This book has been a great reading experience. Thanks to the author and the publisher for bringing this book to life.

The author shows how the failures of the past can help us to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. He also discusses the challenges that we face in the 21st century, such as climate change and resource depletion, and he argues that we need to be more creative and innovative in our search for solutions.

Invention and Innovation is a thought-provoking book that challenges our assumptions about technology. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the future of our planet.

This book serves as a humble reminder of the real world, not the one of overblown assertions or unjustifiable dreams. It is more interested in the countless unfavorable, often problematic, and sometimes even deadly repercussions of several passionately embraced, widely disseminated, and securely entrenched contemporary innovations than than the numerous design flaws that led to catastrophic catastrophes. Several of these failures have been described by technical historians in works focusing on such doomed concepts as electric ploughs in Germany before World War I or Chrysler's automobile gas turbines. Michael Schiffer's Spectacular Flops or Susan Herring's 1989 book From the Titanic to the Challenger are recommended reading for anybody interested in this genre of unsuccessful design. In the subtitle of his book about these encounters, Henry Petroski Failure's Role in Good Design

Unfulfilled promises, disappointments, and ultimately rejections are three significant forms of innovation failures that are examined in this book. It focuses on the spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics as well as the negative effects of prescription drugs on human health and the environment, ranging from annoyance to strict contraindications. It also looks at how well people can tolerate the numerous negative side effects brought on by the development of internal combustion engines in cars. These engines gave us mobility, convenience, and freedom on the road, but they also produced dangerous emissions, rearranged cityscapes, and increased the likelihood of fatalities. The book also examines the effects of significant inventions and how they selectively tolerate their negative side effects and impacts, such as the extensive use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and plastic pollution of the environment.

I'm giving it a five start review and recommendation.

Thanks Netgalley.

A well-rounded review of the history of invention and innovation. Smil looks at inventions that had unintended consequences (DDT), were overhyped or failed (air ships, nuclear fission), and that have not come to pass (hyper loop, nuclear fusion). These are complicated topics, but Smil writes about them smoothly and with seemingly encyclopedic knowledge.

There is a Silicon Valley-adjacent techno-optimist group that constantly urges for increasing investment into "innovations" that promise to change the way we live now. There is also a group that views all "innovations" with skepticism, the consequence of an aggressively capitalist society, and champions "de-growth". In this book, Vaclav Smil offers a useful balanced counterpoint to both the sanguine group and the naysayers, acknowledging the significant human flourishing enabled by innovations while highlighting common failure points where such innovations fell short of their initial promise.

Smil organizes the book into three sections for three different types of failure: innovations that were and ultimately fell out of favor due to externalities (leaded gasoline, DDT, CFCs); innovations that were and failed to meet their promise (airships, nuclear fission, supersonic flight); and innovations that never came to be (vacuum tube travel, nitrogen-fixing grains, nuclear fusion). The cases that he highlights for each failure mode help illustrate the nuances in why, even as science and invention mature, these sometimes fail to translate into society-changing innovations - beyond simple explanations of regulatory obstruction that proponents sometimes default to. His description of challenges in developing nuclear fission plants, in particular, stood out as succinct and readable, and highlighted his expertise in areas of energy and environment.

The book succeeds in providing a more realistic view of the complicated course of developing innovation from scientific discovery and invention than is popularly depicted in the media. One question the book provokes but doesn't fully explore is how a savvy consumer, investor, or innovator can learn from some of these common failure modes to champion better and safer technologies. While some innovations that failed due to externalities were predictable (e.g. leaded gasoline, where the health effects of lead were known at the time of its development), others involved "unknown unknowns" (e.g. CFCs, where iterative waves of invention seemed to bring on new environmental concerns - from the ozone hole to global warming) - how should society consider taking on the "right" amount of risk? And while the innovations that have yet to be appear to have near-insurmountable challenges at this time (e.g. technological challenges in nuclear fusion), many another successful innovation has hinged on a timely discovery that enables the entire apparatus to work - how should society consider further investment in promising technologies when the timing and existence of such hinge points is unpredictable and uncertain? I only hope Smil continues the exploration of these themes in his future work.

