Without machines, it would be impossible for modern man to live his daily life. To drive to work, to make a telephone call, to mow the lawn - all these normal activities are totally dependent upon one form or another of the machine. The treadmill, the water-wheel, the steam engine, the combustion engine, the turbine, the computer - there is much of absorbing interest to record about the origins, invention, function, and uses of these and all the other machines which have marked the progress of mankind. When some early man, finding that he could not budge a boulder by his own puny strength, took a sturdy branch and used it to prize the boulder loose, he was calling on the assistance of one of the simple machines, the lever. Since then, the machine has done much to eliminate the laborious, dull, and distasteful work that is necessary to make our daily lives function. The basis of much of our modern civilization lies in the advance of the machine throughout the ages. Whatever motives may have prompted the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, it would have been impossible to build them without the assistance of the lever, the pulley, the inclined plane, and several ingenious quarrying machines. But A History of the Machine is not simply an engrossing treatment of the actual machines, how they work, and what their uses are, but it's also a chronicle of the great men who invented, improved, and manufactured them. Here is related the genius of Archimedes, the creativity of Hero, the great by stillborn talent of Polsunov, the researches of the methodical Smeaton, the inventiveness of Watt. Here, too, we find the flair and ingenuity of Diesel, Edison, Ford, von Braun, Wiener, and Wankel. This record of the machine's development is also a record of the genius of mankind. - Dust jacket.