The Idea Factory
This book is a history of the Bell Labs run by AT&T for much of the 20th century. These are the labs which produced many of the things I use day to day -- Unix and the C programming language for example, although this book focuses on other people present at the lab, and a bit earlier than the Unix people. Unix, a history and a memoir for example is set in the same location but later in time. One interesting point the book makes early is that the America of the early 20th century wasn't super into scientists, it was much more about engineers. So for example Edison was an engineer whose super power was systematically grinding through a problem space looking for solutions to a problem, but not necessarily actually understanding the mechanism that caused the solution to work. A really good example, although not one of Edison's, is adding lead to fuel to stop engine knocking and wear -- they literally walked the periodic table until they found an element that worked. I am left wondering how much of this failure to understand the underlying mechanism was a contributor to the longer term environmental and health implications…