Nuts and Bolts
Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Society Science Book Prize
“A riveting love letter to the small, wonderful, and mundane things that make the modern world.”—Roman Mars
A structural engineer examines the seven most basic building blocks of engineering that have shaped the modern world.
Some of humanity’s mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale—and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump.
Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments, Agrawal shows us how even our most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs. She explores an array of intricate technologies—dishwashers, spacesuits, microscopes, suspension bridges, breast pumps—making surprising connections, explaining how they work, and using her own hand-drawn illustrations to bring complex principles to life.
Alongside deeply personal experiences, she recounts the stories of remarkable—and often uncredited—scientists, engineers, and innovators from all over the world, and explores the indelible impact these creators and their creations had on society. In preindustrial Britain, nails were so precious that their export to the colonies was banned—and women were among the most industrious nail makers. The washing machine displayed at an industrial fair in Chicago in 1898 was the only machine featured that was designed by a woman. The history of the wheel, meanwhile, starts with pottery, and takes us to India’s independence movement, where making clothes using a spinning wheel was an act of civil disobedience.
Eye-opening and engaging, Nuts and Bolts reveals the hidden building blocks of our modern world, and shows how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this wide-ranging history, structural engineer Agrawal (Built) surveys how seven objects—the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string, and pump—transformed the world. Arguing that these "foundational innovations" prove "how engineering at its most fundamental is inextricably linked to your everyday life," Agrawal discusses how the first bronze nails, dating to 3400 BCE Egypt, and their derivatives (rivets, screws, bolts) "enabled robust connections between different materials," an innovation so fundamental it allowed for the construction of more complex buildings and boats and today makes possible such diverse gadgetry as satellites and watches. She traces the history of each invention, noting that the first known wheels were used to make pottery in Mesopotamia around 3900 BCE before they were attached to wagons for transportation several hundred years later. The straightforward prose makes it easy to understand how such contraptions as the Piezoelectric air pump work, and Agrawal has a knack for showing how simple objects provide the bedrock for intricate technologies; for example, she explains how the spring, which "tightened up and stored energy," made possible the construction of clocks significantly smaller than previous models used in church towers, which utilized a weighted system that relied on gravity to power the gears. The result is a potent look at the building blocks of the modern world.
