Seven Elements That Have Changed the World

by John Browne

  Winchester, Simon, Bomb, Book and Compass (London: Penguin Books, 2009)

  World Bank, ‘The Cost of Pollution in China’ (2007)

  Yergin, Daniel, The Prize (New York: Free Press, 2009, originally published in 1991)

  Yergin, Daniel, The Quest (London: Allen Lane, 2011)

  Zoellner, Tom, The Heartless Stone (New York: Picador, 2006)

  GOLD

  Ball, Phillip, The Elements: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)

  Bernstein, Peter, The Power of Gold (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000)

  Brands, H. W., The Age of Gold (London: Arrow, 2006)

  Bray, Warwick, The Gold of El Dorado (London: Royal Academy, 1978)

  Browning, Peter, Bright Gem of the Western Seas (Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 1991)

  Caughey, John Walton, California Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)

  Davies, Glyn, A History of Money (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002)

  Eichengreen, Barry and Flandreau, Marc, The Gold Standard in Theory and History (London: Routledge, 1997)

  Emmerich, André, Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965)

  Hammer, B. and Norskov, J. K., ‘Why gold is the noblest metal of all’, Nature, Vol. 376, 20 July 1995

  Hammond, Innes, The Conquistadors (London: Collins, 1986)

  Hemming, John, The Search for El Dorado (London: Michael Joseph, 1978)

  Holliday, J. S., The World Rushed In (London: Victor Gollancz, first published in 1981, this edition in 1983)

  Keynes, J. M., Essays in Persuasion (London: Macmillan, 1984, originally published in 1931)

  Labbé, Armand, Colombia Before Columbus (New York: Rizzoli, 1986)

  Lane, Frederic and Mueller, Reinhold, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, Vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985)

  Lapiner, Alan, Pre-Colombian Art of South America (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976)

  Levenson, Thomas, Newton and the Counterfeiter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)

  Marx, Jennifer, The Magic of Gold (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978)

  Museo del Oro, El Dorado: The Gold of Ancient Colombia (New York: Graphic Society, 1975)

  Pemberton, John, Conquistadors (London: Futura, 2011)

  Ramage, Andrew and Craddock, Paul, King Croesus Gold (London: British Museum Press, 2000)

  Rawls, J. J. & Orsi, R. J., Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)

  Rouillard, Patrick, Colombia (Publisher unknown, in EJPB library)

  Salgado, Sebastião, Workers (London: Phaidon Press, 2003)

  Shaw, Ian and Nicholson, Paul, The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1995)

  Sutherland, C. H., Gold: Its Beauty, Power and Allure (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959)

  Sykes, Ernest, Banking and Currency (London: Butterworth & Co., 1932)

  Stahl, Alan, Zecca (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)

  Weatherford, Jack, A History of Gold and Money (London: Pierre Vilar, 1976)

  Wood, Michael, Conquistadors (London: BBC Books, 2000)

  SILVER

  Bakewell, Peter, Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí 1545–1650 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984)

  Cartier-Bresson, Henri, The Decisive Moment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952)

  Coe, Brian, George Eastman and the Early Photographers (London: Priory Press, 1973)

  Coe, Brian, Kodak Cameras: The First 100 Years (Hove: Hove Foto, 1988)

  Davy H., ‘An account of a method of copying paintings upon glass, and of making profiles, by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With observations by H. Davy’, Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1, pp. 170–74, p. 172 (1802)

  Fay, Stephen, The Great Silver Bubble (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982)

  Ferry, Stephen, I Am Rich Potosí (New York: Monacelli Press, 1999)

  Fox Talbot, William Henry, The Pencil of Nature (Chicago: KWS Publishers, 2011) (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1844)

  Fox Talbot, W. H., ‘Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by Which Natural Objects May Be Made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s Pencil’, Read to the Royal Society on 31 January 1839

  Friedman, Milton, Money Mischief (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992)

  Frizot, Michael, A New History of Photography (Milan: Könemann, 1998)

  Gandía, Enrique de, Historia critica de los mitos de la conquista Americana (Buenos Aires, 1929)

