MITCHELL LANE PUBLISHERS

Alexander Graham Bell and the Story of the Telephone

ISBN 1-58415-243-5 • 9781584152439

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It took a teacher of the deaf to figure out a better way for people to communicate with each other over long distances. The son and grandson of celebrated speakers, he was the child of a deaf mother. He began his experiments hoping to improve on the human voice box and offer deaf people a better way to communicate. But he didn't just devise a new form of the telegraph. Instead, he invented an entirely new device that could be used by anyone. This instrument would change the way that people communicate around the world. It is the telephone and it's inventor's name is Alexander Graham Bell.

Antoine Lavoisier: Father of Modern Chemistry

ISBN 1-58415-309-1 • 9781584153092

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Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was a statesman, businessman, economist, and a social reformer who accomplished many things in each of these roles. However, it is for his work as a chemist that he is best remembered. Lavoisier uncovered the significance of oxygen. He was the first to understand that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. And the contributions he made to the metric system and chemical nomenclature continue to help scientists to this day.

Early in life Lavoisier learned to look at a problem analytically, and to approach its solution in a methodical manner. Whether in the laboratory or out, Lavoisier was continuously trying to improve the lives of his fellow French citizens. His keen mind made him world-famous, and even George Washington sought his advice.

The turbulent period of history in which Lavoisier lived robbed the world of this brilliant scientist, whom the world has come to call the "Father of Modern Chemistry." His life was cut short by political violence, but his spirit of chemical investigation continues to live on in the research of modern science today.

Auguste and Louis Lumiere and the Rise of Motion Pictures

ISBN 1-58415365-2 • 9781584153658

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On December 28, 1895, about 35 people in Paris, France, descended into a basement room. The overhead lights were turned off. The audience saw an image projected onto a white sheet on one of the walls. Suddenly the image began to move! This was the first public showing of a motion picture. The device that was used to film the subjects and then serve as a projector was known as a Cinématographe. It had been invented about a year earlier by a young Frenchman named Louis Lumière. Along with his brother Auguste, the two men became important pioneers in making movies. From this primitive beginning, movies have become one of the world’s most popular entertainment forms.

Charles Babbage and the Story of the First Computer

ISBN 1-58415-372-5 • 9781584153726

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In 1815, there weren’t any computers. Electricity hadn’t yet been discovered as a way to make things run. Calculating sums of numbers had to be done by hand. One mistake would mean adding everything up all over again. But English scientist Charles Babbage was planning to change all that. He planned to use his knowledge of mathematics and engineering to build a machine that would be able to work out the most complicated sums instantly. But someone would have to give it the right program to follow. Women weren’t supposed to know mathematics in his day. But Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was one of the best mathematicians. She became the first computer programmer. And Charles Babbage could become the father of computing—if only he could overcome the biggest problem of all. It wasn’t the lack of electric power. It wasn’t the lack of modern equipment. Before he could succeed, Charles Babbage had to conquer the greatest problem of all—himself.

Charles Darwin and the Origin of the Species

ISBN 1-58415-364-4 • 9781584153641

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As a young man in England, Charles Darwin had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Then he was asked to go on a long ocean voyage. Boarding the ship Beagle in 1831, he spent nearly five years sailing around the world. He returned with one of the most important ideas in the history of science: the theory of evolution.

It took him more than 20 years to publish a book about his theory. When his book, the Origin of Species, appeared in 1859, it aroused a great deal of controversy. It directly challenged many of the beliefs in the Bible. And remains controversial today.

Dmitri Mendeleyev and the Periodic Table

ISBN 1-58415-267-2 • 9781584152675

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Born in an isolated Siberian village in 1834, Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeleyev overcame great odds to become the most brilliant and acclaimed scientist in the field of chemistry in the 19th Century. His mother's determination overcame the objections of those who believed he was a poor student. She took him the long hard way across Siberia to Moscow and later St. Petersburg where finally Mendeleyev was admitted to a teachers college. Despite his mother's death and his own serious illness, he was awarded the gold medal for best student of the year in 1855. As a young chemistry teacher during the progressive educational reforms of Czar Alexander II, Mendeleyev was sent to study in Europe in order to bring the latest developments in science back to Russia. He succeeded so well that the chemistry textbooks he wrote became standard texts all over the world, and his Periodic Table of the Elements forms the foundation for all the advances in chemistry from his time until the present.

