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Author: Elizabeth Milroy
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780271066769
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"A collection of essays examining how patterns of use and attitudes to green spaces within Penn's city plan and along the Schuylkill informed notions of place from the time of Philadelphia's founding to the formation of the modern Fairmount Park system in the mid-19th century"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Phillip F. Schewe
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2007-02-20
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 030910260X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe electrical grid goes everywhere-it's the largest and most complex machine ever made. Yet the system is built in such a way that the bigger it gets, the more inevitable its collapse. Named the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering, the electrical grid is the largest industrial investment in the history of humankind. It reaches into your home, snakes its way to your bedroom, and climbs right up into the lamp next to your pillow. At times, it almost seems alive, like some enormous circulatory system that pumps life to big cities and the most remote rural areas. Constructed of intricately interdependent components, the grid operates on a rapidly shrinking margin for error. Things can-and do-go wrong in this system, no matter how many preventive steps we take. Just look at the colossal 2003 blackout, when 50 million Americans lost power due to a simple error at a power plant in Ohio; or the one a month later, which blacked out 57 million Italians. And these two combined don't even compare to the 2001 outage in India, which affected 226 million people. The Grid is the first history of the electrical grid intended for general readers, and it comes at a time when we badly need such a guide. As we get more and more dependent on electricity to perform even the most mundane daily tasks, the grid's inevitable shortcomings will take a toll on populations around the globe. At a moment when energy issues loom large on the nation's agenda and our hunger for electricity grows, The Grid is as timely as it is compelling.
Author: Julie A Cohn
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2018-02-02
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 0262343797
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe history of the grid, the world's largest interconnected power machine that is North America's electricity infrastructure. The North American power grid has been called the world's largest machine. The grid connects nearly every living soul on the continent; Americans rely utterly on the miracle of electrification. In this book, Julie Cohn tells the history of the grid, from early linkages in the 1890s through the grid's maturity as a networked infrastructure in the 1980s. She focuses on the strategies and technologies used to control power on the grid—in fact made up of four major networks of interconnected power systems—paying particular attention to the work of engineers and system operators who handled the everyday operations. To do so, she consulted sources that range from the pages of historical trade journals to corporate archives to the papers of her father, Nathan Cohn, who worked in the industry from 1927 to 1989—roughly the period of key power control innovations across North America. Cohn investigates major challenges and major breakthroughs but also the hidden aspects of our electricity infrastructure, both technical and human. She describes the origins of the grid and the growth of interconnection; emerging control issues, including difficulties in matching generation and demand on linked systems; collaboration and competition against the backdrop of economic depression and government infrastructure investment; the effects of World War II on electrification; postwar plans for a coast-to-coast grid; the northeast blackout of 1965 and the East-West closure of 1967; and renewed efforts at achieving stability and reliability after those two events.
Author: Stephen Doheny-Farina
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2008-10-01
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 0300133820
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book focuses on electric grids and tells the stories about two villages separated by time, connected by proximity, and united by the challenges of maintaining a community under duress. It provides a glimpse of what it took to build the kind of grids that made America, the grids which connect people to one another, and is told through the experiences of some of the people who sacrificed the most to build the grids.
Author: Hannah B Higgins
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2009-01-23
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 0262512408
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTen grids that changed the world: the emergence and evolution of the most prominent visual structure in Western culture. Emblematic of modernity, the grid is the underlying form of everything from skyscrapers and office cubicles to paintings by Mondrian and a piece of computer code. And yet, as Hannah Higgins makes clear in this engaging and evocative book, the grid has a history that long predates modernity; it is the most prominent visual structure in Western culture. In The Grid Book, Higgins examines the history of ten grids that changed the world: the brick, the tablet, the gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, the ledger, the screen, moveable type, the manufactured box, and the net. Charting the evolution of each grid, from the Paleolithic brick of ancient Mesopotamia through the virtual connections of the Internet, Higgins demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it may bend, crumble, or shatter, but its organizing principle never disappears. The appearance of each grid was a watershed event. Brick, tablet, and city gridiron made possible sturdy housing, the standardization of language, and urban development. Maps, musical notation, financial ledgers, and moveable type promoted the organization of space, music, and time, international trade, and mass literacy. The screen of perspective painting heralded the science of the modern period, classical mechanics, and the screen arts, while the standardization of space made possible by the manufactured box suggested the purified box forms of industrial architecture and visual art. The net, the most ancient grid, made its first appearance in Stone Age Finland; today, the loose but clearly articulated networks of the World Wide Web suggest that we are in the middle of an emergent grid that is reshaping the world, as grids do, in its image.
