This book offers readers a comprehensive view of technological development—extensive in time, as the title suggests, but also expansive in space, unbounded by geography. It is surprising how often the history of technology is overlooked, despite our increasing dependence on it.

Mathematical formulas are virtually absent. Instead, I have aimed to illustrate facts and reflections that may come as unexpected, lying outside common knowledge, yet capable of stimulating thought and helping readers grasp interactions and implications that are not immediately apparent. The book explores many technological innovations—at least the most significant ones, though inevitably not all—highlighting how they evolved through a complex interplay of mutual influence with politics, economics, culture, and religion. It also examines how different societies have adopted similar technologies, and how the same technologies have triggered different reactions across societies and eras.

The book seeks to explain why some technologies have failed while others have succeeded. Looking to the future, it considers which technologies seem most promising today. Yet such promises may still be broken, as every technology has a dark side—and it is up to those who shape and use it to turn it into a force for good or for harm. Ever since a chipped flint knife could be used either to secure food for survival or to kill another man, the same dilemma has persisted. Two million years later, it remains unchanged.

This second volume explores the history of technology from the expansion of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century to the present. It primarily focuses on the Western world, while also branching into a wide range of technological domains.

Massimo Guarnieri was born near Venice, Italy, in 1955. He received the Laurea (Hons.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padua in 1979, the Diploma in Plasma and Thermonuclear Fusion Research in 1982, an MBA from CUOA Business School in 1985, and the Ph.D. in Electrical Science from the University of Rome in 1987. He joined the Italian National Research Council in 1982 and the University of Padua in 1983, where he has been Full Professor of Electrical Engineering since 2000. Throughout his academic career, he has combined research, teaching, and industrial collaboration in the fields of electrical engineering, energy systems, and technology studies. His early research focused on electromagnetic systems and power supplies for magnetic-confinement thermonuclear fusion experiments. He led the RFX Magnetic System Group at the Consorzio RFX in Padua, where he was responsible for the design, operation, and development of the major magnetic systems of the RFX experiment, the world's largest reversed-field pinch fusion facility. Subsequently, his research interests expanded to electrochemical energy-storage and energy-conversion systems, including hydrogen technologies, fuel cells, flow batteries, and lithium-ion batteries, integrating both computational modeling and experimental investigations. He is a member of several scientific associations and has served on technical committees supporting European and international institutions. He promoted collaborations between the University of Padua and leading universities in Europe, North America, and Asia, and directed numerous projects with public institutions and industrial partners aimed at transferring scientific and technological knowledge from academia to industry and society. His scientific output includes more than 350 publications, of which about 190 are indexed in Scopus, spanning journal articles, conference proceedings, textbooks, and six patents. He has been included in Stanford University's World's Top 2% Scientists ranking, both in the career-long and annual impact lists (2021–2024). In 2024, he was acknowledged by the Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers for his contribution to the Economic Report of the President.

His broad engagement with technological innovation and its societal implications naturally led to a longstanding interest in the history of technology and engineering. For twenty-five years he taught History of Technology within engineering degree programs at the University of Padua, contributing to the education of generations of engineers through an interdisciplinary approach combining technological, scientific, economic, and social perspectives. He currently serves as Chair of the History Activity Committee of the IEEE Italy Section. He has authored more than fifty scholarly articles on the history of technology published in peer-reviewed international journals, many of them issued by IEEE, and has presented numerous papers at international conferences dedicated to the history of technology and engineering. He served as Co-Chair of HISTELCON 2023, the IEEE Conference on the History of Electrotechnology, held in Florence. His research in the history of technology spans the evolution of energy systems, transportation, communication technologies, industrialization, and the reciprocal interactions between technological innovation and society. His work is characterized by the integration of engineering analysis with historical scholarship, with particular attention to the role of technology in shaping economic and social change. Through his publications, Professor Guarnieri seeks to make the history of technology accessible both to specialists and to a broader readership interested in understanding the technological foundations of human civilization.