Alchemy and Life: How People and Materials Changed Each Other

The scientist and science popularizer Ainissa Ramirez presents eight inventions — clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, electric lamps, hard drives, laboratory glassware, and silicon chips — and shows how they influenced human experience. Ramirez tells the story... of a woman who "sold time," an inventor who inspired Edison, and an enthusiastic entrepreneur whose discovery suggested the path to the creation of the computer.
Among other things, she describes how the quest for precision predetermined our sleep patterns, how railroads contributed to the commercialization of Christmas holidays, how the forced brevity of telegrams influenced Hemingway's literary style, and how a young chemist exposed the practice of using Polaroid cameras for passporting and racial segregation under apartheid in South Africa.