Introduction
“We could imagine” . . . “system of cogs and wheels”: De Landa, p. 3.
“I have a friend who’s an artist”: From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a 1981 documentary.
Chapter 1. Glass
A small community of glassmakers from Turkey: Willach, p. 30.
In 1291, in an effort: Toso, p. 34.
After years of trial and error . . . Angelo Barovier: Verità, p. 63.
For several generations, these ingenious new devices: Dreyfus, pp. 93–106.
Within a hundred years of Gutenberg’s invention: http://faao.org/what/heritage/exhibits/online/spectacles/.
Legend has it that one of them: Pendergrast, p. 86.
“one of the worst teachers”: Quoted in Hecht, p. 30.
“If I had been promised”: Quoted ibid., p. 31.
Some of the most revered works of art: Woods-Marsden, p. 31.
Back in Murano, the glassmakers had figured out: Pendergrast, pp. 119–120.
“When you wish to see”: Quoted ibid., p. 138.
“It is as if all humans”: Macfarlane and Martin, p. 69.
“The most powerful prince in the world”: Mumford, p. 129.
“How from these ashes”: Quoted ibid., p. 131.
“Ice is an interesting subject”: Thoreau, p. 192.
“Plan etc for transporting Ice to Tropical Climates”: Quoted in Weightman, loc. 274–276.
“In a country where at some seasons”: Quoted ibid., loc. 289–290.
“fortunes larger than we shall know what to do with”: Quoted ibid., loc. 330.
“No joke. A vessel”: Quoted ibid., loc. 462–463.
“On Monday the 9th instant”: Quoted ibid., loc. 684–688.
“This day I sailed from Boston”: Quoted ibid., loc. 1911–1913.
“Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants”: Thoreau, p. 193.
“In workshops, composing rooms, counting houses”: Quoted in Weightman, loc. 2620–2621.
“cooling rooms packed with natural ice”: Miller, p. 205.
“It was this application of elementary physics”: Ibid., p. 208.
“a city-country [food] system that was the most powerful”: Ibid.
“the greatest aggregation of labor”: Sinclair.
“a direct sloping path”: Dreiser, p. 620.
A string of shipwrecks delayed ice shipments: Wright, p. 12.
“might better serve mankind”: Quoted in Gladstone, p. 34.
By 1870, the southern states: Shachtman, p. 75.
Any meat or produce that had been frozen: Kurlansky, pp. 39–40.
“The inefficiency and lack of sanitation”: Quoted ibid., p. 129.
His first great test came: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/news-and-features/features/technology/e3iad1c03f082a43aa277a9bb65d3d561b5.
“It takes time to pull down”: Ingels, p. 67.
Swelling populations in Florida, Texas: Polsby, pp. 80–88.
Millions of human beings around the world: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/12/story-ivf-five-million-babies.
Chapter 3. Sound
Reznikoff’s theory is that Neanderthal communities: http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=3.2.
In the annals of invention . . . Phonautograph: Klooster, p. 263.
Just a few years ago, a team of sound historians: http://www.firstsounds.org.
His name was Alexander Graham Bell: Mercer, pp. 31–32.
“It may sound ridiculous to say”: Quoted in Gleick 2012, loc. 3251–3257.
Eventually, the antitrust lawyers: Gertner, pp. 270–271.
Effectively, they were taking snapshots: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/sigsaly_start_digital.shtml.
“We are assembled today”: Quoted ibid.
Working out of his home lab: Hijiya, p. 58.
As a transmission device for the spoken word: Thompson, p. 92.
“I look forward to the day”: Quoted in Fang, p. 93.
“The ether wave passing over the tallest towers”: Quoted in Adams, p. 106.
But somehow, lurking behind all of De Forest’s accumulation: Hilja, p. 77.
Almost overnight, radio made jazz: Carney, pp. 36–37.
“It is no wonder that so much of the search for”: Quoted in Brown, p. 176.
“Sympathetic to the society’s mission”: Thompson, pp. 148–158.
“No one could figure out the sound”: Quoted in Diekman, p. 75.
Just a few days before the sinking: Frost, p. 466.
The German U-boats roaming the North Atlantic: Ibid., p. 476–477.
“I pleaded with them”: Quoted ibid., p. 478.
China was almost 110 boys: Yi, p. 294.
Chapter 4. Clean
In December 1856, a middle-aged Chicago engineer: Cain, p. 355.
During the Pleistocene era, vast ice fields: Miller, p. 68.
“You have been guilty”: Quoted ibid., p. 70.
“green and black slime”: Miller, p. 75.
That rate of growth . . . a lot of excrement: Chesbrough, 1871.
“The gutters are running”: Quoted in Miller, p. 123.
“The river is positively red”: Quoted ibid., p. 123.
