Word: inventor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...view Edison as an eccentric anomaly, and leave his life and work to the historians of wizardry or of science. Conventional histories deal with technological development as though it were an independent force, growing without any influence from the men who in fact produced it. But to ignore an inventor as part of a larger force is no more valid than ignoring a president because his actions are largely determined by political forces or ignoring a businessman because his ways are mainly set by laws of economics...
...important gap in the story of America's industrialization and urbanization in the late 1800s becomes instead a long collection of trivia and anecdotes. This new Edison biography is fine as source material for those who are interested in finding out details about the life of an important inventor, but it will not offer much interesting material to those with only a passing interest in the history of technology...
Edison's life does entail some inherently interesting history--young Tom growing up in the Midwest during the Civil War, selling newspapers and printing one of his own; Edison the insomniac telegraphist; Edison the eccentric inventor; Edison the occasional businessman. But Clark's book is only interesting to the extent that Edison's life was interesting. Thoughtful analysis is largely left behind after the first half dozen pages, and the book becomes a string of information bits, arranged loosely in chronological order. The only logic connecting the information presented is the immediately obvious: what happened when. Clark rarely steps back...
...Though Inventor Clive Sinclair, 37, is hoping to drum up demand for his set throughout Europe, he is particularly interested in the rich American market, where he has limited sales to such pricy outlets as Manhattan-based Bloomingdales, Dallas' Neiman-Marcus and Southern California's Bullocks. Even so, he insists the set "is not a toy. Its uses are endless-at sporting events, on a boat, commuting by train, for automobile passengers...
...component of any Le Carré novel is its jargon-the trade terms used by secret service personnel. His invented spy lingo is so persuasive that it has convinced readers that spies actually talk that way. As a matter of fact, sometimes they do. According to their inventor, such Le Carré words as mole and honey trap have been co-opted by British and Russian spies; others are rapidly entering the language. Among them...