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Eric Laithwaite takes the reader on a guide tour through the
mysteries of invention, stopping off to examine the laws of nature and engineering.
He shows how many of our inventions are based on designs which were evolved by
the natural world over millions of years. In fact we learn that the natural world
has often found more efficient answers than we have to taxing engineering problems.
The shapes and sizes of both natural and Man-made objects are largely dictated
by the size and weight of the earth and by the properties of materials. An
Inventor in the Garden of Eden crosses many boundaries: as well as natural
history and engineering, the author discusses religion, economics and cosmology.
More than that, the author deals with such fundamental topics as wisdom and civilisation.
The book dispels all he myths surrounding the belief that human
inventions are superior to anything that evolution has produced in the living
world. Eric Laithwaite was born in 1921 and spent
his school days in the agricultural Flyde district of Lancashire. He served in
the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1946, rising to the rank of Flying Officer. He
did experimental flying at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. After
the war he went to Manchester University to read Electrical Engineering, stayed
on to do a Masters degree, working on the world's first commercial full-scale
digital computer. In 1952 he began studying linear induction motors, a subject
which occupied him for the next 40 years. Manchester University rewarded him with
a PhD and later a DSc. He made many inventions
in linear motors and in 1966 was awarded the Royal Society's S. G. Brown Medal
for invention. Subsequently he received the Nikola Tesla Medal of the American
Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineering for further work on the same
subject. He was made a Fellow of Imperial College in 1991, and an Honorary Fellow
of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1992. His linear motor work has
taken him to Hong Kong, Florida, California and Toronto, as well as to Zagreb
and other European countries. Professor Laithwaite
has made many television appearances, but none more memorable than his presentation
of the famous Christmas Lecture series from the Royal Institution in 1966, and
again in 1973. In the later series he included work on gyroscopes, which became
the subject of much criticism and debate. But the biology he learned at school
never left him, and he has lectured on engineering and biology for over 20 years. He
is now an Emeritus Professor of Imperial College and a Visiting Professor of The
University of Sussex, where he continues his research on gyroscopes, because he
has seen unusual phenomena 'that won't go away!' He is married with four children
and three grandchildren. |
