How to Invent Everything
by Ryan North · first published 1999
83% recommend14% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Funny, surprisingly dense tour of how civilization's key technologies could be rebuilt, framed as a time-machine repair manual. Suits readers curious about how inventions build on each other.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…to the party on this one. Mostly enjoyed it, especially the early ancient history stuff, but I felt it got a bit contrived in the middle - like the author was forcing it. Overall a good read though. How to Invent Everything (Ryan North, 2018) - First book I've pre-ordered in a long time. A look at the history of civilization and technology through a comedic lens. Pretty funny and enjoyable. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗I'm really liking How to Invent Everything by Ryan North. It's instructions for rebuilding civilization if you were stranded in the past, and is just the right mix of funny and interesting.
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗If you liked this article I would recommend “How To Invent Everything” by Ryan North. The book is effectively a time travelers guide to reinventing technology.
on “Epistemic standards for “Why did it take so long to invent X?”” ↗Oh, puh-leeze! THE book on rebuilding civilization is How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time-Traveler[1] by Ryan North. [1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Invent-Everything-Survival-Strand...
on “How These Things Work – A book about CS from first principles (2016)” ↗Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I found this entertaining: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990-how-to-invent-e... It's written in a comedic style, and takes you through what you would need to build to "reimplement modern civilization" if you found…
on “Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?” ↗Something like this? How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler [https://www.amazon.com/How-Invent-Everything-Survival-Strand...]
on “Purple dye extracted from sea snails made the Phoenicians rich traders (2020)” ↗On a related note, you might be interested in the book "How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler" by Ryan North. It addresses that idea, of restarting civilization and reinventing the technology that has been most helpful.
on “Making iron from sand [video]” ↗A similar book is Ryan North's "How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler." It is framed as part of a user manual for a rental time machine that can travel as far back as 12,100,000 BCE and return to the present day. Should the time machine break during a visit to the past,…
on “Ask HN: How do you propose to rebuild industry in a post-apocalypse world?” ↗> Every once in a while I pull up some Wikipedia article with idle curiosity of "If I were transported back in time, could I usefully help this get invented?" This reminds me of the book “How to invent everything” by Ryan North, to kind of see the fast-path for many inventions :)
on “A 3K-year-old copper smelting site could be key to understanding origins of iron” ↗I've heard better things about How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North (who has some other interesting titles, too). Also, if this is your jam, the YouTube channel [How to Make Everything](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g) is fun because…
on “The Book. The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization” ↗You may also enjoy How To Invent Everything[0], from the creator of SMBC Comics. The frame device is that it's a manual that comes with your time machine, only to be used if you get stranded. I thought it would be a fun flip-through but it's delightfully dense, with fun comments on when, where, and why you'd need want/need to invent something depending on "when" you get stranded in time. 0: https
on “Einstein Refrigerator” ↗For those that would like to know how to rebuild civilization, the book The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell is a handy reference on things to know and do. General bibliography: * http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/bibliography/ Deep dives on particular topics of agriculture, food and clothing, substances (charcoal, lime), materials (wood, cement, furnaces, glass), medicine, etc: * http://the-knowledge.
on “A Compass for the Politics of Collapse” ↗You might not do great to start with computers, and instead, do better to start from the dawn of civilization. https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/ What I got from this is that I could make homemade coal by myself, MAYBE. I don't know if there's any climate on Earth where I could eek out a net energy return on primitive crops. If there was no one telling me what to do, I would surely starve in
on “How to make a CPU – a simple picture-based explanation” ↗OK, that's the third time I've seen "How to Invent Everything" recommended in 3 very different places. Ordered.
on “Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’” ↗You should read this book: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller
on “Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?” ↗