SERIES MADE SIMPLE

Problem with Early Cameras

by Ryan NAGELHOUT
9781482427585. ea vol: 24p. (Bloopers of Invention). index. Gareth Stevens. 2015. lib. ed. $22.60.
COPY ISBN
Gr 2–4—Though he embeds some humorous missteps—each headed with an eye-catching "OOPS!"—into this set of reasonably coherent highlight reel-style accounts of how selected technological developments got their starts, Nagelhout makes more than a few problematic choices. Characterizing Otto Lilienthal's fatal crash and the Hindenburg disaster in Early Flying Machines as "bloopers" seems fatuous, for instance. Other entries seem shoehorned in, such as the abacus (accompanied by text describing the practice of counting on fingers as an "OOPS!"). Moreover, the author phones in a history of photography in Early Cameras, commenting that the first Kodak film was made from "something called cellulose" and quaintly warning that "if you lose a memory card or your computer breaks, you could lose all your digital photos."
VERDICT Though readers hoping for disaster-centric edutainment will be disappointed, these histories do offer good overviews of their subjects, with a well-chosen mix of period photos and labeled diagrams to illustrate each high (or low) point.
Reviewed by John Peters , Nov 01, 2015

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