Thank you MIT Press for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Like all his books this one is amazing. The amount of research that went into it is impressive and the ease with which Smil presents his topics is so approachable. I would recommend this book to anyone in the mood to learn new things about our world and how it became the way it is today.

This book is about technological failures, the various ways in which technologies fail, and what lessons can be learned from these failures when hearing about new “world-changing breakthroughs.” The author explores nine technologies in depth, three for each of three varieties of technology failure.

The first group are those technologies that came online as promised, fixing a major problem, only to later be discovered to have side-effects deemed disastrous. The examples used are: leaded gasoline, DDT pesticide, and CFC (Chlorofluorocarbon) refrigerant. These technologies have come to be associated with health defects, air pollution, ecological collapse, and ozone depletion.

The second group (like the first) came online, but then never became competitive with existing technologies. The technologies presented as examples are: airships, nuclear fission for power production, and supersonic flight. Airships died out not only because of the Hindenburg disaster, but also because people preferred airplanes to a craft with the combined slowness of a boat and the crash potential of a plane. Nuclear fission became untenable for new commercial power plants due to a risk premium on build costs even though it doesn’t contribute to global warming and (once powerplants are paid for) is exceedingly cheap per kilowatt-hour. Supersonic flight was just too costly and short-ranged to compete with subsonic flight.

The final group are those technologies that failed to come online at all, despite intense efforts. These include travel by vacuum tube (i.e. Hyperloop, and, yes, like at the bank but with people inside) nitrogen-fixing grains (negating the need for fertilizer,) and nuclear fusion. Despite the celebrity billionaire love of Elon Musk and Richard Branson, hyperloop isn’t advancing because of challenges of maintaining vacuum over large distances. Making cereal grains that feature the nitrogen-fixing capabilities of legumes has also proven more difficult than expected. Nuclear fusion recently experienced a moment in the sun when, for the first time, they got more energy out of it than was needed to achieve it. (This wasn’t written about in the review copy I read, but I suspect will be mentioned in the finished book. At any rate, it doesn’t negate the author’s point as it’s still just one breakthrough of several that would be needed for the technology to be commercially viable.)

In the last chapter, the author gets into a number of other technologies with shorter discussions that are meant to illustrate specific issues with excessive technological optimism. He also investigates some technologies that he believes need to come down the pike, given our present and expected future challenges.

I found this book fascinating. The author seems to love being contrarian (he not only contests popular optimism by those overestimating technological progress but also contests the pessimism regarding the first group of failed technologies, so it appears that he enjoys pointing out how mass opinion [or the opinion of another smart person] is wrong.) That said, there’s a great deal of thought-provoking information in the book. And, I think it can help people more critically consider claims about up-and-coming technologies.

Vaclav Smil is guaranteed interesting. He is a numbers man, a scientist and an analyst. His take on any topic is carefully thought out, and so has impact. His latest book, Inventions and Innovations was going to be a bit iffy, because there are already so very many books laughing at failed inventions. I didn’t know how he was going to do anything different or better. I should not have worried.


There are, unfortunately, millions of inventions, fully patented for future embarrassment, that proved to be disasters or just never lived up to their hype, I mean potential. Smil does not wallow there. He’s not in it for the quick laugh. Instead, he divided his book into five chapters along these lines:

-Inventions that turned from welcomed to undesirable
-Those meant to dominate, but did not
-Inventions we’re still waiting for
-Misplaced techno optimism
Thanks to this framing, suddenly, not-so-great inventions are worthy subjects.


So, for example, inventions that were once welcomed include leaded gasoline, DDT and CFCs, while those meant to dominate include airships and supersonic flight. An example of something we’re still waiting for is microbiologists getting grains to manufacture their own nitrogen out of the air, like legumes do. It’s a very thoughtful selection that has implications for all of society. I would expect no less of Smil.


For each one, he explores its origins, applications, and how failure began nibbling at its edges. Eventually, they all failed completely, some by legislation and some by the weight of their unforeseen problems. This is all to the good, except that Smil gets too technical. Between chemistry and electricity, he will probably lose many readers along the way. That, and the unfortunate choice of using only metric measures, will not help make this book attractive to the American market. I would have expected Imperial/US measures in brackets at very least.


