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How the Victorians took us to the moon : the story of the 19th-century innovators who forged our future / Iwan Rhys Morus.

by Morus, Iwan Rhys, 1964-

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Pegasus Books, 2022.

Science -- History -- 19th century.

Inventors -- History -- 19th century.

Technological innovations -- History -- 19th century.

9781639362608 (hc.)

viii, 339 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Iwan Rhys Morus holds PhDs in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. He has spent much of his career working on the history of science during the nineteenth century, including the development of new electrical technologies, the popular culture of science, and the history of ideas about the relationship of electricity and the human body. Iwan has authored or edited ten books published in Britain, and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's "In our Time” and "Great Lives.” He lives in Wales.

Includes bibliographic resources (pages 297-322) and index.

"The rich and fascinating history of the scientific revolution of the Victorian Era, leading to transformative advances in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization. And to get us there, they created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilization of the resources of the British Empire. With their expert culture of accuracy and precision, they created telegraphs and telephones, electric trams and railways, built machines that could think, and devised engines that could reach for the skies. When Cyrus Field's audacious plan to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic finally succeeded in 1866, it showed how science, properly disciplined, could make new worlds. As crowds flocked to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the exhibitions its success inaugurated, they came to see the future made fact--to see the future being built before their eyes. In this rich and absorbing book, a distinguished historian of science tells the story of how this future was made. From Charles Babbage's dream of mechanizing mathematics to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's tunnel beneath the Thames to Georges Cayley's fantasies of powered flight and Nikola Tesla's visions of an electrical world, it is a story of towering personalities, clashing ambitions, furious rivalries and conflicting cultures--a rich tapestry of remarkable lives that transformed the world beyond recognition and ultimately took mankind to the Moon."--From publisher.

"Science historian Morus (Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future) connects the vision and accomplishments of the Victorian era to the technological advancements of the 21st century. He describes the emergence of a culture of science, starting with specialists who formed elite societies and instituted a practice of discipline in a growing number of fields. New methods of communication, calculation, and transportation changed the daily lives of people both inside and outside of the British Empire. New publications shared industrial developments across class lines. Large-scale exhibitions brought inventions and their inventors into the public eye. Projects such as the Thames Tunnel and the Atlantic Cable were widely popular, even when they failed. These discoveries led to new debates over standards, ownership, and labor. Morus argues that the Victorians not only created a new world, but they also had the vision to imagine futures beyond their time. This thematic summary of the influence of Victorian innovation goes beyond the well-known names and also notes the leading role that imperialism played in the success of this era. Recommended for history of science audiences."--Library Journal.

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