Connections

Many years ago, I watched and was completely fascinated by a PBS series - Connections (and later Connections 2 and Connections 3). The Connections set was going to be among the first purchases once I started buying DVD's for personal use although it was eventually years before I ever found a set for sale and it was restricted to educational institutions and quite pricey.So when I saw the book, it was like a flashback and I knew I had to get a copy. And it is just as good as I remember. This 2007 edition has a new preface, updating a view that was originally started in 1978 and even updated in 1995. Remarkable how much some things have changed and how some have not.Anyway, the book. There are only 10 chapters and they are independent of each other.To give you an idea, I broke down the pattern of Chapter 7: The Long Chain. Starting with jet aircraft and their consequences on travel today.Back to 16th and 17th century trade in the Baltic and the Dutch monopoly. Dutch trading vessels were built different from their warships, more focused on how much cargo could be stuffed on board and with a lower center of gravity, were far more stable during ocean voyages.Side trip to Edward Lloyd who created 'insurance' for investors since many ships unfortunately disappeared - yes, the beginning of Lloyd's of London.Anyway, back to the ships. Russia wanted a warm-water port and attempted to elbow their way into the Baltic Sea which caused a war. Surprise there. England had another source - the American colonies - at least until they declared independence.English forested land was restricted for Naval use so glass and iron workers needed another fuel for their furnaces which was found in coal and coke.Coal could provide a tar-like substance under certain circumstances when it was being turned into coke - replacement tar for shipping which changed over to copper lined hulls. So coal-tar was distilled into a multitude of substances - salts used in soaps and a vapor that burned bright and without any odor.While working on the steam engine, James Watt and partner Matthew Murdock were told of the vapor which could be ignited - the first gas burning lamps. Gaslight spread across the country and changed society. Streets were safer. Factories could work longer hours which means production rose. Evenings were available, even for classes and so literacy spread.Another coal tar waste was naphtha, which could clean cloth-dying machinery as well as dissolve rubber. Dissolved rubber could be applied to cloth making it waterproof. Making just about anything cloth based waterproof - tents, mattresses, gloves, hoses, printing rollers, and even raincoats.Supply of rubber couldn't keep up with demand so authorities were encouraged to either grow rubber in the Kew Gardens or get seedlings from South America and create plantations in the Far East. But Kew Gardens was more interested in the cinchona tree in which the bark contained quinine - the only treatment for malaria.More compounds were being discovered in the sludge-like tar - like coal tar or aniline dyes. Colors previously unavailable or unstable were now vibrant, didn't fade or change color in gaslight. BASF kept the stream of different colors flowing even as other German companies created aspirin, diagnostic tissue stain and other medical discoveries.A food crisis caused by large increases in population. Grain from the Americas was undercutting the German Junkers rye growers. Rye was exported and the ground was too exhausted to grow wheat without fertilizer which had been coming from Chile whose deposits were nearly exhausted.Which brings back the last of the coal-tar discoveries dealt with the so-called 'SOHO stink' or the stench coming off the Thames which was the dumping ground for everything. The ammonia was turned into a salt. BASF took the salts, some hydrogen and liquid nitrogen in a pressure vessel to obtain ammonia which mixed with air and passed through a platinum mesh and mixed again with soda, became the same vital fertilizer. Problem solved!Not quite.Calcium carbide and water gave off a gas known as acetylene, a competitive source of bright lighting. Unfortunately, electricity had become cheaper so all the calcium carbide was laying about when BASF (yes, them again) used to create an even more potent fertilizer.Because of a lack of markets for their fertilizers, Germany had to have colonies which means a bigger Navy. That arms race contributed to war breaking out in 1914. Still with the fertilizer, it needed one more chemical step to become gun cotton which was an explosive.Out of the acetylene debacle came one more development (besides fertilizer and war). Created as a protective coating for aircraft wings and discarded as 'not useful' until a variant was produced called polyvinyl chloride or PVC.And that's just one chapter. So much information and so intertwined. And that was just the basic as I could make it leaving out names and lots more side trips.A quote from Isaac Newton "If I have seen further than Others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." Perhaps not all these inventions were the actions of giants and their names and discovery is only known by a select few but they laid groundwork and provided direction for those who came after. For every aspect of our lives, dozens of men and women advanced humanity's knowledge. So a tip of the proverbial cap and a thank you for their dedication and their innovations.Note: This review is identical to that posted on GoodReads.com

