Did you know that the machine used to drill tunnels for the first underground railway in England was invented by a South African, or that the first computers in South Africa were women calculators working at the Royal Observatory in Cape Town? Everyone knows that the Kreepy Krawly, Pratley's Putty, Dolos, and CATscanner were invented in South Africa, but what about the Sheffel Bogie, Oil of Olay, Q20, Policansky fishing reels, Lodox low-dose X-ray machine, and Waste Shark? This authoritative volume is crammed with information on the awesome variety of new products and services that South Africans, at home and abroad, have invented from precolonial times to the present. Written in a highly accessible style and richly illustrated, the book spotlights Wadley's Loop, Louis Liebenberg's Cybertracker, the unique Africanis dog, the first computerized ticketing system in the world, the first ever digital laser, and more. Historic photographs, fascinating anecdotes, and illuminating case studies light up the text and make it read like a detective novel.
