Book excerpt: With full color and black & white images, this hardcover, photographic book highlights 100 key landmarks in the history of mechanical engineering, devices or innovations that have shaped the world. The products of mechanical engineering sustain the very fabric of modern life. Some are obvious, like the automobile; some hide behind casings, like the disk drives of computers. Sometimes they are large and visible, like the rockets that took astronauts to the moon; sometimes they are all but invisible to the general public, like the pumps that provide water to our cities or the turbines that generate our electric power. This volume provides brief introductions to 100 key landmarks in the history of mechanical engineering, devices or innovations that have shaped the field and broadly influenced modern civilization.