Author: William Emery Doolittle
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9780816524280
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCrisscrossing Pleistocene terrace tops and overlooking the Gila River in southeastern Arizona are acres and acres of rock alignments that have perplexed archaeologists for a century. Well known but poorly understood, these features have long been considered agricultural, but exactly what was cultivated, how, and why remained a mystery. Now we know. Drawing on the talents of a team of scholars representing various disciplines, including geology, soil science, remote sensing, geographical information sciences (GISc), hydrology, botany, palynology, and archaeology, the editors of this volume explain when and why the grids were built. Between A.D. 750 and 1385, people gathered rocks from the tops of the terraces and rearranged them in grids of varying size and shape, averaging about 4 meters to 5 meters square. The grids captured rainfall and water accumulated under the rocks forming the grids. Agave was planted among the rocks, providing a dietary supplement to the maize and beans that were irrigated on the nearby bottom land, a survival crop when the staple crops failed, and possibly a trade commodity when yields were high. Stunning photographs by Adriel Heisey convey the vastness of the grids across the landscape.
Author: Fred Fruehan
Publisher:
Published: 2019-01-22
Total Pages: 222
ISBN-13: 9780999272459
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen Fred Fruehan's son Freddy is kidnapped at age fourteen, Fred puts his life on hold and vows to find him. Freddy escapes from his captors but not from the horror of those thirty-five days. OFF THE GRID is the story of Fred's attempts to save his son. It is the story of a father's journey, including facing his own past and his own demons.
Author: Foster Huntington
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-10-27
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 0751581941
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBestselling Van Life author Foster Huntington shares his experiences - as well as others - living by his own rules in this aspirational book filled with awe-inspiring photographs of unique homes in unexpected places. After spending three years on the road living in a camper van, Foster Huntington continued his unconventional lifestyle by building a two-story treehouse. Foster, like many others, are finding freedom, tranquility, and adventure in living off the grid in unconventional homes. Perfect for fans of Van Life and Cabin Porn and those who yearn for a simpler existence, Off Grid Life showcases unique dwellings from all around the world. Organized into sections like tree houses, tiny houses, shipping containers, yurts, boathouses, barns, vans, and more, the 250 aspirational photographs feature enviable settings like stunning beaches, dramatic mountains and picturesque forests. Also included are images of fully designed interiors with kitchens and sleeping quarters as well as interviews with solo dwellers, couples, and families who are living lives off the beaten path.
Author: Alan C. Braddock
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2016-12-12
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 0271078928
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn unconventional history of Philadelphia that operates at the threshold of cultural and environmental studies, A Greene Country Towne expands the meaning of community beyond people to encompass nonhuman beings, things, and forces. By examining a diverse range of cultural acts and material objects created in Philadelphia—from Native American artifacts, early stoves, and literary works to public parks, photographs, and paintings—through the lens of new materialism, the essays in A Greene Country Towne ask us to consider an urban environmental history in which humans are not the only protagonists. This collection reimagines the city as a system of constantly evolving constituents and agencies that have interacted over time, a system powerfully captured by Philadelphia artists, writers, architects, and planners since the seventeenth century. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Maria Farland, Nate Gabriel, Andrea L. M. Hansen, Scott Hicks, Michael Dean Mackintosh, Amy E. Menzer, Stephen Nepa, John Ott, Sue Ann Prince, and Mary I. Unger.
Author: Faith Hunter
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2016-08-02
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0698184483
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this series set in the same world as the Jane Yellowrock novels, New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter introduces Nell Ingram, who wields powers as old as the earth. When Nell Ingram met skinwalker Jane Yellowrock, she was almost alone in the world, exiled by both choice and fear from the cult she was raised in, defending herself with the magic she drew from her deep connection to the forest that surrounds her. Now, Jane has referred Nell to PsyLED, a Homeland Security agency policing paranormals, and agent Rick LaFleur has shown up at Nell’s doorstep. His appearance forces her out of her isolated life into an investigation that leads to the vampire Blood Master of Nashville. Nell has a team—and a mission. But to find the Master’s kidnapped vassal, Nell and the PsyLED team will be forced to go deep into the heart of the very cult Nell fears, infiltrating the cult and a humans-only terrorist group before time runs out...