His approach is always technical. Take just one example from the book: passenger airliners. The Boeing 707, back in the 1950s, established the best cruising speed to be about 550mph. It turns out that between the drag coefficient, the shape and dimensions of the passenger tube, and the lift to drag ratio which decreases as you add weight beyond the sweetspot, you have an unarguable airspeed target. Everything is worse both above and below that speed.


This was why the much lamented Concorde had a tiny cigar tube of a cabin, unsuitable for claustrophobics on transatlantic trips. It had to trade off space for speed. As it was, it burned three times as much fuel per passenger mile as the gigantic Boeing 747, which could carry five times as many passengers. This meant Concorde could not even cross the Pacific without stopping to refuel. Other Super Sonic Transports have been drawn up, but they all fail. The bottom line in commercial flight is .85 of Mach 1 (the speed of sound) is the ideal speed for airliners, and that is why there have been no increases in it since 1958. That is correct: despite all the innovations over the past 60 years, ideal flight speed was achieved in 1958 and remained unchanged. Science will do things like that.


Smil’s point in all this is that supersonic flight is not the “next natural step” in ever-increasing speed that people think it to be. Pursuing that goal has proven totally fruitless. This kind of perspective changes everything. That’s what readers come to Smil for.


Similarly, Smil attacks Elon Musk’s Hyperloop transporter as a worthless idea. As he shows in a cartoon by William Heath, the vacuum tube transporter goes back to at least 1829, when Heath portrayed it as a failed invention in a drawing crammed with them. In the cartoon, London passengers are boarding the tube for quick hop over to India/Bengal.


Sealing the tube to accommodate all the changes in temperature as well as in air pressure, is currently not possible. Nor is digging a tunnel from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Just the approvals needed would by themselves prevent it from ever happening. And we have lots of examples of digging tunnels for metros. It is incredibly slow and massively expensive. Going from city to city is simply out of the question. Maintaining the vacuum with all the stops, comings and goings and changes in weather and climate is not yet feasible. Dealing with heat generated and keeping passengers comfortable at the same time, is shall we say, challenging. This did not stop Elon Musk from bragging he could do it all by himself in 2013. And yet, in November 2022, he quietly (!) gave up, dismantled his lab and scale model test Hyperloop, and restored the parking lot they occupied. Musk just never gave it proper (Smil) thought.


Another of Smil’s points is that numbers of inventions are actually decreasing, not increasing. Totally new ideas are getting harder to come by. There might be lots of activity inventing new dispensers for old products, but dramatic breakthroughs have slowed to a crawl. Moore’s Law, the doubling of computer chip capacity every 18 months to two years, is coming to its natural end as transmission is now down to one atom’s width in a channel ten atoms wide. This obviously cannot go on much longer. But a totally new concept to replace it is nowhere to be found.


In medicine Smil’s stats indicate that we aren’t making the dramatic breakthroughs the drug manufacturers brag about. For example, the five year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients has tripled thanks to new meds. But it has tripled from three percent to nine, he says. The curve on that graph is not particularly hopeful. And nothing to brag about.


Similarly, the so-called war on cancer shows results in the range of pitiful. Cancer is much more complex and varied than we give it credit for, and wiping it out is nowhere in sight, despite the bleatings of politicians over the decades. It remains the number two killer of people. Smil simply says “It is unwise to specify outcomes by dates.” It will always cost more, take longer, and change directions unpredictably. When a startup announces it will have a new battery ready in five years that will be an order of magnitude more powerful than anything on the market today, you are permitted to laugh.


The concluding chapter contains all the fireworks. Using the same sorts of calculations and reasoning as on all the other inventions, Smil goes after climate change. He shows irrefutably that Man does not possess the inventions, the history, the resources or the capital to implement the changes needed to avoid disaster. The historical pattern of carbon reduction, which continues to be an annual increase, shows no hope of plunging 30-50% in the next 15 years, any more than airliners will routinely pass the sound barrier or that batteries will store more energy that petroleum of the same mass.


