Valentin Dumitriu

Grade 6 A

Book Report:
Inventions that Changed the World

Summary:
Inventions that Changed the World is a book that teaches us how devices were in
time, how people communicated, what they looked like, how big they were and how different
things worked.
The chapters are: Printing, Mathematics, Navigation, Guns, Engines,
Flight, Communication and Computers. Each chapter describes how things function,
who made it and how it evolved. For example, the first printing press was invented in China.
Later, Johannes Gutenberg made a printing press with reusable ink with the colors red, blue
and black. The book also talks about Pythagorass teachings in the chapter called
Mathematics.
Task 7:
This book is for normal people who want to know things about the world around them.
They need specific information that explains how certain things were created, when they were
created and for what they were created. The author can be read by children as well as adults
because it is easy to understand and interesting. It can also be educational. It teaches us how
devices came to be and their evolution in our time.
It isnt a book only for intelligent people because everything is explained in a way
that is understandable. In the chapter about printing it says: Fust continued Gutenbergs
work and, in 1457, he was the first person to print in color, using red and blue ink as well as
black. The author uses normal speech; he doesnt speak like a scientist.
The book also has pictures that show how exactly something was built and used. It
helps the reader to see how devices were made and looked to the smallest detail. The picture
on page 49 is of the Colossus computer that was built in 1944 and in use in Britain. The
photograph is important because people can look and see what a computer looked like in that
time and what it did. It shows the difference between then and now. Nowadays, we have two
components, the system unit and the monitor. In that time the computer was very tall and
wide. Children will like this book because it has photos to explain how all the objects looked.
The first radio was created by Bayliss and was made in 1994. It worked with a lever that you
rotated until you couldnt anymore; then the radio worked for fourteen minutes.
The author writes for a certain group of people. This can be seen from the fact that the
book uses photos and simple words to describe the different inventions. Another kind of
reader would have been scientists. If the book had been written for them it would have looked
different. The text used is not academic. For a person who wants to better understand a
specific subject like a scientist would, the book should have been more complicated. The
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Valentin Dumitriu
Grade 6 A

chapter on mathematics was simple and short. A scientist needs to look at every side of an
idea. The book does not explain everything, but only the general idea. This is why it is for
normal people, children and not for scientists. The pictures that would be for scientist should
have been like a detailed sketch with mathematical formulas. This is why the book is really
for a different kind of people. It is a regular book.
These inventions helped us communicate faster, to be better connected with the rest of
the world using electronics, to travel more easily, to write digital letters, to contact your
friends and relatives that are not in your city or even outside the country. This is why devices
evolved: for an upgraded world. From horse and carriage you now have cars.