderfully enlightening and quirky exploration of the fascinating backstories of everyday objects, such as the humble and perfectly designed paper clip and the utilitarian, irreplaceable pencil. How many of humanity’s brightest ideas started out on a scrap of paper or in the margins of a notebook? In a delightfully witty and fresh voice, James Ward—cofounder of the Boring Conference and collector of the arcane—explores the secret histories of deskbound supplies, from pencils to fluorescent ink, and the gleaming reams of white paper we all take for granted, encouraging a deeper appreciation and fascination for the things that surround us each day. In the spirit of The Evolution of Useful Things and A History of the World in 100 Objects, Ward transforms the mundane into remarkable stories of invention, discovery, and even awe. The Perfection of the Paper Clip is “a hugely entertaining experience for the reader…this engaging book is an absolute must” (Booklist).

Technical Innovation in American History [3 volumes]

Technical Innovation in American History [3 volumes] PDF Author: Rosanne Welch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 161069094X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1155

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Book Description
From the invention of eyeglasses to the Internet, this three-volume set examines the pivotal effects of inventions on society, providing a fascinating history of technology and innovations in the United States from the earliest European colonization to the present. Technical Innovation in American History surveys the history of technology, documenting the chronological and thematic connections between specific inventions, technological systems, individuals, and events that have contributed to the history of science and technology in the United States. Covering eras from colonial times to the present day in three chronological volumes, the entries include innovations in fields such as architecture, civil engineering, transportation, energy, mining and oil industries, chemical industries, electronics, computer and information technology, communications (television, radio, and print), agriculture and food technology, and military technology. The A–Z entries address key individuals, events, organizations, and legislation related to themes such as industry, consumer and medical technology, military technology, computer technology, and space science, among others, enabling readers to understand how specific inventions, technological systems, individuals, and events influenced the history, cultural development, and even self-identity of the United States and its people. The information also spotlights how American culture, the U.S. government, and American society have specifically influenced technological development.

Invention Analysis and Claiming

Invention Analysis and Claiming PDF Author: Ronald D. Slusky
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318188
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Invention Analysis and Claiming presents a comprehensive approach to analyzing inventions and capturing them in a sophisticated set of patent claims. A central theme is the importance of using the problem-solution paradigm to identify the "inventive concept" before the claim-drafting begins. The book's teachings are grounded in "old school" principles of patent practice that, before now, have been learned only on the job from supervisors and mentors.

White Shoe

White Shoe PDF Author: John Oller
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 1524743267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
The fascinating true story of how a group of visionary attorneys helped make American business synonymous with Big Business, and Wall Street the center of the financial world “Entertaining.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fast-paced history.”—Library Journal • “Insightful and revealing."—Kirkus • “Captivating.”—BookPage The legal profession once operated on a smaller scale—folksy lawyers arguing for fairness and justice before a judge and jury. But by the year 1900, a new type of lawyer was born, one who understood business as well as the law. Working hand in glove with their clients, over the next two decades these New York City “white shoe” lawyers devised and implemented legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the twentieth century. These lawyers were architects of the monopolistic new corporations so despised by many, and acted as guardians who helped the kings of industry fend off government overreaching. Yet they also quietly steered their robber baron clients away from a “public be damned” attitude toward more enlightened corporate behavior during a period of progressive, turbulent change in America. Author John Oller, himself a former Wall Street lawyer, gives us a richly-written glimpse of turn-of-the-century New York, from the grandeur of private mansions and elegant hotels and the city’s early skyscrapers and transportation systems, to the depths of its deplorable tenement housing conditions. Some of the biggest names of the era are featured, including business titans J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, lawyer-statesmen Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Among the colorful, high-powered lawyers vividly portrayed, White Shoe focuses on three: Paul Cravath, who guided his client George Westinghouse in his war against Thomas Edison and launched a new model of law firm management—the “Cravath system”; Frank Stetson, the “attorney general” for financier J. P. Morgan who fiercely defended against government lawsuits to break up Morgan’s business empires; and William Nelson Cromwell, the lawyer “who taught the robber barons how to rob,” and was best known for his instrumental role in creating the Panama Canal. In White Shoe, the story of this small but influential band of Wall Street lawyers who created Big Business is fully told for the first time.

The Moral Case for Profit Maximization

The Moral Case for Profit Maximization PDF Author: Robert White
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498542646
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Moral Case for Profit Maximization argues that profit maximization is moral when businessmen seek to maximize profit by creating goods or services that are of objective value. Traditionally, profit maximization has been defended on economic grounds. Profit, economists argue, incentivizes businessmen to produce goods and services. In this view, businessmen do not need to be virtuous as long as they deliver the goods. It challenges the traditional defense of profit maximization, arguing that profit maximization is morally ambitious because it requires businessmen to form normative abstractions and to cultivate a virtuous character. In so doing, the author also challenges the moral basis of corporate social responsibility. Proponents of CSR argue that businessmen can do good while doing well. This book argues that businessmen already do good by maximizing profit, drawing upon the histories of the wheel, the refrigerator, and the shipping container, as well as the biographies of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison to demonstrate the role of values in the creation of material goods and the role of the virtues in value creation. The author challenges readers to rethink the relationship between profit, value, and virtue.