Improvements in batteries, currently in fractions of one percent, give no hope to multiplying storage capabilities in this century, something that both solar and wind systems require, and promise. Smil says “Even if we got batteries whose energy density was an order of magnitude higher than today’s best lithium-ion batteries, their energy density would still be less than a quarter of the energy density of the refined fuels (gasoline, kerosene, diesel).”


Same goes for living forever and uploading a human brain into a computer. We are nowhere near the goals, and are not making anything like the progress needed to imagine them ever being real. Target dates like 2045 are meaningless.


What this means for climate change is that all the international conferences and country pledges will not have the promised effects. There is no precedent for their numbers, and no plans filed that could possibly achieve them. When they return home, delegates will find no one at all who can implement them.


It’s a very dramatic conclusion, because all the stories that precede it give no hint of their relation to the future of the planet itself. Pure Smil, undistilled.


David Wineberg

I have read some of, but not all, Vaclav Smil's wonderful books, and this one is also well worth your time, but it is a little more detailed than I would have preferred. For example, I didn't need to know the tail numbers for all of the German Zeppelins That said, you should invest the time to read "Invention and Innovation." Btw, Dr. Smil and I were likely both students at Penn State in the late 1960s, and while we never met I may have taken one of my father's courses.

A somewhat dense academic look at how we humans have created more problems than we have solved with all lot of current technologies.

This is one of the books that intrigued me as I like the topic, but I just can’t get into it. It seems like a pretty quick read, but while I’m reading, I feel like I’m not moving forward through the book. I started reading and I’m not into the book, so I will set it aside for now and try reading again in the future.

A short, sobering book about some of the more egregiously overhyped innovations of the last century, how they got that way, and their outcomes. I'm an innovation cheerleader so it was hard to swallow, but yes, it's accurate. Smil covers leaded gasoline, DDT, and supersonic transport as three examples typifying the 20th century, then touches on current topics like controlled fusion, AI, cancer research, and carbon reduction. It's all very factual and is a good eye-opener for people who blindly support innovation at all cost (or just expect it).

What Smil doesn't offer is advice on when to take on high-risk, high payoff ventures like these. Certainly there's value in pursuing big advances for the knowledge gained, for the possiblity of success or spinoffs, or just for their own sake. Near the end he suggests that resources should be redirected to improving the quality of life everywhere in the world, which means redirecting resources to places where populations are growing the fastest. Surely that's as pie-in-the-sky as any technological topic in the book, and seems to encourage that kind of growth while discouraging support of high-tech R&D with very longterm payoffs, the kind of work that can only be undertaken in the affluent, population-stable countries.

The book portrays the media as the bad guys, with governments and research institutions as overly optimistic, misguided, or poor decision-makers. Fair enough, but again, no solutions are offered. How do we course-correct, if we can at all? Do we vote differently, do we pursue different careers or change our daily habits - what will it take to fix the problems identified here? Pointing them out is only half the battle.

I really enjoyed teh book, challenging as it was to hear all the negativity about things that excite me. I will be looking into other Smil titles next.

I appreciated this book based on the information it provided and its thoughtful and pragmatic approach. I also liked the discussions of how the media distorts information related to science and technology. There was also some sarcasm which helped lighten the mood. But I found the writing style abrupt, with what appeared to be the author’s well-placed anger showing through. Some of the discussions were complex, with not enough background given. Thank you to Netgalley and MIT Press for the advance reader copy.

It was refreshing to read a book on scientific innovation and history that is fact-based and not sensationalist. Vaclav Smil does the research, lays out the facts, and connects the dots to support his view point. I especially enjoyed his break down of what it would take to become carbon neutral by 2050 --- surprise, surprise! It's basically impossible! AI and exponential growth bringing immortality in the next 2 decades? Also unlikely!

The writing is practical, methodical, and well researched. Fortunately for the reader, there is a bit of humor sprinkled throughout. Of course, there is a chance I took the author's impatience and exasperation with media and pop culture's glorification of scientific innovation a bit more humorously than he intended.

The book summary is very well written and lays out the book like an abstract. For that reason, I'd recommend this book to anyone who is still curious after reading the book summary. The sections are well laid out and you will learn an abundance of facts and history around the listed items.

Thank you MIT Press for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.