Authors: David P. Billington and David P. Billington Jr.
“Power, Speed, and Form” is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939—the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the long-span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete.
Beginning with Thomas Edison’s system to generate and distribute electric power, the authors explain the Bell telephone, the oil refining processes of William Burton and Eugene Houdry, Henry Ford’s Model T car and the response by General Motors, among others.