Florence Nightingale and the Advancement of Nursing

ISBN 1-58415-257-5 • 9781584152576

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Florence Nightingale attained an almost saintly status among her British countrymen while she labored as a nurse during the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856. The truth about Florence reveals that she was an often difficult and always demanding woman. She was opinionated and fought fiercely to win the battles set before her. Florence's privileged childhood was often unhappy for the young woman who questioned everything about herself and her environment. Only after many miserable years as a young adult was she was able to convince her parents to let her be a nurse. Florence worked with intense energy to improve the hospital conditions in the Crimean Peninsula. She supervised her nurses as they gave the patients basic care. She did this successfully even though the military doctors did not want a "society lady" telling them how to run their hospitals.

Friedrich Miescher and the Story of Nucleic Acid

ISBN 1-58415-369-5 • 9781584153696

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It was one of the greatest mysteries of mankind: how are traits passed from parent to child? Although philosophers and scientists from the earliest civilizations recognized that offspring carried traits from both parents, nobody understood the process responsible for heredity. It wasn’t until a shy young Swiss chemist stumbled upon a new substance that the mystery began to be literally unraveled.

Friedrich Miescher came from a distinguished family of physicians but turned to research for his life’s work, worried that a hearing impairment would make it difficult to treat patients properly. Although Miescher would discover the key to heredity, nucleic acid, it would be many years before the importance of his discovery was fully appreciated. This book tells the great scientific detective story that resulted in the ultimate unveiling of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, as the genetic material responsible for heredity.

George Eastman and the Story of Photographic Film

ISBN 1-58415-258-3 • 9781584152583

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Like many other Americans, George Eastman enjoyed taking photographs. But in 1877, photography was a complicated process that included chemicals, glass plates, and boxes full of equipment.

George Eastman decided there had to be an easier way to take pictures. Although he had a full-time job at a bank, he devoted every spare minute to experimenting with photography. Within a few years, he had created a better way to take pictures. His inventions led to a new business, the Eastman Kodak Company. The company's new films and cameras changed the world of photography forever. For the first time, a person didn't have to be a professional photographer to take a picture. Eastman's cameras were so simple that even children could use them.

Because of his hard work and willingness to try new things, Eastman made photography as simple as pushing a button.

Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of the Gene

ISBN 1-58415-266-4 • 9781584152668

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Gregor Mendel was one of the first people to practice the science of what we now call genetics. Yet he wasn't even a scientist. He was an obscure monk living in poverty. His work was tedious and demanding. Although he published several papers describing his research, few people read them. Gregor Mendel was ahead of his time. His fame would not arrive until he was long dead. Although Mendel did not live long enough to see his work recognized, his experiments put him on the same level with the most celebrated scientists of all time.

Guglielmo Marconi and the Story of Radio Waves

ISBN 1-58415-265-6 • 9781584152651

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Guglielmo Marconi was a young man fascinated with the recently discovered phenomenon of electricity. Telegraph wires were already being used to send messages with electricity—there was even a cable under the Atlantic Ocean making communication between continents possible. But when Marconi learned about the discovery of electromagnetic waves, he thought that they could be used to send messages without wires. In 1894, when he was 20 years old, Marconi began experiments in sending messages: first a few feet, next a few yards, then over a mile, and at last across the Atlantic Ocean.

Marconi's wireless telegraphy made it possible, for the first time, for ships at sea to communicate with the land and with each other. Marconi's work provided the foundation for the amazing developments in electronic technology that occurred in the 20th century—radio, television, radar, sonar, microwave ovens—and are still occurring at dizzying speed.

Henry Bessemer: Making Steel From Iron

ISBN 1-58415-366-0 • 9781584153665

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He was a grade-school dropout who grew up in a small country town. But Henry Bessemer would become one of the richest men in London and would help lay the foundation for the Industrial Revolution. As a youth, Henry discovered a natural talent for making things out of metal, including machines of all kinds. In all, Bessemer was credited with over 100 inventions. None was as important as the Bessemer process, a method to cheaply produce steel out of iron. Steel’s light weight and strength made it the perfect building material for everything from buildings to railroad tracks. This is the story of how a quiet, unschooled young man became one of the greatest inventors of the 19th century.

Henry Cavendish & the Discovery of Hydrogen

ISBN 1-58415-368-7 • 9781584153689

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The strange little man was unnaturally shy. He couldn't stand looking anyone in the face. He was unable to bear meeting more than one person at a time, and ran away if too many people came near him. When he had to go out, he sat in the shadows of his carriage so that no one could see him. He wore the same old-fashioned outfit day after day. And he never, ever spoke to a woman. And yet Henry Cavendish was also a brilliant man who made one of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century—hydrogen, among other things.

