Hucksters and pioneers

Robertson's Book of Firsts: Who Did What for the First Time. By Patrick Robertson. Bloomsbury; 575 pages; $35. Buy from Amazon.com

FIFTY years in the making, this encyclopedia of “firsts” is a gem of a book, amusing and informative. Patrick Robertson, a former BBC cuttings librarian, started work on the project in 1961 when he was 14. He travelled the world to pursue his eccentric obsession, collecting stories and trivia as if filling an enormous curio cabinet. We are lucky he did.

From the first false eyelashes (1916), public lavatory (1852) and sliced bread (1912), Mr Robertson takes readers on an alphabetical romp through history's innovations and innovators. He wisely concentrates on the people behind these inventions, rather than the concepts themselves. A natural storyteller, he injects life and humanity into what might have otherwise been a dull list.

Thus we meet 21-year-old John Curtis who produced the first commercial chewing gum in his home kitchen in Maine in 1848. At a penny for two sticks, he made $5,000 in his first year and established the world's first chewing-gum factory in Portland in 1850. Still barely literate, he died a multimillionaire in 1897. The chewing-gum industry is worth around $20 billion today.

Few have heard of Percy LeBaron Spencer, but most readers probably use his invention. While working at a Massachusetts-based weapons manufacturing company called Raytheon in 1945, Spencer stood in front of a magnetron tube and noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. The next day he tried to cook an egg using the same device, but his experiment exploded in the face of a passing engineer. When Spencer later installed a prototype microwave in the kitchen of a Raytheon director, the cook declared it was black magic and handed in her notice.

The mind rarely wanders to King Louis XV of France when standing in awkward silence in a lift, yet his lustful urges inspired the innovation. After providing a suite for his mistress at the Palace of Versailles, the king wanted a way to whisk her to his rooms just below with minimal effort. Voila! Engineers installed the first passenger lift in 1743. An arrangement of weights and pulleys brought Madame de Châteauroux to him (with help from servants), and preserved his energies for her charms.

Mixing lively writing with an eye for the telling detail, Mr Robertson has delivered a charming trove of ingenuity in unexpected places. The book's format makes it easy for readers to dip in and out. Its breadth and depth make it an invaluable catalogue of global culture and social trends. Readers may end up feeling wistful for a time when items such as roller skates (1760) and in-flight meals (1919) were one eureka-moment away from existing. But today's rate of innovation promises many more firsts to come. Let's hope Mr Robertson is already working on the next edition.