Intro
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
Part I: Before the Industrial Revolution
1: Introduction
2: Fire and Water: Technologies Extending Nature
2.1 Bipedalism: Down from the Trees
2.2 Pottery, Cooking, and Mobility
2.3 Keeping the Dark at Bay
2.4 Pain, Anesthesia, and Surgery
2.5 Water Management and Farming
2.6 Agriculture
2.7 Extensions of the Legs: Mobility and Transport
3: Extensions of the Body
3.1 From Skin to Fibers
3.2 From Fibers to Fabrics and Clothing
3.3 From Caves to Walls to Settlements

3.4 From Teeth and Claws to Bows and Arrows
3.5 Metallurgy
3.6 Firearms and Explosives
4: Words and Music
4.1 Cave Art
4.2 Writing and Stories
4.3 Tokens, Numbers, Ideographs, Pictographs, and Cuneiform
4.4 Logography: Shift from Visual to Aural
4.5 The Alphabet: Segmentation of Sounds
4.6 Musical Notation
4.7 Musical Instruments
4.8 From Numbers to Arithmetic And Algebra
5: Printing, Movable Type, and Books
5.1 Precursors of Paper
5.2 Gutenberg, Movable Type, and the Bible
5.3 The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Knowledge

Part II: The Age of Fossile Fuels
6: The Enlightenment: The Rise of Science
6.1 Money and Credit
6.2 Universities and "Higher Learning"
6.3 Alchemy and Chemistry
6.4 Magnetism and Electricity
6.5 Philosophy and Astronomy
6.6 Entropy, Complexity, and the Universe as a "Heat Engine"
7: The First Stage of Industrialization: Coking and Canals (1712-1820)
7.1 Coking and Iron Smelting
7.2 Coal and Canals
7.3 Foundations of Chemistry
7.4 The Alkali Industry and Soap Making
7.5 Phosphorus and "Safety Matches"
7.6 Rubber

8: Machine Tools and Mechanization
8.1 Attaching Metals: Welding, Soldering and Brazing, Riveting
8.2 Screws, Machines, and Machine Tools
8.3 Ball Bearings and Roller Bearings
8.4 Printing Inventions
8.5 Clocks, Automata, and Watches
8.6 Locks and Keys
8.7 The Repeating Rifle and the Safety Pin
8.8 The Zipper Fastener
8.9 The Bicycle
9: The Triumph of Steam and Steel (1820-1876)
9.1 From a Pump to an Engine
9.2 Trevithick's High-Pressure Steam Engine
9.3 Mechanization of Textile Manufacturing
9.4 George Stephenson and the Railway Boom

9.5 The Hot Blast and Cheap Steel
10: Petroleum and Petrochemicals
10.1 Petroleum, the New "Black Gold"
10.2 Coal Gas for Streetlighting
10.3 Aniline Dyes
10.4 Synthetic Fibers: From Rayon to Orlon
10.5 Fertilizers and Nitrogen Fixation
10.6 Petroleum Refining Technology
11: Anesthesia, Surgery, and Modern Medicine
11.1 Anesthesia, Analgesics, and the Conquest of Pain
11.2 Antiseptics and Antibiotics
11.3 Immunology and Vaccines
11.4 Opiates and Drug Injection
11.5 Sulfa Drugs
12: Mobility: From Rails to Roads to Space Travel