J. J. Thomson and the Discovery of Electrons

ISBN 1-58415-370-9 • 9781584153702

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He loved to laugh. He loved to make up silly songs to make his students laugh, too. But he also loved to think, and find out the answers to scientific puzzles. It didn't matter if the questions were asked by a seven-year-old boy or a famous scientist. J. J. Thomson thought that they were all worth answering.

Of course, there was one little problem with his research: J. J. was brilliant, but he was also clumsy. Test tubes broke in his hands and experiments refused to work. Once a beaker even exploded in his face, nearly blinding him. But all those accidents didn’t stop him. He was a terrific professor. All his students loved him, and learned from him. And if J. J. had to build his own equipment so that he could examine the atom, then he would do it. When he did, he would discover something about the atom that no one else had ever expected.

James Watt and the Steam Engine

ISBN 1-58415-371-7 • 9781584153719

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James Watt was a sickly boy who was often bullied at school. He wasn’t very self-confident and doubted his ability. He was often paralyzed by the fear of going into poverty. He lived most of his life with ferocious headaches. His first wife, who always supported and encouraged him, died when he was still a relatively young man.

Yet he overcame these problems to become one of the most important inventors in world history. He made improvements to the primitive steam engines so that they could provide power for the factories that were springing up in England. These factories completely changed the way that people worked and lived, and made James Watt a wealthy, well-known man.

John Dalton and the Atomic Theory

ISBN 1-58415-308-3 • 9781584153085

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Born in obscurity to a Quaker family in England in 1766, John Dalton would eventually become one of the most famous scientists of the 19th century. When he died in 1844, more than 40,000 people in his adopted city of Manchester, England, turned out to honor him. The master of his own school at the age of 12, he had a curiosity about the world around him for his entire life. This curiosity led him to spend many hours in research in a wide variety of subjects. Eventually that research focused on the question of what all the things in the world were made of. He had a startling answer: atoms. Even though he couldn't see them, he was able to calculate their weight and the way in which they interacted with other atoms. Controversial for many years, his atomic theory eventually formed one of the cornerstones of modern chemistry and physics.

Joseph Lister and and the Story of Antiseptics

ISBN 1-58415-262-1 • 9781584152620

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None of the doctors could figure it out. During the nineteenth century, surviving surgery was only half the battle. In many hospitals, 50 percent of amputees lived through their painful operations only to die soon afterward in their beds. Everyone had a theory for what doctors referred to as "hospitalism." But it was not until Joseph Lister and his pioneering work in antiseptic methods that death rates were greatly reduced after surgery. His work is so important that surgical history is divided into two eras: Before Lister and After Lister.

Joseph Priestly and the Discovery of Oxygen

ISBN 1-58415-367-9 • 9781584153672

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At the age of eleven, the eldest son of an English cloth maker began to perform scientific experiments on spiders. The experiments ignited his interest in science, and the natural world and everything in it soon became his own personal laboratory. As an adult, his curiosity continued to burn bright and he became a well-respected scientist. The results of his experiments impacted the way modern scientists have come to understand everything from respiration and combustion to the composition of the human body and the Earth’s crust. That’s because the boy who once experimented with spiders had grown into the man who discovered the most abundant element on Earth. That man was Joseph Priestley, and the element he discovered was oxygen.

Karl Benz and the Single Cylinder Engine

ISBN 1-58415-244-3 • 9781584152446

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Many men had tried to invent a "horseless carriage." Karl Benz was only one of them. In 1885, he succeeded in building the first three-wheeled automobile. He didn't plan on starting his own automobile revolution. In fact, not many people bought his first car. But a century later the company he built is still in existence. And his contribution to self-powered vehicles has changed millions of lives.

Louis Daguerre and the Story of the Daguerreotype

ISBN 1-58415-247-8 • 9781584152477

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In the early 18th century the only way to preserve an image was with a pen, paper, or other drawing tools. Though several people had made progress in the development of photography, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre is perhaps the most famous. Daguerre spent most of his life as an artist. He was used to manipulating light and working with chemicals of his paints. He sketched the images from a camera obscura and created realistic drawings. Using the camera obscura, Daguerre made an early photograph. In partnership with Niepce, Daguerre sought to make a lasting image. Though Niepce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment. Between 1835 and 1837, he perfected his process, an early form of photography.

Daguerre grew up in France in the shadows of the French Revolution and came of age during an artistic revolution. He lived to see his invention improved and carried into war. He named it after himself.

