Little big inventions

Roma Agrawal's book is a masterclass on how to make technical content connect seamlessly with the reader's life experiences

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions that Changed the World

Author: Roma Agrawal

Publisher:  Hodder & Stoughton

Pages: 320 

Price: Rs 799

Technology is a busy word today. Smartphones, laptops, cyber security, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality setups — the world of modern technology can appear confounding and complex, and the pace of its proliferation equally baffling. And therefore, it’s always a good idea to scale down the canvas from time to time, focus on the actual nuts and bolts, and appreciate the multifaceted nature of these basic inventions. From silicon chips to touch screens, from the Covid-19 vaccine to the International Space Station, complicated contraptions rely on these seemingly modest components.

Structural engineer, physicist, and author Roma Agrawal writes that studying objects such as strings and magnets, lenses, and springs will help devise new solutions to tackle some of the world’s emerging tech challenges.

Now, when you encounter a book such as this, a common first question is: Why? Why do I need an entire monograph on class 7th science, again? I have had my share of lectures on levers, pulleys, and wedges. I understand that since the wheel was reinvented back in the 18th and 19th century, things haven’t been the same. Or, that the tiniest of glass surfaces act on the basic principles of lenses. Do I really need another “science made easy” book on “how the world works”?

So, you gingerly pick up this book, if at all, and coax yourself to read the first few lines. And bam! That’s when you know: This ain’t that book. Ms Agrawal knows she is talking about stuff that most readers would assume they know. She also seems aware that this presumption makes this book getting picked off the bookshelf a feat in itself. And so, she makes sure you are rewarded for it.

The author pairs her brilliant story-telling skills with a genuine passion for craftsmanship, the thrill of discovery, and understanding the intricate efforts needed to make something as simple as a nail. More importantly, though, this is not another science nerd’s pocketbook. Well, it is that too, but not just. The text is deeply personal, and Ms Agrawal painstakingly crafts it that way.

Right from the get-go, she is at the centre of it all. You find her coaxing a steel rod out of a 1000°C furnace, dismantling ornate watches, and fiddling with doorknobs. She does not shy away from talking about her own work. And this is where her expertise shines through. When speaking about the cables of the Northumbria University Bridge, on which she worked, the author’s delight in capturing the unique configuration of bolts required to endure the fierce winds battering the spire of the Shard is palpable. Her writing becomes effortless.

The reader also realises, slowly but surely, that the author’s obsession with identifying the context of each of these simple machines, is also rooted in her Indian connection, in her past and the weaving of their daily mechanical utilities into our larger cultural yearn.

Thus, from the wheel at the centre of the Indian flag to taar  — a word that means both “string” as well as the telegraph service in Hindi — many objects emerge as essential cultural markers and connectors for Ms Agrawal and nearly three generations of her family. The stringed instruments, including the Tanpura that provided the musical accompaniment to her Indian dance lessons, would go on to inspire C V Raman to describe the scattering of light by atoms that would win him India’s first Nobel prize in science.

And then these instruments fall back from the larger narrative of nation building to more personal moments of enabling and sustaining life itself. At the start of her chapter on lenses, for instance, Ms Agrawal shares a letter to her daughter, Zarya, who was conceived by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) — a procedure that involves the use of a microscope to identify and combine cells that could become a baby. It would take another feat of engineering — a breast pump — to give Ms Agrawal the time and strength to write this book. There is also the incredible heart-lung machine, a mechanical marvel keeping patients alive during complex cardiovascular surgeries, but ultimately working on the humble principles of the pump.

The narratives keep weaving themselves through each other, making fascinating patterns, and galvanising finally to form some identifiable historical moments or some mundane instrument of daily use. 

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions that Changed the World is one of those rare books which, in its first reading, offered me no scope for nit-picking. Don’t judge the book by its cover. (Oh wait! There’s the flaw: a seriously underwhelming cover design.)

It’s a masterclass on how to make technical content connect seamlessly with the reader’s life experiences and situate them in the larger network of historical creations and re-inventions. It’s a book of science, but a deeply human story.