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A comment on Ask HN: What are your favorite books on the history of ideas and inventions?.

Re:Ask HN: What are your favorite books on the history of id... by didgeoridoo on Sunday February 05, 2017 @11:51PM (#13576580)
Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty spectacular. He takes a travel writer's eye to the history of science and puts together an incredibly accessible and compelling tour.
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Re:Ask HN: What are your favorite books on the history of id... by tunap on Wednesday February 08, 2017 @01:37PM (#13600762)
Thumbs up fir Bryson. To take it a step further, Boorstin's "The Discoverers" is a longer, more encompassing version of scientific discoveries.

Also, "Empires of Light" is a great chronology of events and people(Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse, JP Morgan) leading to the modern, electric world.

One more, "The Idea Factory" is a history of Bell Labs. It is surprisingly light on programming but makes up for it in the hardware/electronics topics.

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