Gavin Weightman: 7 books

Tracing the long pre-history of five twentieth-century inventions which have transformed our lives, Gavin Weightman reveals a fantastic cast of scientists and inspired amateurs whose ingenuity has given us the airplane, television, bar code, personal computer, and mobile phone. Not one of these inventions...

In the early 1870's a nighttime view over Britain would have revealed towns lit by the warm glow of gas and oil lamps and a much darker countryside, the only light emanating from the fiery sparks of late running steam trains. However, by the end of this same decade,Victorian Britons would experience...

Without the Thames, there would be no London or England. From earliest times, the city's needs--whether for stone, gold, or coal, for hay to feed livestock or food, wine and spices for human beings--were supplied from the river, as the fierce tides brought ships upstream or carried them down again....

“Anyone with a passing interest in economic history will thoroughly enjoy” this account of how industry transformed the world (The Seattle Times). In less than one hundred and fifty years, an unlikely band of scientists, spies, entrepreneurs, and political refugees took a world made of...

The world at the turn of the twentieth century was in the throes of "Marconi-mania"-brought on by an incredible invention that no one could quite explain, and by a dapper and eccentric figure (who would one day win the newly minted Nobel Prize) at the center of it all. At a time when the...

The intriguing story of how wireless was invented by Guglielmo Marconi – and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution. Wireless was the most fabulous invention of the 19th century: the public thought it was magic,...

The story of the 19th-century ice trade, in which ice from the lakes of New England – valued for its incredible purity – revolutionised domestic life around the world. In the days before artificial refrigeration, it was thought impossible to transport ice for long distances. But one man, Frederic...