Many of them subscribed . . . “death fogs”: Miller, p. 123.
“the most competent engineer”: Cain, p. 356.
Building by building, Chicago was lifted: Ibid., p. 357.
“The people were in [the hotel]”: Cohn, p. 16.
“Never a day passed”: Macrae, p. 191.
Within three decades, more than twenty cities: Burian, Nix, Pitt, and Durrans.
“came out cooked”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/peopleevents/e_canal.html.
“The grease and chemicals”: Sinclair, p. 110.
Working in Vienna’s General Hospital: Goetz, loc. 612–615.
“Bathing fills the head”: Quoted in Ashenburg, p. 100.
As a child, Louis XIII: Ashenburg, p. 105.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister: Ibid., p. 221.
“By the last decades”: Ibid., p. 201.
“A large part of my success”: http://www.zeiss.com/microscopy/en_us/about-us/nobel-prize-winners.html.
Koch established a unit of measure: McGuire, p. 50.
It was an interest born: Ibid., pp. 112–113.
“Leal did not have time”: Ibid., p. 200.
“I do there find and report”: Quoted in ibid., p. 248.
“And if the experiment turned out”: Quoted ibid., p. 228.
About a decade ago, two Harvard professors: Cutler and Miller, pp. 1–22.
“In total, a woman’s thighs”: Wiltse, p. 112.
Annie Murray had created America’s first commercial bleach: The Clorox Company: 100 Years, 1,000 Reasons (The Clorox Company, 2013), pp. 18–22.
In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Reinvent-the-Toilet-Challenge.
Chapter 5. Time
In October 1967, a group of scientists from around the world . . . But the General Conference on Weights and Measures: Blair, p. 246.
To confirm his observations: Kreitzman, p. 33.
“The marvelous property of the pendulum”: Drake, loc. 1639.
His astronomical observations had suggested: http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/pendulum.html.
The watchmakers were the advance guard: Mumford, p. 134.
“On a rainy day”: Thompson, pp. 71–72.
“the employer must use the time of his labour”: Ibid., p. 61.
“deadly statistical clock”: Dickens, p. 130.
Dennison had a vision of machines: Priestley, p. 5.
Dennison’s “Wm. Ellery” watch . . . cost just $3.50: Ibid., p. 21.
“It is simply preposterous”: http://srnteach.us/HIST1700/assets/projects/unit3/docs/railroads.pdf.
The United States remained temporally challenged . . . William F. Allen: McCrossen, p. 92.
“the day of two noons”: Bartky, pp. 41–42.
Instead, pulses of electricity traveling: McCrossen, p. 107.
In the 1890s . . . Marie Curie proposed: Senior, pp. 244–245.
“a clock that ticks once a year”: http://longnow.org/clock/.
“If you have a Clock ticking”: Ibid.
Chapter 6. Light
In a diary entry from 1743: Irwin, p. 47.
When darkness fell, they would drift: Ekirch, p. 306.
In the deep waters of the North Atlantic: Dolin, loc. 1272.
In a 1751 letter, Ben Franklin: Quoted ibid., loc. 1969–1971.
The candle business became so lucrative: Dolin, loc. 1992.
It’s remarkable to think: Irwin, p. 50.
Somewhere on the order of three hundred thousand: Ibid., pp. 51–52.
“During periods of major technological change”: Nordhaus, p. 29.
Today, you can buy three hundred days of artificial light: Ibid., p. 37.
The problem with this story: Friedel, Israel, and Finn, loc. 1475.
“celluloid, wood shavings”: Ibid., loc. 1317–1320.
“I cannot help laughing”: Quoted in Stross, loc. 1614.
What Edison and the muckers created: Friedel, Israel, and Finn, loc. 2637.
Smyth interpreted this correspondence: Bruck, p. 104.
In October 1887, a New York paper . . . Blitzlicht: Riis, loc. 2228.
“We used to go in the small hours”: Ibid., loc. 2226.
“The spectacle of half a dozen”: Ibid., loc. 2238.
Within a decade of their publication: Yochelson, p. 148.
Even though neon appears: Ribbat, pp. 31–33.
In the early 1920s, the electric glow: Ibid., pp. 82–83.
“Las Vegas is the only city”: Wolfe, p. 7.
“Allusion and comment, on the past or present”: Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, p. 21.
“In some way . . . they are able to generate”: Wells, p. 28.
“it was the result of a storm of inventions”: Gertner, p. 256.
“The laser is to ordinary light”: Ibid., p. 255.
Big stores did much better: Basker, pp. 21–23.
Conclusion: The Time Travelers
A world of numbers: Toole, p. 20.
“Owing to some peculiarity”: Quoted in Swade, p. 158.
“I am very anxious to talk to you”: Quoted ibid., p. 159.
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental”: Quoted ibid., p. 170.