  Gernsheim, Helmut, The Origins of Photography (London: Thames & Hudson, 1982)

  Guilbert, John, The Geology of Ore Deposits (New York: Freeman, 1986)

  Habashi, Fathi, ‘Niece De Saint-Victor and the Discovery of Radioactivity’, Bull. Hist. Chem., Vol. 26, No. 2, 2001

  Hanke, Lewis, The Imperial City of Potosí (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956)

  Howgego, Christopher, Ancient History from Coins (London: Routledge, 1995)

  Hurt, Harry, Texas Rich (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981)

  Kagan, Donald, The Peloponnesian War (London: Harper Perennial, 2005)

  Kraay, Colin M., Archaic and Classical Greek Coins (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1966)

  Lindgren, Waldemar and Creveling, J. G., ‘The Ores of Potosí, Bolivia’, Economic Geology, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, pp. 233–62, May 1928

  Nef, John, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. II: Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages, Chapter X: ‘Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilisation’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, edited by M. M. Postan and Edward Miller)

  Salgado, Sebastião, Migrations (New York: Aperture, 2000)

  Smith, Jerome, Silver Profits in the Seventies (Vancouver: ERC Publishing, 1972)

  Spufford, Peter, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

  Spufford, Peter, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003)

  V&A, Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton (London: V&A Publishing, 2011)

  Wade, Nicholas J., ‘Accentuating the negative: Tom Wedgwood’ (1771-1805), photography and perception, Perception, Vol. 34, pp. 513–20, 2005

  Wells, Liz, Photography: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002)

  Xenophon, A Discourse Upon Improving the Revenue of the State of Athens

  URANIUM

  Baggott, Jim, Atomic (London: Icon Books, 2009)

  Boyer, Paul, By the Bomb’s Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985)

  Buruma, Ian, Wages of Guilt (London: Atlantic Books, 2009)

  Cambridge University Physics Society, A Hundred Years and More of Cambridge Physics (Cambridge University Physics Society, 1974)

  Chadwick, James, ‘Possible Existence of a Neutron’, Nature, p. 312 (27 February 1932)

  Corera, Gordon, Shopping for Bombs (London: Hurst & Company, 2006)

  Cunningham, C, ‘The Silver of Laurion’, Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 14, No. 2 (October 1967), pp. 145–56

  Degroot, Gerald, The Bomb (London: Pimlico, 2005)

  Frantz, D. and Collins, C., The Nuclear Jihadist (New York: Hachette, 2007)

  Frisch, Otto, What Little I Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)

  Frisch, Otto, ‘Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment’, Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3616, p. 276 (18 February 1939) doi: 10.1038/143276ao

  Frisch, Otto and Meitner, Lise. ‘Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction’, Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3615, p. 239 (11 February 1939) doi: 10.1038/143239ao

  Gowing, Margaret, Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1965)

  Hachiya, Michihiko, Hiroshima Diary, The Journal of a Japanese Physician August 6–Septembe
r 30, 1945 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955)

  Hales, Peter, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997)

  Hendee, William, R., ‘Personal and public perceptions of radiation risks’, Radiographics, November 1991

  Hennessy, Peter, Cabinets and the Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

  Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, A-bomb Drawings by Survivors (Hiroshima: The City of Hiroshima, 2007)

  IAEA, The Great East Japan Earthquake Expert Mission, International Atomic Energy Agency, 2011

  International Institute for Strategic Studies, Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks (London: IISS, 2007)

  Johnson, Charles and Jackson, Charles, City Behind a Fence (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981)

  Lamont, Lansing, Day of Trinity (London: Hutchinson, 1966)

  Lifton, Robert Jay, Death in Life (London: Penguin Books, 1971)

  McNamara, Robert, ‘Mutual Deterrence’, 1962

  National Diet of Japan, The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, 2012

  Norris, Robert S. and Kristensen, Hans M., ‘Global nuclear weapons inventories’, 1945–2010, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2010 66: 77 doi: 10.2968/066004008

  Nuclear Energy Agency, Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources (OECD, 2010)

