Great Inventors and Their Inventions


Read by LibriVox Volunteers

(4.3 stars; 88 reviews)

This book is about Great inventors and what they created. It has different stories like Alexander Bell, Wrights, Morse, Gutenberg, and Edison. ON August 17, 1807, a curious crowd of people in New York gathered at a boat landing. Tied to the dock was a strange-looking craft. A smokestack rose above the deck. From the sides of the boat, there stood out queer shaped paddle wheels. Of a sudden, the clouds of smoke from the smokestack grew larger, the paddle wheels turned, and the boat, to the astonishment of all, moved. It was "Fulton's Folly," the Clermont, on her first trip to Albany.

The first boat used by man was probably the trunk of a fallen tree, moved about by means of a broken branch or pole. Then some savage saw that a better boat could be made by tying a number of logs together to make a raft. But rafts are hard to move, so the heart of a log was hollowed out by means of a stone ax or fire, to make a still better boat, or strips of birch bark were skillfully fastened together to form a graceful canoe. Boats were constructed also of rough-hewn boards. With such primitive craft, voyages of hundreds of miles were made up and down great rivers like the Mississippi, or along the shores of inland seas like the Great Lakes.

The Phœnicians were the first great sailors. Their boats, called galleys, were sometimes two to three hundred feet long. These were of two kinds, merchantmen and war vessels. The merchantmen were propelled partly by sails and partly by oars, but on the war vessels, when in battle, oars only were used. On a single boat there were often several hundred oarsmen or galley slaves. These galley slaves were as a rule prisoners of war. They were chained to the oar benches, and to force them to row, they were often beaten within an inch of their lives. In enormous sail-and-oar vessels the Phœnicians crossed the Mediterranean in every direction, pushed out into the Atlantic Ocean, and went as far north as England.

The chief improvement in boat making, from the time of the Phœnicians until the first trip of the Clermont, was to do away with oars and to use sails only. - Summary by Elijah Fisher (5 hr 56 min)

Chapters

Preface 1:49 Read by PNWDAN509
James Watt and the Invention of the Steam Engine 23:40 Read by PNWDAN509
Robert Fulton and the Invention of the Steamboat 31:03 Read by PNWDAN509
George Stephenson & Invention of the Locomotive 31:01 Read by PNWDAN509
Invention of the Electric Engine 19:50 Read by PNWDAN509
The Invention of the Spinning Machines 18:54 Read by MaryAnn
Eli Whitney & the Invention of the Cotton Gin 24:56 Read by Maggie Travers
Elias Howe & the Invention of the Sewing Machine 26:15 Read by MaryAnn
Cyrus H. McCormick and the Invention of the Reaper 23:04 Read by MaryAnn
Henry Bessemer and the Making of Steel 38:45 Read by Linda Andrus
John Gutenberg and the Invention of Printing 29:41 Read by Linda Andrus
Samuel F. B Morse & the Invention of the Telegraph 31:41 Read by Scott Bennett
Alexander Graham Bell & Invention of the Telephone 25:30 Read by Jesse Zuba
Thomas A. Edison 7:32 Read by Maggie Travers
Orville and Wilbur Wright 9:13 Read by Maggie Travers
Guglielmo Marconi 5:47 Read by PNWDAN509
John P. Holland 8:05 Read by Maggie Travers

Reviews

Love listening to true stories about inventors.


(5 stars)

Hearing about the inventors that came before me, their struggles, failures and successes. Inspires me to keep going. Thank you!!!


(3.5 stars)

It was ok I wish it was only one reader


(5 stars)

i realy like to learn how inventors progress

Entertaining & Informative


(4 stars)

An interesting collection of mini-bios suitable for adult and young readers. Although the bios are brief they bring out background information not generally known today. Curiously, the author considered the phonograph to be Edison's greatest invention, and completely ignored Edison's incandescent lamp. Good readers without exception.


(4.5 stars)

Good book I wish it was one reader some of the readers were hard to understand but anything else it was good overall. If I never heard about this book I would stop trying on building things that’s not even as hard.


(5 stars)

Love this book 📖 It’s great 👍🏻 I tried to rite a book but it was so bad 😬

pretty good


(4 stars)

some of the narrators are very hard to understand probably cuz they are smokers


(3.5 stars)

good book. I like to learn more about how things were made.