Books in Inventions in. . . series

This title of the Crafty Inventions series sees the space race gathering momentum as the Apollo program counts down to lift off. Artificial satellites Sputnik and Vostok are sent out to explore, the first 3-stage rocket, Saturn, takes off, followed by the space shuttle, Columbia; a lunar rover with wheels made from piano wire is let loose on the moon, solar-power propelled probes go ever deeper into space and Mariner sends back the first ever photos of Mars’ strawberry sunsets. Find out about the stars and space junk, then be a space engineer and construct an astro helmet, a star-gazing telescope, a 3-stage rocket and a moon mobile.

Who was Archimedes and did his discoveries match up to his boasting? Did Leonardo’s designs actually work? What sparked Edison’s invention of the light bulb, and did Bell’s early telephone ring? Tough challenges lead to another ten mind-boggling inventions in this title of the Crafty Inventions series. Find out why Marconi tied aerials to balloons and kites, how the Wright Brothers’ hobby of bird-watching helped them to perfect airplane control and why Trevithick nicknamed his steam locomotives OEpuffer whims. Then model your own inventions from a cocktail stick bi-plane and a corkscrew helicopter to a radar helmet and a big mouth megaphone.

What is a bathyscaphe? How do you use an aqualung? Could you rely on a diving bell? How do unmanned submersibles find shipwrecks? Where in the ocean is the twilight zone? In this title of the Crafty Inventions series, explore the depths of the world’s largest oceans, discover sea monsters that make their own light, such as the gulper eel and the viperfish, and look at some weird and wonderful submersibles that have helped us learn more about life on the ocean floor. Then model your own miniature Titanic, a nuclear sub with a moveable periscope, a bottle aquarium and a spooky lantern fish.

The experiments and advances that transformed the world! This intriguing series covers the breakthroughs of invention that created the way of life that we take for granted today, and the people who made them. Each book looks at one specific part of history and clearly shows how things were in the past and how they have changed over time. Each book in the series contains full colour illustrations, a table of contents and an index.