author
William H. (William Henry) Doolittle
1844–1904
A patent expert and former U.S. Patent Office official, he wrote with the kind of firsthand curiosity that makes the nineteenth century’s inventions feel vivid and new. His best-known work turns a sweeping age of discovery into an accessible tour of the machines and ideas that changed everyday life.
1 Audiobook
Inventions in the century
by William H. (William Henry) Doolittle
About the author
Born in 1844, William Henry Doolittle built his career around invention and the patent world. Contemporary library and audiobook records describe him as an expert and patent solicitor, a former examiner in the U.S. Patent Office, and an Assistant Commissioner of Patents in Washington.
That background shaped his writing. In Inventions in the Century (1903), he gathered a wide-ranging survey of nineteenth-century advances in fields such as agriculture, engineering, chemistry, transportation, electricity, and more, explaining how new tools and discoveries transformed ordinary life.
He died in 1904. Although not widely remembered today, his work remains a useful window into how people at the start of the twentieth century understood the astonishing pace of modern technological change.