{"product_id":"edisons-eve-edisons-eve-a-magical-history-of-the-quest-for-mechanical-life-9781400031580","title":"Edison's Eve: Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life","description":"During the eighteenth century, the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that seemingly could digest and excrete its food. A few decades later, Europeans fell in love with \"the Turk,\" a celebrated chess-playing machine built in 1769. Thomas Edison was obsessed for years with making a talking mechanical doll, one of his few failures as an inventor. In our own time, scientists at MIT are trying to build a robot with emotions of its own. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhat lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In \u003cb\u003eEdison's Eve\u003c\/b\u003e Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGaby Wood attended Cambridge University and has been a regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the author of a short work of nonfiction, \u003cb\u003eThe Smallest of All Persons Mentioned in the Records of Littleness\u003c\/b\u003e, and is now living in London, where she is a staff writer for \u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e. This is her first full-length book.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Knopf Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50334347428114,"sku":"9781400031580","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_05abf74e-e157-4f55-9467-f8640b9504f1.jpg?v=1727888482","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/edisons-eve-edisons-eve-a-magical-history-of-the-quest-for-mechanical-life-9781400031580","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}