Brain Power—What's the Big Idea?

Boys and girls with inquisitive minds will open this book and feast on the wealth of information and ideas connected with the long history of human inventions. It's a lighthearted, color-illustrated approach to human technology, starting with the discovery and control of fire some 750,000 years ago and progressing to the space vehicles, cell phones, and digital equipment of today. Kids might be surprised to learn that the first lighthouse dates back to 285 B.C., and stood off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. They'll also learn about the origin of paper in China, nearly 2,000 years ago, the first European use of gunpowder in the fourteenth century, the development of the telescope in the sixteenth century by Galileo and others, the 1783 first manned balloon flight, accomplished in France by the Montgolfier Brothers, the invention of the airplane by the Wright Brothers, the origins of telephone, and later, of radio communication in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and much more. Young readers will also find thumbnail sketches of important inventors and thinkers—such men and women as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, the Francis Crick-James Watson DNA-discovery team, and Microsoft's Bill Gates, who made computer technology a part of everyday life. This fascinating volume features color illustrations on every page plus a glossary and index.