Agrawal says Kwolek’s discovery was “all the more noteworthy because it took place in an industry that, at the time, was extremely male-dominated.” Take the story of Stephanie Kwolek, a chemistry major who in 1946 got a job at the chemicals company DuPont and invented poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (Kevlar fibre to you). As it is, she invites the reader to genuflect before some highly dubious ex cathedra statements. They would hardly raise an eyebrow, had she only given them the space they deserved. There’s also a superb discussion of the peculiar, overtone-rich and resonant tone of the tanpura – a guitar-like Indian classic instrument that creates, refines and embellishes to a high art the buzzing sound that Western instrument-making tradition generally goes out of its way to avoid.Īgrawal’s detours into politics – the plight of women in STEM, the use of male physical norms in product design – are less happy. The chapter on springs pulls off the same deeply satisfying trick, showing step by step how the science behind the unfeasibly sophisticated Mongolian bow (bark, sinew, wood, bone, over a year of construction and drying time and a range half as far again as the English longbow) contributed to the design of architectural dampeners that reduce noise and vibration levels and make our cities compact, pleasant places to live. So, while Cochran’s dishwasher sits at the heart of the discussion of wheels, the chapter ends with a stellar flourish, describing the four 100kg gyroscopes, spinning 6,600 times a minute, whose angular momentum stabilises the International Space Station in Earth orbit. Agrawal enriches her account by showing how her chosen devices also work in combination, creating artefacts as unlikely as they are exotic. In Nuts and Bolts she focuses on humble devices, on nails and wheels, springs and magnets, lenses and pumps and strings (which apparently “enabled our ancestors to spin out a series of innovations” this is not a book lacking in puns).Įxplaining the workings of familiar objects is a well-worn conceit. Roma Agrawal, a structural engineer, cut her teeth on the Northumbria University bridge in Newcastle and is best known for her work on The Shard. Luckily for plates everywhere, Cochran stuck to her guns. The professional engineers she had consulted were more trouble than they were worth: “I couldn’t get men to do the things I wanted in my way until they had tried and failed in their own,” she wrote, reflecting on that 1893 prototype. So Cochrane did what any enterprising engineer’s daughter would do – and invented the dishwasher, “a large, rectangular wooden box, with a slew of cranks, spinning gears, and wheels on one side, into which a cage full of dirty dishes disappeared, only to reappear minutes later, clean, as if washed by hand.” This wouldn’t have mattered, except that they were heirlooms, dating back to the 1600s. Josephine Cochran, a socialite and mother of two, found that her maid kept chipping her dishes while doing the washing-up.
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