Edison's Concrete Piano : Flying Tanks, Six-Nippled Sheep, Walk-on-Water Shoes, and 12 Other Flops from Great Inventors - Softcover

Judy Wearing

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550228633 ISBN 13: 9781550228632

Publisher: ECW Press, 2009

Synopsis

Highlights the careers of famous inventors, revealing the lesser-known and most fascinating facts about their careers, their wackier hobbies, big flops and great successes. Thomas Edison, for example, created a concrete piano and a machine to speak to the dead. Written snapshots of inventors through the ages are accompanied by photographs of their lives and inventions. From Alexander Graham Bell's multi-nippled sheep to Leonardo da Vinci's walk-on-water shoes, these ludicrous ideas and faulty designs will leave readers with a smile on their faces.

About this title

Review:

"Judy Wearing has written a captivating book on success and failure . . . This book is full of lessons for inventors and non-inventors alike." --Henry Petroski, author, "Success through Failure"

"This book sparkles with heaps of ideas, some plain bonkers, others, like the car, more pedestrian. . . . This book is fun and full of quirks . . . a fine yarn." --"Waikato Times"

"Best Book Title of the Year?: The popular science is fun and easily accessible, and there's more to the inventor's experiments than the title can contain." -- "Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy"

"[Wearing's] background as a science educator is advantageous in this entertaining piece of popular science: she portrays lively personalities and eccentric projects in concrete prose." "--Booklist"

About the Author:

Judy Wearing is an award-winning educator, author, and science education consultant, who holds a PhD in biology from Oxford University. She lives in Newburgh, Ontario.

About this edition

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1550228633
• ISBN 13: 9781550228632
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 270