How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World Quotes
"The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges."
"We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation."
"I have endeavoured to meet it as I would the tempest of heaven."
"Mankind will have the blessing for ever whether I die soon or live long."
"Ice must be considered as out doing most other luxuries."
"This business is established. It cannot be given up now and does not depend upon a single life."
"Artificial cold became imaginable in the middle of the nineteenth century."
"Inventions and scientific discoveries tend to come in clusters."
"The history of global trade had clearly demonstrated that vast fortunes could be made."
"Almost everything in the nineteenth-century story of cold was about making it bigger, more ambitious."
"Cold was about to get small: those block-long Tribeca refrigerators would soon shrink down to fit in every kitchen in America."
"The climate was unforgiving, with temperatures regularly hitting 30 degrees below Fahrenheit."
"A typical meal would be what locals called 'brewis': salted cod and hard tack, boiled up and garnished with 'scrunchions.'"
"When they thawed out the frozen trout from the ice-fishing expeditions, they discovered it tasted far fresher than the usual grub."
"A slow freeze allowed the hydrogen bonds of ice to form larger crystalline shapes."
"The Inuit fishermen hadn’t thought about it in terms of crystals and molecules, but they had been savoring the benefits of flash freezing for centuries."
"Birdseye’s frozen-food breakthrough took shape as a slow hunch."
"Frozen food was still more than a decade away from becoming a staple of the American diet."
"The entire economy of cold was supported by a vast fleet of refrigerated trucks."
"The first 'apparatus for treating air' had been dreamed up by a young engineer named Willis Carrier in 1902."
"Places that had been intolerably hot and humid were suddenly tolerable to a much larger slice of the general public."
"The fastest growing megacities are predominantly in tropical climates."
"The frozen 'TV dinners' that arose in the decades after Birdseye’s discovery have fallen out of favor."
"Millions of human beings around the world owe their existence to the technologies of artificial cold."
"The marvelous property of the pendulum is that it makes all its vibrations, large or small, in equal times."
"Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent."
"I am quite correctly described as ‘more of a sponge than an inventor.’"
"The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium."
"The guides, the wardens of our faculties and stewards of our labour, watchful men and skillful in the usury of time."
"The people of Cincinnati stick to the truth as it is written by the sun, moon and stars."
"Time measurement and factory efficiency are intimately linked."
"The invention of artificial light extended the human day."
"Refrigeration revolutionized the way we eat, preserve, and transport food."
"The development of clean water systems has saved more lives than any medical advancement."
"The phonograph brought music into homes, changing entertainment forever."
"The spread of diseases was greatly reduced by advancements in public sanitation."
"Atomic clocks have redefined the precision of timekeeping."
"The discovery of antibiotics marked a turning point in medical history."
"The internet has transformed every aspect of modern life, from communication to commerce."
"The creation of the GPS system has made navigation precise and ubiquitous."