An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology, edited by Ian McNeil, Routledge, London, NYC, 1990. This 1062 page hardback is a single volume, handy reference to the subject of technologies. It provides concise summaries of a wide variety of technologies including basic details on how the technology works, inventors, and end of chapter references for additional detail. Should a technology question arise, this is an excellent quick reference that gets you started with enough detail to learn what related subjects to search.

The book is organized into 21 broad subject chapters which give an indication of the breadth of coverage: Materials: Non-ferrous Metals, Ferrous Metals, Chemicals; Power: Water, Wind, Animal, Steam, Internal Combustion, Electricity, Engineering; Transport: Roads, Bridges, Vehicles, Inland Waterways, Ports, Shipping, Rail, Aeronautics, Spaceflight; Communications: Language, Writing, Printing, Information, Timekeeping, Computing, Telecommunications; Technology: Agriculture, Textiles, Clothing, Building, Domestic Interiors, Public Utilities, Weapons, Armor.

I was especially impressed with the detail of the metallurgy section, which includes processing aluminum and magnesium as well as iron and steel. The coverage seemed thorough and surprisingly clearly written. Numerous illustrations help make the points. I noticed there are a few limits to coverage. Silicon is not included. Plastics are covered too briefly for a chemist. Integrated circuits are mentioned and get one paragraph, but there is no discussion of fabrication technologies. Gold mining is mentioned, but there is no discussion of ore processing. Germanium is not mentioned. One concludes that coverage is best of ancient technologies that led to the 19th Century industrial revolution, i.e., the machine age. Coverage of 20th Century topics is hit or miss, with some topics incomplete or absent.

A second limitation is that the book is British in origin and most examples are chosen from UK. US inventions are also described when appropriate, but the examples are often to foreign, unknown (to us) places. Plus, European construction details make those descriptions not applicable to the US situation.

This is an excellent desk reference which history and technology buffs will find fascinating. Indexed. Illustrated. End of chapter references.