Engines of Our Ingenuity

September 7, 2003 8:01 AM

Engines of Our Ingenuity is a web site run by John Lienhard of the University of Houston. The site includes almost 2000 short, three minute talks on the history of science, technology, and engineering. The talks are in the form of RealAudio files, with accompanying transcripts which often give you more links and references. The transcripts themselves are indexed by keywords and are also fully text-searchable. A simple idea but very effective, and kind of addictive. I've been finding out about Jacquard and Babbage, German women astronomers of the seventeenth century, and the deisgn of the zipper. There's also other cool stuff: what did people say about books in 1498?
posted by carter (5 comments total)

Caveat: previous Metafilter posts (1 2 3) have linked to individual pages in this site, but in support of other topics, and they did not link to the site's main index. The talks, broadcast on KUHF-FM Houston, are available for free streaming to your local public radio station if they are interested.
posted by carter at 8:03 AM on September 7, 2003

wow, great stuff! thanks :D
posted by kliuless at 9:05 AM on September 7, 2003

Excellent find, carter. Thank you.
From episode 43:
(Christopher) Columbus found the new world, but (Amerigo) Vespucci was the man who recognized that it was a new world and hence the name America.

Mr. Lienhard reminded me of James Burke and his Connections programme.
posted by philfromhavelock at 9:04 PM on September 7, 2003

As a young and eager engineering student eons ago, I spent a day in awe within the Henry Ford museum, amazed at the brilliant solutions and work-arounds put together into productive working machines by the finest mechanical minds of the era. Some which still stand out in my mind were the alternatives to the patented CAM drive.
posted by HTuttle at 12:20 AM on September 8, 2003

I'm with the others. This is a great resource. Thanks, carter.
posted by samuelad at 12:35 AM on September 8, 2003