Technology Biography

Joseph Montgolfier and his brother Étienne developed the first balloon. But its first riders were a sheep, a rooster, and a duck!

Meet Doug Taron, a scientist who studies butterflies and other Insects & Arachnids at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.

An old timer regales the audience with the story of the Stanley brothers and their famous Stanley Steamer, a steam-powered automobile.

Isaac Newton did not discover gravity; people had noticed it before! But he did figure out the rules for how it works.

Why would Geoffrey Pyke propose a strange idea like building an aircraft carrier from a mixture of ice and wood pulp?

In 1752, the sky in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, darkened. A thunderstorm was coming. Benjamin Franklin was ready to perform an experiment. He wanted to show the electrical nature of lightning. His experiment was a success, but he didn’t discover electricity that day. Myths about Franklin and his experiment have been told for years. Discover what’s real and what’s fiction through infographics, primary sources, and expertly leveled text.

In 1949, Dorothy Vaughan became the first African American woman to lead a team at NASA's Langley Research Center. Her work as a mathematician was an important part of helping the United States explore space. Learn more about Vaughan's life as a famous mathematician!

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest minds of our time. His theories about the universe have changed the way we think about black holes and the Big Bang. Learn more about the physicist on wheels who traveled the world.

This is the story of a unique American hero who came of age as an astronaut during the few dramatic years when man reached the moon. Cernan's career spanned the entire Apollo program, from the tragic fire that killed three of his comrades on Apollo 1, through the moment when he left man's last footprint on the moon as commander of Apollo 17.

Explore the life and achievements of Rachel Carson, a ground-breaking scientist who worked to protect the Earth.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.

The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone - some brilliant, audacious crook - had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin. Other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents.

A lively exploration into the life of Charles Darwin, One Beetle Too Many recounts both Darwin’s childhood and his time on the Beagle as a naturalist. This adventurous tale explores Darwin’s discoveries in geology, paleontology, and animal anatomy that led to his famous theory of evolution.

You know the Super Soaker. It's one of the top 20 toys of all time. And it was an accidental discovery that brought it into being. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love of rockets, robots, and inventions and a mind for creativity were present in Lonnie Johnson's early life.

Le fondateur de la théorie du chaos et de la relativité. Cédric Villani nous guide à travers l'œuvre de Henri Poincaré, qui fut le plus grand mathématicien de son temps, un éminent philosophe des sciences et le précurseur génial dans de nombreux domaines de recherches qu'il a fondés, la théorie du chaos et la relativité notamment. Une lumineuse histoire des sciences.

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a best-selling author, the country's first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies' man, and a moralist - and the most prominent celebrity of the 18th century. Franklin was, however, a man of vast contradictions.

Emma Lilian Todd's mind was always soaring—she loved to solve problems. Lilian tinkered and fiddled with all sorts of objects, turning dreams into useful inventions. As a child, she took apart and reassembled clocks to figure out how they worked. As an adult, typing up patents at the U.S. Patent Office, Lilian built the inventions in her mind, including many designs for flying machines. However, they all seemed too impractical. Lilian knew she could design one that worked.

The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era. Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most formats. Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.

Growing up in the 1920s on a dirt-poor farm in North Dakota, Mary Sherman's life was filled with chores—until she finally began school and discovered she loved to learn. Mary excelled at science, especially chemistry, and leaped at the chance to work in a laboratory during World War II designing rocket fuels. And when the US decided to enter the space race, Mary was chosen over her male colleagues to create the fuel to launch a rocket carrying America's first satellite.