"This enchanting tale, masterfully recounted by a pre-eminent historian of the Middle Ages, reveals the fertile imagination and extraordinary inventiveness of a period whose legacy to the modern world included not just books, banks, and buttons, but also eyeglasses, playing cards, pasta, table forks, underwear, the mechanical clock, and domesticated cats inside the house."
- Library Journal
Once regarded by historians as a period of intellectual stagnation, the Middle Ages were actually a period of extraordinary technological innovation. This entertaining romp through the inventions of the period tells the story of the first appearance of dozens of items of lasting significance. From the invention of eyeglasses (by a now-forgotten layperson who sought to keep his methods secret, the better to profit from them) to the creation of the fork (at first regarded as an instrument of diabolical perversion but embraced when it helped people handle another invention of the age, pasta), this beautifully illustrated volume is a fitting tribute to a misunderstood era that gave us countless items from which we still benefit today.
What we owe to the Middle Ages:
Eyeglasses
Paper
Watermarks
Books
Printing with movable type
Universities
Arabic numerals
Zero in mathematics
The date of the birth of Christ
Banks
Notaries
Charitable lending societies
Family tree
Names of musical notes
Buttons
Underwear
Trousers
Playing cards
Tarot cards
Chess
Carnival
Anaesthetics
Amulets
Domesticated cats
Glazed windows
Fireplaces
Forks
Pasta
Windmill and watermill
Horse as labor
Wheelbarrow
Gunpowder
Clocks
Purgatory
Santa Claus
Contents:
1. Reading and Keeping the Books
2. Time for Pleasure and Time for Duty
3. Dressing and Undressing
4. And Then Came the Fork
5. Making War
6. By Land and Sea
- Library Journal
Once regarded by historians as a period of intellectual stagnation, the Middle Ages were actually a period of extraordinary technological innovation. This entertaining romp through the inventions of the period tells the story of the first appearance of dozens of items of lasting significance. From the invention of eyeglasses (by a now-forgotten layperson who sought to keep his methods secret, the better to profit from them) to the creation of the fork (at first regarded as an instrument of diabolical perversion but embraced when it helped people handle another invention of the age, pasta), this beautifully illustrated volume is a fitting tribute to a misunderstood era that gave us countless items from which we still benefit today.
What we owe to the Middle Ages:
Eyeglasses
Paper
Watermarks
Books
Printing with movable type
Universities
Arabic numerals
Zero in mathematics
The date of the birth of Christ
Banks
Notaries
Charitable lending societies
Family tree
Names of musical notes
Buttons
Underwear
Trousers
Playing cards
Tarot cards
Chess
Carnival
Anaesthetics
Amulets
Domesticated cats
Glazed windows
Fireplaces
Forks
Pasta
Windmill and watermill
Horse as labor
Wheelbarrow
Gunpowder
Clocks
Purgatory
Santa Claus
Contents:
1. Reading and Keeping the Books
2. Time for Pleasure and Time for Duty
3. Dressing and Undressing
4. And Then Came the Fork
5. Making War
6. By Land and Sea