The imagineers of war : the untold history of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that changed the world / by Sharon Weinberger.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017Description: x, 475 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780385351799
- 0385351798
- Untold history of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that changed the world
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 355.0409 W423 | Available | 33111008735728 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that have evolved from the agency's mission- forward-thinking solutions to the Pentagon's challenges. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA's successes and failures, useful innovations and wild-eyed schemes- we see how the nuclear threat sparked investment in computer networking, which led to the Internet, as well as plans to power a missile-seeking particle beam by draining the Great Lakes...how, in Vietnam, DARPA developed technology for the world's first armed drones and was also responsible for Agent Orange... how DARPA's recent success with self-driving cars is counterbalanced with its disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Weinberger has spoken to dozens of former DARPA and Pentagon officials--many of whom had never been interviewed before about their work with the agency--and synthesized countless documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The result is a riveting history of a meeting point of science, technology, and politics.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 441-451) and index.
Prologue: Guns and money -- An agency for unimagined weapons -- Scientia potentia est -- Mad men -- Society for the correction of Soviet excesses -- Mad scientists -- Welcome to the jungle -- Ordinary genius -- Extraordinary genius -- Up in flames -- A worldwide laboratory -- Blame it on the sorcerers -- Monkey business -- Bury it -- The bunny, the witch, and the war room -- Servants of war -- Invisible war -- Top secret flying machines -- Synthetic war -- Vanilla world -- Fantasy world -- Return of Voldemort -- Epilogue: glorious failure, inglorious success.