A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions

'A remarkable achievement' - Stephen Fry

In 2015 #thedress captured the world's imagination. Was the dress in the picture white and gold or blue and black? It inspired the author to ask: if people in the same time and place can see the same thing differently, how did people in distant times and places see the world?

Jam-packed with fascinating stories, facts and insights and impeccably researched, A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions investigates the story of seeing from the evolution of eyes 500 million years ago to the present day. Time after time, it reveals, inventions that changed how people saw the world ended up changing it altogether.

Twenty-first-century life is more visual than ever, and seeing overwhelmingly dominates our senses.

Can our eyes keep up with technology? Have we gone as far as the eye can see?



'I was entranced from the first paragraph. A magnificently readable survey of so much that in the human experience is profound and profoundly important to us ... Every page elicits at least one "ah" "ooh" or "wow!", usually all three at once. Authoritative without being dry, academic or difficult, fluent and fun without being facetious or over simple A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions is a remarkable achievement.'



'In his book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari gave us a portrait of our broad family history. A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions paints a picture that is more intimate, closer both physically and in time.'



'A wonderful, wide-ranging, totally gripping account of the evolution of seeing, from the firelight shadows of 1 million BC to the age of Netflix. Well worth casting your eye over, if only to find out how - and why - you are able to do that ...'



'From the first fires to the Facebook age, A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions takes us on an elegant, sweeping and wholly fascinating tour through human history.'