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Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact

vaclav smil

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The period between 1867 and 1914 remains the greatest watershed in human history since the emergence of settled agricultural the time when an expansive civilization based on synergy of fuels, science, and technical innovation was born. At its beginnings in the 1870s were dynamite, the telephone, photographic film, and the first light bulbs. Its peak decade - the astonishing 1880s - brought electricity - generating plants, electric motors, steam turbines, the gramophone, cars, aluminum production, air-filled rubber tires, and prestressed concrete. And its post-1900 period saw the first airplanes, tractors, radio signals and plastics, neon lights and assembly line production. This book is a systematic interdisciplinary account of the history of this outpouring of European and American intellect and of its truly epochal consequences. It takes a close look at four fundamental classes of these epoch-making formation, diffusion, and standardization of electric
systems; invention and rapid adoption of internal combustion engines; the unprecedented pace of new chemical syntheses and material substitutions; and the birth of a new information age. These chapters are followed by an evaluation of the lasting impact these advances had on the 20th century, that is, the creation of high-energy societies engaged in mass production aimed at improving standards of living.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2004

This edition

Format
368 pages, Hardcover
Published
August 25, 2005 by Oxford University Press
ISBN
9780195168747
ASIN
0195168747
Language
English

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About the author

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vaclav smil

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 15 votes)
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15 reviews All reviews
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breycw
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This book is aimed perfectly by the author, to proclaim the special debt we owe to the period of technical innovation from 1880 to 1940 that gave us electricity, engines, radio, and film.

But the writing style is very bad. It reads like someone is summarizing other books they have read. Information is duplicated many times because the author could not synthesize his sources into a coherent narrative.

I also wish the author had spent some pages to compare this age of innovation with out modern age of computers, data, and satellites.
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gabunomi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Ground-moving. Demanding. You need to have a notebook at hand.
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Gabatron085
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Style is a big dry, lots of numbers, but really opened my eyes on this incredibly inventive period of history, and the magnificence of the unsung innovations that enables our current society.
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KING_OF_ANOME
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Excellent book. To those who are critical of the style being too dry and the book too detailed - you need to get better at selecting the books you read! This one is intended as a somewhat detailed account for those interested in how things work, as well as pictured. Smil was never a lighthearted writer.
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plsRespawn
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A very readable overview of several crucial inventions that reshaped human living standards. Smil tells us that these were invented and rapidly improved roughly in the two generations before the First World War.

He also demonstrates the role scientific insights had on inspiring and guiding the process of invention and improvement. This exercise in moving from theory to practice is supposedly different from prior inventions largely discovered by tinkering around. For example, the diesel engine was created as not only an iterative improvement on an existing piece of equipment, but also as an exercise in using the thermodynamic principles of Carnot to create a much more efficient engine.

If there is one shortfall to his overall theory, it would have to be the realm of biology. Biologically-grounded medical advances like penicillin were discovered after the First World War and also reshaped the 20th century on a fundamental level (adding up to 20 years of life). It could be argued that these were greatly aided by advances in materials and energy, but medical improvement was ultimately driven by separate bodies of knowledge and practitioners.

Worthwhile and thought-provoking read.
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jman650
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A fascinating and inspirational account of how the modern world came together - light bulbs, electricity, internal combustion, cameras and cinema, long distance telephones, fertilizers, manned flight, steel and aluminium, and so much more.

Makes you realise the possibilities of a period of relative political and economic stablity pre-WWI (atleast in the western world)... and if replicated today, could it empower the brilliant minds amongst us, to build the technologies we need, to tackle the climate challenges we face?
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Eddy120876
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I have very mixed feelings about this very absorbing book about the development of electric power transmission, internal combustion motors, new chemical processes, and telephone and radio in the period from 1865 to 1914.

Smil is a great story-teller, weaving in technical details about the individual inventions with the broader picture of overwhelming and rapid technological change. (But he assumes a fairly high level of technical knowledge going in -- for example he gives a great explanation of the Otto cycle in a normal gasoline engine, then doesn't give any description of the combustion cycle in a Diesel engine. Keep Wikipedia handy.)

Smil demolishes the image of Edison and other inventors as brilliant geniuses who created their invention through tinkering. He shows that the technical innovations of this time were grounded in a revolution in science, and that scientific theory often preceded the development of new inventions.

One of the markers Smil gives for this "Age of Synergy" is the publication of Capital in 1867, " a muddled but extraordinarily influential piece of ideological writing." But I actually think Capital is a great companion volume to this book, or this book to Capital. Capital places these extraordinary changes in the context of the development of the accumulation process. The drive for accumulation pushed capitalists to increase the productivity of labor (electric motors, electric lighting, steam turbines), create new products (new fertilizers thru the Haber process), and speed up global transportation and communication (the internal combustion engine, telephone, radio). Smil hints at these connections all over place, like when he describes how electricity and the electric motor revolutionized factory production and increased the flexibility of production design by eliminating steam-driven belts.

I left this book wanting to read more Smil.
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emontesno
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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One of my favourite authors on science and technology.. gives an overview of many technological inventions right from electricity to phone to automobile.
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