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 bulbs, hard drives, laboratory glassware, and silicon chips — and shows how they have influenced the human experience. Ramirez tells... the story of a woman who "sold time", of an inventor who inspired Edison, and of an entrepreneurial enthusiast whose discovery hinted at the path to creating a computer.
Among other things, she describes how the pursuit of accuracy predetermined our sleep patterns, how railways contributed to the commercialization of Christmas, how the forced brevity of telegrams affected Hemingway's literary style, and how a young chemist exposed the practice of using Polaroid cameras for passporting and racial segregation in apartheid South Africa.