Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life |  | Author: Gaby Wood
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $5.85
as of 5/20/2012 06:30 EDT details
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Seller: Reciprocity
Sales Rank: 468,690
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1400031583
EAN: 9781400031580
ASIN: 1400031583
Publication Date: July 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
During the eighteenth century, the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that seemingly could digest and excrete its food. A few decades later, Europeans fell in love with “the Turk,” a celebrated chess-playing machine built in 1769. Thomas Edison was obsessed for years with making a talking mechanical doll, one of his few failures as an inventor. In our own time, scientists at MIT are trying to build a robot with emotions of its own.
What lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In Edison’s Eve Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history.
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