Reddit reviews The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are

If you're interested in this it's covered in the book The Evolution of Useful Things .



If you click on the 'surprise me' page a few times you might get to see page 10 on which it spends a little time talking about how the fork emerged from being a carving instrument to being a normal part of the dinner table, moving from 2 tines through to 3 then 4 tines. The suggestion is "4 tines provide a relatively broad surface and yet do not feel too wide for the mouth. Nor does a four tined fork have so many tines that it resembles a comb, or function like one when being pressed into a piece of meet."


Honestly if you love questions like this that book is well worth a read, it covers the development of things like the paperclip, flatware/cutlery, zips and tools etc.

Anything by Henry Petroski is a good bet, especially The Evolution of Everyday Things.

If you like this story, I would recommend the book, The Evolution of Useful things. It tells the history of the design of the soda top lid, paperclips/staples, zippers and other mundane important engineering accomplishments.

> "But there's no mechanism for evolving non-organic things like dishes!"

Drifting off topic here, but check out this excellent book:
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are

I like Chris Lefteri's books when it comes to manufacturing materials & processes.

I'm also reading The Evolution of Useful Things which is an interesting read about how common products have evolved very organically.

If this intrigues you, I humbly recommend...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-From/dp/0679740392

Don't Sleep There Are Snakes - Excellent read about a linguist's study of an Amazon tribe with a language unlike any other. Contains very interesting musings and science regarding how language and culture can affect how we perceive the world around us.

The Evolution of Useful Things - Very cool read if you are at all an engineering or design inclined person. The author has a great way of weaving in cultural and historical context into how all the tiny and useful things around us have evolved and come to represent very specific functions.

• Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Wiener. Chapter and verse how a small cadre of adventuresome elitists ended up shaping the post-War world into what it is today.
  
  
• The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. A balanced look at the effects upon the world of the economic systems of capitalism and communism, and an analysis of how the Soviet loss of the Cold War does not mean an American win.
  
  
• Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia by Bertil Linter. As much a socioeconomic history of the Pacific Rim as a flashy expose of Triads, the Yakuza and the Tongs, Blood Brothers delves into the philosophy of crime in Asia and how the Western paradigm of Law/Crime is inadequate when describing the Eastern mindset of quasi-governmental organized "crime."
  
  
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Discusses the overall impact of mankind on ecology, geology, and the future of the planet, whether or not we happen to be here.
  
  
• The Joke by Milan Kundera. A lyrical, heartbreaking look into the workings of Soviet Czechoslovakia. The allegations that Milan Kundera may have been an informant himself throws a stark and surreal light on the book.
  
  
• The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski. Starting with the fork and working his way through the paperclip, Petroski illustrates that the oft-repeated platitude "necessity is the mother of invention" is completely wrong - luxury is the mother of invention.
  
  
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Oversimplified and infuriating, Ishmael is, however, a pretty good overview told in a semi-entertaining way of Conrad Lorenz's argument that the modern lifestyle is fucking stupid and we were all better off as hunter-gatherers. If condescending sophistry isn't your bag, go to The Source.
  
  
• Watchmen. Fer real.

Yes. Technology does not have to be a device. Methods, techniques, and processes are also technology. If we understand how to do something, it is technology.

Henry Petrosky has some good thoughts on what technology is and how it evolves: http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zippers-Came/dp/0679740392

Examples of technology that looks like magic are herbal medicine and metallurgy. They may not involve the use of many special tools, but they require lots methods and techniques that may not be apparent to the untrained individual.

There is a whole book dedicated to the invention of the paper clip and everyday things like that. The author is a really awesome guy or at least was awesome when I met him. See http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-From/dp/0679740392

The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski has a wonderfully detailed section of precisely how this came to be. Cans were cheaper per beer, so the large breweries naturally gravitated towards putting their highest volume product in cans first to save money. The highest volume beers just so happen to be the cheapest beers (coors light, bud light, miller lite, etc.). Even though the canning process is actually superior to bottling in delivering high quality beer, as mentioned above, a stigma was quickly attached in the consumers' minds that cans = cheap beer. Cans also had many issues in the past with liners and tabs (at one point there was basically an epidemic of beaches littered with razor sharp aluminum tabs).

I definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in design, engineering, and the social history of how both are interweaved into our present day culture.

Not sure if this counts as a book precisely, but Feynman's lectures on EM are free online!

I'm actually far more into the subatomic physic and aerospace side of electrical engineering so that's been my main focus. I'm currently (slowly, and not doing the homework problems) going through this look into everything JPL has been doing in regards to electric propulsion: "Fundamentals of Electric Propulsion: Ion and Hall Thrusters."

Mulling over your question, I should specify that I read educational books aimed toward a technical audience but probably wouldn't be considered "technical" themselves. These were my last three:

• Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  
• The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski
  
• To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design