Since the British Museum has recounted the history of mankind in a wide-ranging radio series based on hundreds of exhibits and published a book about it (published in German in 2013 as “A History of the World in 100 Objects” by C.H. Beck), the projects have been in vogue. The German Museum has also taken up the idea and presents “The World of Technology in 100 Objects” (CH Beck, 2022). American astronomer Sten Odenwald, director of the NASA Space Science Education Consortium, now takes readers back in time to the past 73,000 years and describes the hundred inventions with which mankind fulfilled the dream of space.
Each object (images are printed matte) pertaining to astronomy or space travel is devoted to one double page. The spectrum ranges from the lunar calendar on bones from prehistoric times to the star map of the Pawnee Indians (circa 1700) or the Multi-Fiber Spectrometer (1978) to the James Webb Space Telescope, which is often in the news these days with new, fantastic images represented.
Odenwald does not wish to present a “successful review of the greatest scenes”, but rather draws attention to technical developments that are known only to experts or are not obvious, but which had a significant impact on development. But of course the Nebra Sky Disk, Antikythera Mechanism or Event Horizon Telescope shouldn’t be missing here either.
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