An interesting narrative of electricity's (or, more accurately, electromagnetic waves') history and subsequent societal revolutions. Yet, while Bodanis succeeded to explain physical phenomena at an elementary level, he leaves the reader yearning for a richer description of the underlying quantum physics that facilitated, for example, the development of radar and computers. Likewise, his chapters on neurotransmitters and neurons near the end of the book were poorly explained and lacking in detail. That said, I enjoyed his light-hearted jokes that were peppered throughout the book, and his writing style made for a quick read. He provided numerous examples of the commercialization (telegraph, Bell Labs) and industrialization (Silicon Valley) of academic research.

Science light, history strong. Good storytelling. Solidly popular science, it is what it purports to be.

Every time I thought maybe this isn't so bad, the Bodanis would make some outrageous claim or false history statement and I'd end up back where I started. Pretty poor.

Bodanis begins with Volta's discovery of electricity and the development of many inventions dependent on it. It's incomplete, which a reader would expect for a book of this length pertaining to events and personalities spanning over three and a half centuries.

A reader unfamiliar with the topic must start at the shallow end, and Electric Universe was just right for its technical explanations. I've read the reviews of other readers who challenge Bodanis's explanations as errant. I'm not expert enough to affirm or refute these readers' reviews.

I felt that the explanation of the explosion of rock and roll music was unnecessarily hasty, and here was an instance where I disagreed. Bodanis claims that the transistor, as used in the transistor radio, was responsible for the rapid diffusion of the music of the mid-twentieth century. This is partly true, but it ignores something huge. The truth is that rock and roll actually kept vacuum tube amplification alive longer than it would have survived otherwise. Many musicians of other genres were interested in transistors because the transistor amplifiers removed the perceived problem of distortion. Rock and roll harnessed distortion because its kind of harmonics are not normally heard with acoustic instruments. Transistor amplifiers merely increase the volume of the instrument or the vocals, but tube amplifiers most audibly change the quality of the tone. (Tubes are not purer than transistors in sound at all.)

The book made the nearly unpardonable crime of leaving out Tesla, but this can be forgiven in a book that is so readable.

It should have been better than it was. Bodanis is not able to weave a narrative like Bryson, Dawkins or Feynman; instead the bits are broken into different parts of the book. This resulted in frequent disappointment only to learn later that I do indeed get my questions answered, well after I thought to ask them.

Also, there i not enough. Also, I didn't particularly click with his metaphors. They were not especially illuminating.

The information itself is fascinating. I think it would be a hit with young adult readers, if any of them were interested in the history of electrical discoveries.

A well written and informative book that has changed my understanding of wave theory. This is a good informational book, and I recommend it to anyone interested in understanding the interconnectedness of science.

In the foreword to his book ‘Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World’ David Bodanis writes: As the Victorian era dawned, that was still most of our knowledge: two metals, when positioned near each other, could sometimes produce a sparking current within a wire connecting them. It seemed a weak, merely curious phenomenon. But it was the first useful door into a world that had been sealed and hidden.

He continues: “In this book I show what has happened in the two centuries since humankind opened that door, which took a mere two centuries.

The first part looks at the Victorian researchers who had only a few tenuous glimpses of electricity, yet created devices never before imagined. There were telephones and telegraphs and lightbulbs; roller coasters and fast streetcars—and ever more electric motors powering them all. There was even an electrical fax machine operating efficiently in France in 1859—before the American Civil War.

The world started to change. The new wave of electrical technologies helped lead to the modern corporation and to votes for women, to suburbs stretching far from cities, and tabloid newspapers, and, influenced by crisp telegraph messages, to a new Hemingway-style prose. One exuberant telephone executive apparently remarked that Americans had become the first people who would interrupt sex to take a phone call.”

This narrative includes information on a fascinating cast of characters, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, Alessandro Volta, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, James Clerk Maxwell, and Cyrus West Field.

The author says: “The stories along the way are as much about religion, love, and cheating as they are about impersonal science or technology.

They take us from Hamburg cellars during a World War II firestorm to the mind of Alan Turing, brilliant computer inventor, hounded by the authorities of the very country he’d saved; from the slum-born Michael Faraday, slurred by his contemporaries because of his religious faith (yet who used his faith to become the first to see electric forces weaving invisibly through space); to a pampered artist, Samuel Morse, who eagerly ran for mayor of New York on a platform of persecuting Catholics, and who learned more about how telegraphs operate than he ever cared to admit, from a frontiersman who couldn’t believe anyone would wish to patent such an obvious idea.”

And there’s Graham bell: “There’s an exuberant twenty-something immigrant to America, Alexander Bell, desperate to capture the love of a deaf teenage student, and there’s the forty-something Robert Watson Watt, desperate to escape from a boring marriage and the tedium of 1930s Slough.

There’s Otto Loewi, who wakes up one Easter eve realizing he has solved the problem of how electricity works in our body, yet in the morning, agonizingly, can’t read the scrawled explanations he jotted beside his bed during the night; there’s the boy from rural Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell, who was treated as a fool for years by bullies at his elementary school, yet who became the nineteenth century’s greatest scientific theorist, able to envision the inner structure of the universe in a way that scientists of a later era would realize was profoundly true. All of these stories illuminate how the immense force of electricity was gradually seen: how it was led out from its hidden domain—and what we, imperfect humans, have made of the enhanced powers it has granted.”

Bodanis’s history of the science of electricity is a journey of discovery, as it vividly describes the work of the many scientists and pioneers who unlocked and applied electricity’s invisible secrets.

This is a must-read book for any average teen ager – and adult alike. Bodanis’s book makes electricity clear both as a force of nature and as an integral part of modern society.

Após anos na biblioteca finalmente peguei nele, dado uma necessidade recente de entender como funciona a tecnologia atual.
Não parecendo especialmente atrativo pelo título é um livro que se lê bastante bem, altamente informativo com uma narrativa histórica bastante bem conseguida.
Explica-nos controlamos e somos controlados pela eletricidade, desde Volta, até Turing, passando por Bell e Edison.
Termina com uma passagem interessante sobre neurotransmissores.
Aconselho!

This book was so interesting. A perfect mix of accurate and not overreaching historical context with a detailed description of the science involved. Excellent description of electrical phenomena and its practical applications.

I put it down when i noticed no entry for Tesla in the index.

Lättsmält och håller uppmärksamheten utan att offra de vetenskapliga förklaringarna och faktan.

Para quem quer começar os estudos em eletricidade. Quase um romance. Com fontes no final para aprofundamento. Alguns reclamaram por ele não citar Tesla, mas acho que não fez muita diferença.