Two books explore winding path from basic science to useful invention
‘How We Got to Now,’ ‘Science Unshackled’ describe how basic research transforms our everyday lives
By Sid Perkins
How We Got to Now
Riverhead
Steve Johnson
$30
Science Unshackled
Johns Hopkins Univ.
C. Renée James
$24.95
The route from scientific discovery to useful invention is often long, tortuous and extends over a horizon concealing a destination that can’t be seen — or sometimes even imagined. Two new books on the history of technology do a good job chronicling such tales of serendipitous innovation.
In How We Got to Now, best-selling author Johnson traces the development of six technologies vital to modern life from their modest origins to their oft-unintended results. Take artificial refrigeration. Who could have imagined that an entrepreneur’s plan to harvest ice from New England’s frozen lakes and ship it to the Caribbean in the early 1800s — despite skeptics’ ridicule that islanders wouldn’t want anything cold to drink — would eventually enable everything from home air conditioning to in vitro fertilization?