  O’Neil, John, Almighty Atom: The Real Story of Atomic Energy (New York: Ives Washburn Inc., 1945)

  ORNL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The First 50 Years, www.ornl.gov

  Pocock, R. F., Nuclear Power: Its Development in the United Kingdom (London: Unwin Brothers, Institution of Nuclear Engineers, 1977)

  Rhodes, Richard, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1988)

  Rutherford, E., ‘Nuclear Constitution of Atoms’, Proc. Roy. Soc., A97, 374, 1920

  Socolow, Robert, ‘Reflections on Fukushima: A time to mourn, to learn, and to teach’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 21 March 2011

  Studera, Michael H. et al., ‘Lignin content in natural Populus variants affects sugar release’, PNAS, 12 April 2011, Vol. 108, No. 15, pp. 6300–305

  UN, The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968)

  UNSCEAR, Source and Effects of Ionising Radiation, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 2008 Report to the General Assembly, Vol. II, ‘Health effects due to radiation from the Chernobyl Accident’ (New York: United Nations, 2011)

  Young, J. et al., Radiation and Public Perception, Advances in Chemistry (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1995)

  Zeman, Scott and Amundson, Michael, Atomic Culture, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2004)

  Zoellner, Tom, Uranium (New York: Viking, 2009)

  TITANIUM

  Aldersey-Williams, Hugh, Periodic Tales (London: Viking, 2011)

  Cohen, B., Cambridge Companion to Newton (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002)

  Crickmore, Paul, Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Mission (Oxford: Osprey, 2004)

  Crickmore, Paul. Lockheed SR-71: Operations in the Far East (Oxford: Osprey, 2008)

  Crickmore, Paul. Lockheed SR-71: Operations in Europe and the Middle East (Oxford: Osprey, 2009)

  Emsley, John, Nature’s Building Blocks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

  Graham, Richard, SR-71 Revealed (Osceola: Motorbooks International, 1996)

  Grätzel, Michael and O’Regan, Brian, ‘A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films’, Nature, Vol. 353, pp. 737–40, 24 October 1991

  Haydon, Robert, The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon: Vol. 1 (London: Peter Davies, 1926, edited by Tom Taylor)

  Klaproth, Martin, Analytical Analytical Essays Towards Promoting the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral Substances, Vol. 1 (1801)

  Leyens, Christoph and Peters, Manfred, Titanium and Titanium Alloys, Fundamentals and Applications (Köln: Wiley-VCH, 2003)

  Mills, A. A., ‘Newton’s Prism and his Experiments on the Spectrum’, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 1981, 36, 13–36 doi: 10.1098/rsnr.1981.0002

  Phillips, Lance and Barbano, David, ‘The Influence of Fat Substitutes Based on Protein and Titanium Dioxide on the Sensory Properties of Low-fat Milks’, Journal of Dairy Science, Vol. 80, No. 11, November 1997, pp. 2726–31

  Polmar, Norman, Cold War Submarines (Virginia: Potomac Books, 2004)

  Polmar, Norman, Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies 1718–1990 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991)

  RAND, ‘Titanium: Industrial Base, Price Trends, and Technology Initiatives’ (RAND Corporation, 2009)

  Rich, B. R. and Janos, L., Skunk Works (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1994)

  Winkler, Jochen, Titanium dioxide (Hannover: Vincentz Verlag, 2003)

  Wu, Deyong and Long, Mingce, ‘Realizing Visible-Light-Induced Self-Cleaning Property of Cotton through Coating N-TiO2 Film and Loading AgI Particles’, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2011, 3 (12), pp. 4770–74

  SILICON

  Auerbach, Jeffrey, Great Exhibition of 1851 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)

  Beaver, Patrick, The Crystal Palace (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)

  Becquerel, A. E., ‘Mémoire sur les effets électriques produits sous l’influence des rayons solaires’, Comptes Rendus, 9: 561–7 (1839)

  Berlin, Leslie, The Man Behind the Microchip. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

  Biringuccio, Vannoccio, Pirotechnia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966, edited by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi, originally published in 1539)

  BP, ‘Computing Colossus’ Frontiers (BP, 2003)

  Bricknell, David, Float: Pilkingtons’ Glass Revolution (Lancaster: Crucible, 2009)

  Brock, David, Understanding Moore’s Law: Four Decades of Innovation (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Press, 2006).