A Fun and Quirky Trip from Then to NowHistory has the tendency of being seen as static and frozen when we view it from a a later time. What happened is what happened, and nothing else could have happened because, again, at that point, it is set in stone. Once upon a time, however, history could have gone any number of ways, and much of the time, it’s the act of change and transition that help drive history through various eras.James Burke is one of my favorite historical authors, and I am a big fan of his ideas behind “Connected thought and events”, which makes the case that history is not a series of isolated events, but that events and discoveries coming from previous generations (an even eras) can give rise to new ideas and modes of thinking. In other words, change doesn’t happen in a vacuum, or in the mind of a single solitary genius. Instead it’s the actions and follow-on achievements by a variety of people throughout history that make certain changes in our world possible (from the weaving of silk to the personal computer, or the stirrup to the atomic bomb).“Connections" is the companion book to the classic BBC series first filmed in the late 70s, with additional series being created up into the 1990s. If you haven’t already seen the Connections series of programs, please do, they are highly entertaining and engaging. The original print edition of the book had been out of print for some time, but I was overjoyed to discover that there is a paperback version as well as a Kindle edition of this book. The kindle version is the one I am basing the review on.The subtitle of the book and series is "an Alternative View of Change”. rather than serendipitous forces coming together and “eureka” moments of discovery happening, Burke makes the case that, just as today, invention happens often as a market force determines the benefit and necessity of that invention, with adoption and use stemming from the both the practical and cultural needs of the community. from there, refinements and other markets often determine how ideas from one area can impact development of other areas. Disparate examples like finance, accounting, cartography, metallurgy, mechanics, water power and automation are not separate disciplines, but rely heavily on each other and the inter-connectedness of these disciplines over time.The book starts with an explanation of the Northeastern Blackout of 1965, as a away to draw attention to the fact that we live in a remarkably interdependent world today. We are not only the beneficiaries of technologies gifts, but in many ways, we are also at the mercy of them. Technology is wonderful, until it breaks down. At that point, many of the systems that we rely heavily on, when they stop working, can make our lives not just sub-optimal, but dangerous.Connections uses examples stretching all the way back to Roman Times and the ensuing “Dark Ages”. Burke contends that they were never “really dark”, and makes the case of communication being enabled through Bishop to Bishop Post to show that many of the institutions defined in Roman times continued on unabated. Life did became much more local when the over-seeing and overarching power of a huge government state had ended. The pace of change and the needs of change were not so paramount on this local scale, and thus, many of the engineering marvels of the Roman Empire were not so much “lost” (aqueducts and large scale paved roads) but that they just weren’t needed on the scale that the Romans used them. Still, even in the localized world of the early Middle Ages, change happened, and changes from one area often led to changes in other areas.Bottom Line:This program changed the way I look at the world, and taught me to look at the causal movers as more than just single moments, or single people, but as a continuum that allows ideas to be connected to other ideas. Is Burke’s premise a certainty? No, but he make a very compelling case, and the connections from one era to another are certainly both credible and reasonable. There is a lot of detail thrown at the reader, and many o those details may seem tangential, but he always manages to come back and show how some arcane development in an isolated location, perhaps centuries ago, came to be a key component in out technologically advanced lives, and how it played a part in our current subordination to technology today. Regardless of the facts, figure and pictures (and there are indeed a lot of them), Connections is a wonderful ride. If you are as much of a fan of history as I am, then pretty much anything James Burke has written will prove to be worthwhile. Connections is his grand thesis, and it’s the concept that is most directly tied to him. This book shows very clearly why that is.

I grew up watching this TV series and it's now available on YouTube if you missed it. This companion book goes into further detail than the series and is recommended.

A superb account of how technological developments and the scientific ideas on which they are predicated are usually not a result of deliberate planning or lone geniuses, but rather the coming together of multiple random occurrences that nobody could have foreseen at the time. At critical points all of the components necessary to build a revolutionary product that will change the world and which couldn't have possibly been constructed a few years earlier, will become available; all that is required is somebody to put them together to make something new.

Llegó en perfecto estado, fue para un regalo.

Was a huge fan of the TV series by the same name, James Burke is one of best TV presenter of our time, the book is worth it

A great book with an unconventional view on the history of inventions and our culture in general - both entertaining and educating. Check out the video series too if you can still find it somewhere (possibly even on youtube)