Eureka! Great Inventors and their Brilliant Brainwaves

This book focuses on thirty-five inventions and their inventors, each on a two-page spread, from Galileo’s pendulum to Tim Berners Lee’s World Wide Web, divided into chapters on Everyday Life and Health (including vaccination, nylon), Getting Around (hot-air balloon, hovercraft), Lenses and Light (telescope, photography), Electricity (telephone, television), Patience and Planning (automatic lubrication – the real McCoy, sound recording). Except in the last chapter, there is emphasis on sudden realisation, hence the title.

The text is generally clear, extensively illustrated, and supported by a chronology, a glossary and an index. There is a brief biography of each inventor. The difficulties of development, after the eureka moment has passed, are well presented. Questions of precedence are confronted. Minor cavil: DNA fingerprinting is presented without the slightest hint of its limitations or of the unfortunate consequences of wrong identification.