One Hundred Patents That Shaped the Modern World

I suspect the inspiration for this book was Neil MacGregor’s acclaimed radio series A History of the World in 100 Objects and the follow-up book of over 600 pages with the same title. In this book, however, the 100 patents are dealt with in about 200 pages, the author David Segal having set himself the daunting task of summarising and contextualising each patent in just one or two pages of print.