The Guinness Book of Innovations: The 20th Century from Aerosol to Zip

by Geoff Tibballs (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.22

  From aerosols to zips via biros, Barbie dolls, Brillo pads, fish fingers, tea-bags and Tupperware, this book traces the origins of about 250 items that are part of people's everyday lives. It looks not only at each invention and its inventor, but how quickly - or otherwise - the invention was accepted by the public and hence could be classed as a true innovation. Although the zip, for instance, had been invented years earlier, it was not until the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924, when a giant demonstration zip was zipped and unzipped three million times without catching, that the public was finally convinced of its efficiency. Likewise, when escalators were introduced to the London Underground a man with a wooden leg had to be hired to ride up and down the one at Earls Court all day, to demonstrate their safety. Not only are technical innovations covered, but social ones as well, including holiday camps and popular games such as Scrabble and Monopoly.