Inventions change people's lives. But the stories told about how they were invented are often wrong. That story you heard of an overnight success took years of hard work and countless failed attempts to create. Discover the true stories behind inventions from the lifesaving gas mask to the thrilling Super Soaker.

“A fascinating story of regeneration. Using a social history perspective over different periods, it offers a wonderful case study of urban reinvention.” —Shiri M. Breznitz, Economic Geography Formerly prosperous cities across the United States, struggling to keep up with an increasingly global economy and the continued decline of post-war industries like manufacturing, face the issue of how to adapt to today’s knowledge economy. In Invention and Reinvention, authors Mary Walshok and Abraham Shragge chronicle San Diego’s transformation from a small West Coast settlement to a booming military metropolis and then to a successful innovation hub. This instructive story of a second-tier city that transformed its core economic identity can serve as a rich case and a model for similar regions. Stressing the role that cultural values and social dynamics played in its transition, the authors discern five distinct, recurring factors upon which San Diego capitalized at key junctures in its economic growth. San Diego—though not always a star city—has been able to repurpose its assets and realign its economic development strategies continuously in order to sustain prosperity. Chronicling over a century of adaptation, this book offers a lively and penetrating tale of how one city reinvented itself to meet the demands of today’s economy, lighting the way for others. “This is an important, pioneering book that contributes to our unique understanding of how one place, San Diego, has achieved what most places want: the capacity to evolve and meet the challenges of a constantly changing global economic environment. Walshok and Shragge help us understand why some places thrive while others wither.” —David B. Audretsch, author of Everything in Its Place

Eddy Thomas can read a college physics book, but he can't read the emotions on the faces of his classmates at Drayton Middle School. He can spend hours tinkering with an invention, but he can't stand more than a few minutes in a noisy crowd, like the crowd at the science fair, which Eddy fails to win. When the local school crossing guard is laid off, Eddy is haunted by thoughts of the potentially disastrous consequences and invents a traffic-calming device, using parts he has scavenged from discarded machines. Eddy also discovers new friends, who appreciate his abilities and respect his unique view of the world. They help Eddy realize that his "friend" Mitch is the person behind the progressively more distressing things that happed to Eddy. By trusting his real friends and accepting their help, Eddy uses his talents to help others and rethinks his purely mechanical definition of success in this Tofte/Wright Children's Literature Award winner.

Did you know that about 40 percent of the world's population lives without toilets? That's more than two billion people, most of whom live in rural areas or crowded urban slums. And according to the World Health Organization, diseases spread by the lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. In particular, diarrheal diseases kill more than two million people each year, most of them children. Everyone needs to go to the bathroom, and from the citizens of the world's earliest human settlements to astronauts living on the International Space Station, the challenge has been the same: how to safely and effectively dispose of human body wastes. Toilet history includes everything from the hunt for the causes of infectious disease to twenty-first-century marvels of engineering. In Remaking the John, you'll explore the many ways people across the globe and through the ages have invented—and reinvented—the toilet. You will learn about everything from ancient Roman sewers to the world's first flush toilets. You'll also find out about the twenty-first-century Reinvent the Toilet Challenge—an engineering contest designed to spur creation of an ecologically friendly, water-saving, inexpensive, and sanitary toilet. And while you're at it, mark World Toilet Day on your calendar. Observed every November 19, this international day of action works to raise awareness about the modern world's many sanitation challenges.

Volumes in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing offer multiple perspectives on a wide-range of topics about writing, much like the model made famous by Wendy Bishop’s “The Subject Is . . .” series. In each chapter, authors present their unique views, insights, and strategies for writing by addressing the undergraduate reader directly. Drawing on their own experiences, these teachers-as-writers invite students to join in the larger conversation about developing nearly every aspect of craft of writing. Consequently, each essay functions as a standalone text that can easily complement other selected readings in writing or writing-intensive courses across the disciplines at any level. Topics in Volume 1 of the series include academic writing, how to interpret writing assignments, motives for writing, rhetorical analysis, revision, invention, writing centers, argumentation, narrative, reflective writing, Wikipedia, patchwriting, collaboration, and genres.

This book deals with the various ways Netflix reconceptualises television as part of the process of TV IV. As television continues to undergo a myriad of significant changes, Netflix has proven itself to be the dominant force in this development, simultaneously driving a number of these changes and challenging television’s existing institutional structures. This comprehensive study explores the pre-history of Netflix, the role of binge-watching in its organisation and marketing, and Netflix’s position as a transnational broadcaster. It also examines different concepts of control and the role these play in the history of ancillary technologies, from the remote control to binge-watching as Netflix’s iteration of giving control to the viewers. By focusing on Netflix’s relationship with the linear television schedule, its negotiations of quality and marketing, as well as the way Netflix integrates into national media systems, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television illuminates the importance of Netflix’s role within the processes of TV IV.

This book explores examples of this process of invention and addresses the complex interaction of past and present in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism.

Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.

As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to generate inventions and creative works, a critical question to be addressed is whether intellectual property (IP) laws should protect such works. This book examines the critical question of whether intellectual property laws should protect works generated by artificial intelligence. If we do not wish to use IP laws to protect such works, how can we still support research, development, and innovation in society? If we do wish to use IP laws to protect such works, should the copyright, patents, and other IP rights attach to the human creator of the AI technology or the AI system? The book explores these compelling societal, economic, and legal issues. The authors evaluate the continuing relevance of existing laws, explore the divergent approaches being debated by nations around the world, and present visions for change. The book will enable both lawyers and non-lawyers to reimagine governance frameworks to create laws that equitably balance the interests of creators, investors, and end users of AI-generated works.

“This new edition of one of the masterworks of twentieth-century anthropology is more than welcome…enduringly significant insights.”—Marilyn Strathern, emerita, University of Cambridge In the field of anthropology, few books manage to maintain both historical value and contemporary relevance. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, originally published in 1975, is one that does. Wagner breaks new ground by arguing that culture arises from the dialectic between the individual and the social world. Rooting his analysis in the relationships between invention and convention, innovation and control, and meaning and context, he builds a theory that insists on the importance of creativity, placing people-as-inventors at the heart of the process that creates culture. In an elegant twist, he also shows that this very process ultimately produces the discipline of anthropology itself. Tim Ingold’s foreword to the new edition captures the exhilaration of Wagner’s book while showing how the reader can journey through it and arrive safely—though transformed—on the other side.