Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)

Product Information

Take the story of Stephanie Kwolek, a chemistry major who in 1946 got a job at the chemicals company DuPont and invented poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (Kevlar fibre to you). Agrawal says Kwolek’s discovery was “all the more noteworthy because it took place in an industry that, at the time, was extremely male-dominated.” Tracing the surprising journeys of each invention through the millennia, Roma reveals how handmade Roman nails led to modern skyscrapers, how the potter's wheel enabledspace exploration, and how humble lenses helped her conceive a child against the odds.

Nuts and Bolts: Books - AbeBooks Nuts and Bolts: Books - AbeBooks

Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple.Agrawal’s detours into politics – the plight of women in STEM, the use of male physical norms in product design – are less happy. They would hardly raise an eyebrow, had she only given them the space they deserved. As it is, she invites the reader to genuflect before some highly dubious ex cathedra statements. Well, she says, everything we made was fashioned out of a single piece of engineering material. A toppled tree trunk spanning a stream was our bridge, while the cave was our home. The nail, along with its derivatives – such as the rivet, screw and bolt – meant that we could expand our horizons by joining things together. Another of her subjects – string – helped in a similar way, although this was a technology we could entangle and wind to bind a shard of flint to an axe handle, or adapt into products as diverse as clothing and guitar strings. Roma Agrawal is an engineer, author and presenter who is best known for working on the design of The Shard, Western Europe's tallest tower. She studied engineering atImperial College London and physics at the University of Oxford. Roma has given talks to thousands at universities, schools and organisations around the world, including TEDx. She invites us to marvel at these small but perfectly formed inventions, sharing the stories of the remarkable, and often unknown, scientists and engineers who made them possible. The nuts and bolts that make up our world may be tiny, and are often hidden, but they've changed our lives in dramatic ways. From the physics behind both Roman nails and modern skyscrapers to rudimentary springs that inspired lithium batteries, Agrawal shows us how even the most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs in engineering.”

Nuts by Tony Greenland - AbeBooks Nuts by Tony Greenland - AbeBooks

A splendid book: clearly written, elegantly structured and full of facts you are unlikely to chance on anywhere else’ DAILY MAIL A splendid book: clearly written, elegantly structured and full of facts you are unlikely to chance on anywhere else' DAILY MAIL

Follow E+T magazine

The idea that small and simple things can be big and complex things in disguise is one that’s fascinated novelists for centuries. In Jane Austen’s world, for example, the merest of imagined slights can have the most far-reaching and dramatic of outcomes, leaving us wondering just how crucial the minutiae of manners can be in constructing a wider social context. While it’s tempting to think of ‘Nuts and Bolts’ as an examination of old-fashioned things relegated to rusty tobacco tins in sheds, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the phrase ‘nuts and bolts’ has passed into our everyday language to signify what’s really important about any situation. Explaining the workings of familiar objects is a well-worn conceit. Agrawal enriches her account by showing how her chosen devices also work in combination, creating artefacts as unlikely as they are exotic. So, while Cochran’s dishwasher sits at the heart of the discussion of wheels, the chapter ends with a stellar flourish, describing the four 100kg gyroscopes, spinning 6,600 times a minute, whose angular momentum stabilises the International Space Station in Earth orbit.