Inventions and inventors gifts

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. Australian Financial Review Top 20 Read for 2023​ Elon...

What would you do if you found yourself unexpectedly stranded in the past, with your only hope of return being the reconstruction of civilisation from the ground up? How to Invent Everything by Ryan North equips you for just such a scenario. This brilliant guide is not only a compendium of human ingenuity but also an entertaining manual that promises...

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2018, Exactly by bestselling author Simon Winchester offers an engrossing historical narrative that delves into the extraordinary achievements of the pioneering engineers and scientists who revolutionised our world through the development of precision machinery. With his trademark eloquence and keen insight, Winchester traces the origins and evolution of precision, from its nascent...

Discover the incredible things we make with plants with best-selling author and science communicator, Jonathan Drori. Did you know that there's seaweed in ice cream, cork in spacecraft, and dandelion in truck tyres? Have you wondered how paper or thread are made, or why the mandrake is so mysterious? Meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated, The Stuff that Stuff is Made...

The most influential inventor of the modern world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of visionary. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Berners-Lee famously distributed his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything - transforming humanity into the first digital species. Through the web, we live, work,...

The tenth anniversary edition of Longitude by Dava Sobel brings readers a captivating and dramatic recount of one of the greatest scientific quests in history: the search for a reliable method to determine a ship’s longitude at sea. This engrossing tale centres around the epic struggle to solve the “longitude problem,” a scientific conundrum that, for centuries, left sailors adrift...

Discover the fascinating story of Ernő Rubik, the inventor of the world-famous Rubik's Cube, and master of creativity and problem-solving! Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944. His mother was a poet and his father a flight engineer. As a child, Ernő loved colours and shapes, design, and geometry. He went to art school but soon realised he...

The bestselling phenomenon - a 6,000-year adventure through the history of books and reading FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE 2023 'Outstanding, universal and unique' NEW YORK TIMES 'A literary phenomenon.' TLS 'Masterly.' ECONOMIST 'Mindboggling' TELEGRAPH Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from...

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough offers readers an enthralling account of the incredible journey undertaken by two pioneering brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, whose groundbreaking achievements would forever change human history. On a brisk December day in 1903, amidst the sandy dunes of North Carolina's Outer Banks, these unassuming bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, launched the world's first powered,...

On April 1, 1976, two scruffy twentysomethings, both named Steve, founded a startup. Their goal: To bring the revolutionary power of computers to everyone. Over the next five decades, Apple reshaped the technology and cultural landscapes, introducing the public to breakthroughs like the mouse, laser printing, CD-ROM, WiFi, digital video, home networking, touchscreen phones, and tablets. Jobs’s obsessive eye for...

Discover the incredible story of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance genius whose boundless curiosity and creativity changed the world. Young readers will follow Leonardo from his childhood in the small village of Vinci, Italy, where he sketched animals and dreamed of flying machines, to his training as an artist and his creation of world-famous paintings like the Mona Lisa and...

NOW A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD FILM DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 'Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying' - Sunday Times Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer - director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - was the most famous scientist...

Science meets magic in this funny new fiction series, starring Izzy the Inventor and a lovable unicorn. Meet Izzy the Inventor in a laugh-out-loud series that brings together science, magic, and a very lovable unicorn. Packed full of illustrations and easy-to-read text, this series is perfect for beginner readers and fans of Isadora Moon and The Naughtiest Unicorn. Izzy the...

Got a curious kid on your hands? They’ll love this Book Pocket Tonie from best-selling author Adam Kay. All they have to do is pop this Tonie on their Toniebox and they’re set for a whirlwind tour of the world’s craziest, best, and most ridiculous inventions. Ever wondered who invented velcro? Here’s a clue: four paws and wagging tail. What...

The most iconic planes of WWII, the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito, and the Avro Lancaster, were all powered by one engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin. The story of the Merlin is one of British ingenuity at its height, of artistry and problem-solving that resulted in a war-winning design. Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and...

'Celebrates human cognitive diversity, and is rich with empathy and psychological insight' — Steven Pinker Why can humans alone invent? In this book, psychologist and world-renowned autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen puts forward a bold new theory: because we can identify patterns, specifically if-and-then patterns. He argues that the genes for this unique ability overlap with the genes for autism. From...

A baking nightmare makes for slapstick comedy gold in this hilarious Little Gem from a bestselling author and illustrator team. Albert’s dad needs help in the family bakery, but all his son can think about is sport. So he builds a machine like no other: the Doughmaster 5000. It seems to have solved all their problems, until one night, Dad’s...

Filled with stunning illustrations and lively, engaging text, The Repair Shop's Dom Chinea guides readers through this celebration of the history and uses of over 100 machines, which have allowed artisans to create beautiful items for centuries. The Repair Shop's Dom Chinea takes you on an exploration of 100 essential machines found in the workshops and studios of the world's...