  Ceruzzi, Paul, A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998)

  Chance Brothers Limited, Mirror for Chance (1951)

  Chance, Toby and Williams, Peter, Lighthouses: The Race to Illuminate the World (London: New Holland Publishers, 2008)

  Copernicus, Nicolaus, De revolutionibus (1543)

  Deboni, Franco, Venini Glass (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2003)

  Drake, Stillman, Galileo: Pioneer Scientist (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990)

  Fay, Charles Ryle, Palace of Industry, 1851: A Study of the Great Exhibition and Its Fruits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951)

  Gable, Carl I., Murano Magic: A Complete Guide to Venetian Glass, Its History and Artists (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2004)

  Gibbs-Smith, C. H., The Great Exhibition of1851 (London: HMSO, 1981)

  Grove, Andrew, Only the Paranoid Survive (London: HarperCollins, 1997)

  Hoskin, Michael, The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

  Kämpfer, Fritz, Glass: A World History (London: Studio Vista, 1966)

  Kryza, Frank, The Power of Light (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003)

  Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity Is near (London: Duckworth, 2005)

  Lancet, Vol. 1: 22 February 1845, p. 214 (London: John Churchill, 1845)

  Lécuyer, Christophe, Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and Growth of High Tech, 1930–1970 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006)

  McCray, Patrick, ‘Glassmaking in Renaissance Italy: The Innovation of Venetian cristallo’, Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, Vol. 50, No. 5 (1998), pp. 14–19 doi: 10.1007/S11837-998-0024-0

  McCray, Patrick, Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999)

  Melchior-Bonnet, Sabine, The Mirror: A History (New York: Routledge, 2001)

  Miller, Jonathan, On Reflection: An Investigation of Artists’ Use of Reflection Throughout the History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)

  No
voselov, K. S., ‘The rise of graphene’, Nature Materials, Vol. 6, March 2007

  Novoselov, K. S. and Geim, A. K. et al., Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films’, Science, 306, 666 (2004)

  Pendergrast, Mark, Mirror, Mirror (New York: Basic Books, 2003 [ebook])

  Rasmussen, S. C, How Glass Changed the World (Heidelberg: Springer, 2012)

  Ryan, Johnny, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future (London: Reaktion, 2010)

  Shurkin, Joel, Broken Genius (London: Macmillan, 2006 and ebook)

  Siffert and Krimmel, Silicon, Evolution and Future of a Technology (Heidelberg: Springer, 2004)

  Tait, Hugh, Five Thousand Years of Glass (London: British Museum Press, 1991)

  EPILOGUE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969)

  Groves, Leslie, R., Now It Can Be Told (New York: De Capa Press, 1962)

  ENERGY AND ORES

  Statistical data has mostly been derived from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and the IEA World Energy Outlook

  INDEX

  A | B | C | D | E

  F | G | H | I | J

  K | L | M | N | O

  P | Q | R | S | T

  U | V | W | X | Y | Z

  Abramovich, Roman, 223

  Académie des Sciences, 114

  Adams, Eddie, 117-18

  Advisory Committee on Uranium, 130

  Aegean Sea, 95, 111

  Agricola, Georgius 42, 108-10, 163, 194, 232-3, 244

  Aioi Bridge, 124

  air pollution, 37-40, 219-20

  Alaska, xi, 33, 44, 60, 177

  Albert, Prince, 168

  Alcibiades, 233

  Alexandria, 231

  Alfonso, Juan Pablo Pérez, 62

  Algeria, 224

  Alsace Lorraine, xiv, 5, 212

  Altdorf, 113

  aluminium, 155-6, 242

  American Civil War, 1, 13, 47, 100, 174, 215

  American River, 91, 93

  Amoco, 58, 65

  Amoco Cadiz, 49

  Anchorage, xi, 177-8