housekeeping
The City That Has Fallen
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was the Katrina of its day. Commentators the country over held forth on what The City meant. Perhaps the most stylish of these was The City That Has Fallen by William Marion Reedy, a St. Louis editor who’d never seen the place. I ran across it in a slim [...]
So, What Is My Book About, Anyway?
As almost all authors will tell you, this is the worst question to get. The soundbiting process is hard and fraught with risk. Nonetheless, over at Change.org, I stuck my toe in the “what’s your big idea?” waters in an exchange with Emily Gertz about the history of alternative energy. I’ve only got eight months [...]
Americans Use More Energy in 8 Hours Than All Pre-Farming Humans Did in a Year
“In view of the fact that the earth in its natural state could hardly support more than about ten million food-gatherers, the maximum consumption of energy by humans in preagricultural times probably amounted to no more than the equivalent of about four million tons of coal annually.”
— Harrison Brown, “Energy in Our Future” from the [...]
Techmix: Tata Nano + Kerosene Tank Bicyclist
Image: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg News. Linked from the NYT.
Techmix: Solar Panel + Hut
Well, if you were a nomad in Mongolia, you’d probably want some television via a satellite dish and powered by a solar panel, too. Right?
Image: A random trip to Mongolia by a couple, Peter and Jackie.
A Mini-Course in Understanding Money and Technology
The deeper I get into the history of energy in America, the more I realize that it’s impossible to examine energy (or green tech) alone. I want to know more about technological diffusion, the systems that constrain or promote tech R&D, the financing systems that allow different types of technology companies to be founded, and [...]
The First Good Road in America
American roads, particularly outside cities, were terrible in the 19th century. Before the arrival of asphalt and then concrete on the scene, contractors used a method called Macadamizing after the man who invented it, John Loudon McAdam.
In this painting, we see the construction of the first American macadam road in 1823. Keep in mind, though, [...]
Fire! Who You Gonna Call? The Steam Powered Fire Engine
I had wondered on occasion where the term “fire engine” came from. It’s a little weird, a little Fahrenheit 451, to call the thing which puts out the flames “a fire engine.” That is, until I stumbled across this wonderful illustration. Oh! The fire engine was actually a steam engine that was used to pump [...]
How Many Buggy Whip Makers Were There, Really?
It’s common to deride the “buggy whip makers” as a class of businesses that couldn’t hack the technological disruption caused by the introduction of the automobile. The once-vibrant whip business run over by the internal combustion engine’s power. The horror! Is there no respect for the past?
Anyway, I was researching Louisville in the mid-19th century [...]
Notes on the First Green Tech Paradise
Thus far, I’ve used Inventing Green to write mostly blog posts intended to reflect on the state of the world. As my three most recent posts attest, I’m transitioning this blog to more of a research notebook that will occasionally contain world-directed posts.
I’m trying out a different way of cataloging research in this post. In [...]
Inventing Green by Alexis Madrigal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