Matt Ridley, in How Innovation Works, presents a fascinating exploration into the nature of innovation, chronicling its history and outlining how it disrupts and enhances our world. Building on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Ridley delves into the mechanism behind innovation, arguing persuasively for a shift in our understanding of the subject. Innovation is the engine of the modern age,...

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. Australian Financial Review Top 20 Read for 2023​ When...

The US is the source of just about all the technologies that define modern life: personal computers, operating systems, smartphones, e-commerce, web browsers, email, search engines, social networks, electric cars and the rest. And most of the tech companies that created and monetized these technologies are also in the US. In this book, Mehran Gul, the winner of the Financial...

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Abundance and Bold comes a practical playbook for technological convergence in our modern era. In their book Abundance, bestselling authors and futurists Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler tackled grand global challenges, such as poverty, hunger, and energy. Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of...

The Pencil by Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome. Petroski writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.

This riveting book tells the story of a creative genius, from his early interest in industrial design to his meteoric rise, as well as the principles and practices that led Ive to become the designer of his generation. Steve Jobs discovered Ive in 1997, when he found the scruffy British designer toiling away in a studio surrounded by hundreds of...

A lively and highly readable account of the origins, invention, and discovery of just about everything on the planet, the truly global coverage of The First of Everything ranges from the Big Bang to driverless cars. The First of Everything follows a context-setting introduction with seven stimulating sections: In the Beginning: From the Big Bang to Homo Sapiens. At Home:...

Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore based out of his garage. Since then, the ever-expanding enterprise has revolutionised shopping and, in many important ways, invented e-commerce as we know it. Today, Amazon is the third-most valuable company in the world, and Bezos's vast customer-oriented empire has mushroomed to include everything from cloud computing and fresh food...

Shard engineer Roma Agrawal deconstructs our most complex inventions into seven fundamental objects: the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump. _____________ 'Delightful' – TIM HARFORD, FINANCIAL TIMES 'Appeals to the nerdy side of just about all of us... a great book to give' – JANE GARVEY 'Splendid. Clearly written, elegantly structured full of facts you are unlikely to...

Award-winning author-illustrator Don Brown explores the history of electricity in this installment of the Big Ideas That Changed the World series. In 600 BCE, the Greek mathematician Thales observed a seemingly strange phenomenon: amber, when rubbed with a cloth, had the ability to attract lightweight objects like feathers, straw, and leaves. He had unknowingly discovered an electric charge. His experiments...

See Inside the Future is a lift-the-flap book that invites you to imagine what the world will be like by the end of the 21st century. Join futurologist Tom Cheesewright on a tour of our world, decades into the future. Eight scenes await, revealing what wonders will unfold in our cities, landscapes, inside our own bodies, and in the vast...

From an engineer and futurist, an impassioned account of technological stagnation since the 1970s and an imaginative blueprint for a richer, more abundant future. The science fiction of the 1960s promised us a future remade by technological innovation. We'd vacation in geodesic domes on Mars, have meaningful conversations with computers, and drop our children off at school in flying cars....

Get ready for a four-part audio adventure that brings the Science Museum to life. Curious kids just pop one of the four Tonies in this set on their Toniebox to head into a world of imagination, exploring topics like space research, the history of medicine, iconic inventions of the Information Age and incredible experiments of WonderLab. Kids meet famous figures,...

Explore the biggest breakthroughs in technology and how they have shaped our world. How much technology have you taken for granted today? It is human nature to make things and to apply knowledge in ingenious ways to survive and to make life easier. From renewable energy to entertainment streaming and electric vehicles to gene-editing, technology shapes our world. The Technology...

A fresh, meticulous, and entertaining account of Henry Ford, the Model-T, and the invention of the American car industry in the early twentieth century that “will make you rethink the man whose legacy sits in your garage” (Parade). From the acclaimed popular historian Richard Snow, who “writes with verve and a keen eye” (The New York Times Book Review), comes...

Unleash your IMAGINATION and learn all about INVENTING in this fact-packed new picture book from the bestselling creator of the FANTASTICALLY GREAT WOMEN series and We Are All Astronauts. This is the perfect introduction to inventing for the next generation of curious creators, whoever they may be. Can you feel it? That FANTASTICAL FIZZ of CURIOSITY? Lizzy Sparks has the...

In Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil, readers are taken on a compelling journey through the annals of human ingenuity, exploring the ebbs and flows of discoveries and advancements that have shaped our world. Smil, a prolific author and renowned thinker, offers a meticulously researched narrative that is both thought-provoking and deeply insightful. The book dissects the lifecycle of inventions,...