Louis Pasteur: Fighter Against Contagious Disease

ISBN 1-58415-363-6 • 9781584153634

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Louis Pasteur's sharp, analytical mind and life-long devotion to science made him one of the best-known scientific researchers of all time. He was, said one historical writer, “The most perfect man who has ever entered the Kingdom of Science.” Today we remember Pasteur as the father of microbiology, the founder of bacteriology and the father of modern medicine. Pasteur’s method of developing vaccines continues to help humans as well as animals conquer sickness and disease. His “prepared mind” saved France’s wine and silk worm industries from the microorganisms that threatened to destroy both. His method of reducing harmful bacteria in milk and other foods has saved countless human lives over the years. Pasteur was one of the first to fight for sanitary practices in hospitals. His ground-breaking “germ theory of disease” continues to provide the foundation upon which we base our modern-day ideas of disease. In many ways, Louis Pasteur was truly a “fighter against contagious disease.” 

Michael Faraday and the Discovery of Electromagnetism

ISBN 1-58415-307-5 • 9781584153078

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Michael Faraday was one of the most brilliant experimental scientists of all time. Although he had no formal education, and never studied advanced mathematics, by painstaking experiments Faraday demonstrated the connection between electricity and magnetism. His invention of the electric dynamo, which made the generation of electricity possible, was the basis for all of the electronic technology that has developed since the 19th century. The electric light; electrical appliances such as washing machines, dryers, and microwave ovens; the telegraph, telephones, radio, and television; computers; and all of the thousands of other uses of electricity—all of them owe their existence to Faraday's invention.

Pierre and Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium

ISBN 1-58415-310-5 • 9781584153108

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Marie and Pierre Curie remain two of the most important scientists of the 20th century. Their pioneering work in the study of radioactivity led to the discovery of the elements radium and polonium. Later, they identified how atoms give off, or radiate, energy, which would be the foundation for modern nuclear physics.

But for as successful as they were as scientific partners, there was also a love story.

Coming from vastly different backgrounds, Marie grew up in politically repressed Poland and suffered the loss of a sister and her mother as a young girl. Pierre enjoyed an idyllic childhood and was educated at home by his brother and father. Although their friendship was initially based on their shared passion for science and research, it soon grew into a romantic love that would lead them to a personal relationship and professional partnership that would literally change the world.

Robert Koch and the Study of Anthrax

ISBN 1-58415-261-3 • 9781584152613

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In the late 19th century deadly diseases such as tuberculosis and anthrax were unstoppable killers. Doctors were helpless to prevent or effectively treat their patients because nobody knew what caused the disease in the first place. It wasn't until German scientist Robert Koch showed that anthrax and other scourges were caused by specific types of bacteria that mankind began to win the war on diseases. In addition to being a renowned researcher, Koch was also an important technical innovator. He was the first to develop an effective system for staining and photographing the microbes he studied under the microscope, the first to establish a scientific protocol to isolate and identify pathogens, and the first to use agar as a medium to grow bacteria cultures in the lab. Koch's lifelong dedication to eradicating disease earned him the 1905 Nobel Prize for Medicine and ensured his legacy as the founder of modern bacteriology.

Samuel Morse and the Story of the Electric Telegraph

ISBN 1-58415-269-9 • 9781584152699

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Samuel Morse, who is called "the father of the telegraph," was not a scientist. For most of his life he was a struggling artist, and a good one. Although he had difficulty selling his paintings during his lifetime, he is now considered a major American painter, and his work is exhibited in art museums. In 1832, Morse was returning from Europe where he had been studying painting. Onboard ship he heard another passenger talking about how electricity could travel through a wire in an instant. Morse had the idea that electricity could be used to send messages. If he had known how many scientists and inventors had already had the same idea, he might have never worked on developing a method of sending messages. But he didn't know, and his idea of creating a code out of dots and dashes, the Morse code, made the telegraph a practical method of sending messages through electric wires.

Thomas Edison: Great Inventor

ISBN 1-58415-306-7 • 9781584153061

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His teacher said he was not a good student. The teacher complained that Thomas Edison could not sit still, so his mother taught him at home. Even when Thomas Edison was older and well-known as a scientist and an inventor, other scientists criticized his ideas and methods.

But Thomas Edison never let others' opinions hold him back. He had his own kind of genius—his own way of thinking. He could imagine something that had not yet been invented, such as the light bulb or the motion picture, and figure out how to make it work.

When he started his extraordinary career as an inventor, people read by candlelight at home and no one had even heard of recorded music. By early in the 20th century, he had revolutionized the way Americans and people all over the world illuminated their homes and businesses and enjoyed their leisure time.

Uncharted, Unexplored, and Unexplained: Set of 26 books

ISBN 1-58415-410-1 • 9781584154105

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