Flash of genius : and other true stories of invention / John Seabrook.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Seabrook, John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Inventions--United States--History.

Inventions.

United States.

History.

Inventors--United States--Biography.

Inventors.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 356 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Griffin, 2008.

Summary:

In Flash of Genius, John Seabrook explores the moment when inspiration strikes in an otherwise average life, and what happens when that idea moves out into the larger culture and takes on a life-and commercial possibilities-of its own. The title piece in this collection is the David v. Goliath story of Bob Kearns, a professor and inventor who came up with something we all take for granted: the intermittent wind-shield wiper. When Kearns's patents were infringed, he fought General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler and eventually prevailed in a classic American story of never giving up, never backing down.

Seabrook has been fascinated by stories of invention and entrepreneurship since childhood, when he grew up with an uncle who invented something as ubiquitous as Bob Kearns's wipers: boil-in-bag vegetables. In Flash of Genius, Seabrook also writes about thirteen other iconoclastic visions that turned into the stuff of every day.

Contents:

The Flash of Genius 1

The Fruit Detective 32

Game Master 45

Child's Play 71

Sowing for Apocalypse 84

The Tree of Me 111

Fragmentary Knowledge 138

Invisible Gold 157

Selling the Weather 209

The Slow Lane 228

The Tower Builder 247

American Scrap 268

It Came from Hollywood 291

Tremors in the Hothouse 304

The Spinach King 325.

ISBN:

9780312535728 :

0312535724 :

OCLC:

213300757