Tools and Weapons

Tools and Weapons PDF Author: Brad Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984877720
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The New York Times bestseller, now updated with new material on cyber attacks, digital sovereignty, and tech in a pandemic. From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. “A colorful and insightful insiders’ view of how technology is both empowering and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future.” —Walter Isaacson Microsoft president Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the top of Microsoft, as the company flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with disruption as an end in itself, and in doing so navigates some of the thorniest issues of our time—from privacy to cyberwar to the challenges for democracy, far and near. As the tumultuous events of 2020 brought technology and Big Tech even further into the lives of almost all Americans, Smith and Browne updated the book throughout to reflect a changed world. With three new chapters on cybersecurity, technology and nation-states, and tech in the pandemic, Tools and Weapons is an invaluable resource from the cockpit of one of the world’s largest tech companies.

Minor Sketches and Reveries

Minor Sketches and Reveries PDF Author: Alberto Balengo
Publisher: Personville Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
These introspective tales (described by one critic as "the perfect panacea for minds stressed by life's challenges") feature animals, allegories and melodramas of everyday life. At the center of the stories are tiny creatures (a sparrow, earthworm or paperclip) struggling to make sense of larger mysterious forces. Human protagonists are equally perplexed by ordinary events - like searching for a lost key, watching late night TV, or eating a taco. As the author admits in the afterward, these pieces feel more like "sketches" than stories with conventional plot and character. Many end at odd places or don't end at all. Scattered through the stories are moments of isolation, confusion and foreboding. Some pieces (like the essayistic "Indolence: Notebooks") investigate a philosophical idea to such absurd lengths that one is almost tempted to take a nap. In one of the lighter pieces ("3 Fake Recommendation Letters,") Balengo submits fake recommendation letters (by Rabelais, Kafka and Hans Christian Anderson) to an MFA program. In a more somber story ("The Deletionist") a disgruntled system administrator tries to delete as much of his digital footprint as he can - with mixed results. Written in plain, careful language, this debut collection by Alberto Balengo depicts people (and creatures) trying valiantly to investigate a world that seems neither rational nor reassuring.

Invention by Design

Invention by Design PDF Author: Henry Petroski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674266455
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Henry Petroski’s previous bestsellers have delighted readers with intriguing stories about the engineering marvels around us, from the lowly pencil to the soaring suspension bridge. In this book, Petroski delves deeper into the mystery of invention, to explore what everyday artifacts and sophisticated networks can reveal about the way engineers solve problems. Engineering entails more than knowing the way things work. What do economics and ecology, aesthetics and ethics, have to do with the shape of a paper clip, the tab of a beverage can, the cabin design of a turbojet, or the course of a river? How do the idiosyncrasies of individual engineers, companies, and communities leave their mark on projects from Velcro® to fax machines to waterworks? Invention by Design offers an insider’s look at these political and cultural dimensions of design and development, production and construction. Readers unfamiliar with engineering will find Petroski’s enthusiasm contagious, whether the topic is the genesis of the Ziploc® baggie or the averted collapse of Manhattan’s sleekest skyscraper. And those who inhabit the world of engineering will discover insights to challenge their customary perspective, whether their work involves failure analysis, systems design, or public relations. Written with the flair that readers have come to expect from his books, Invention by Design reaffirms Petroski as the master explicator of the principles and processes that turn thoughts into the many things that define our made world.

Stuck

Stuck PDF Author: Steve Shores
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666734543
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
It's a common thought that it's wise "to meet people where they are." But what if we don't know where we are? This book entertains the idea that, although humans can dock two fantastically complex machines in space and manage all manner of equally complex coordinates in the process, we may not know our own coordinates. The machines in space may be secured while we are adrift. How is it that we are so skilled at feats of engineering yet so alienated from ourselves that we aren't where we think we are? This book aims to shed light on how we arrive at such self-estrangement and how to begin clarifying where we actually are. The clarity, I hope, will make it easier for us to connect with one another so that our relationships are less troubled and are more likely to be transformed into sanctuary.

New Ideas from Dead Economists

New Ideas from Dead Economists PDF Author: Todd G. Buchholz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 059318355X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
An entertaining and widely-praised introduction to great economic thinkers throughout history, now in its fourth edition, with updates and commentary on the 2020 “great cessation,” Trump and Obama economic policies, the dominance of Amazon, and many other timely topics. Through the teachings of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and more, renowned economist Todd Buchholz shows how age-old ideas still apply to our modern world. In this revised edition, Buchholz offers fascinating insights on the most relevant issues of 2021: climate change, free trade debates, the refugee crisis, growth and conflict in Russia and China, game theory, and behavioral economics. New Ideas from Dead Economists—found on the desks of university students, prime ministers, and Wall Street titans—is a riveting guide to understanding both the evolution of economic theory and our complex contemporary economy.