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Technical progress in the 20th century was based on the unprecedented technical advances that took place during the two pre-WWI generations (1867-1914). All of these fundamental and lasting inventions — most notably electricity generation, internal combustion engines, new materials, and new means of communication — had undergone major technical transformations that improved their performance, reliability, durability, and ease of use while lowering their cost. In addition, the century saw its share of new inventions and innovations, ranging from plastics to solid state electronics.

This introductory chapter presents some ideas and key concepts in materials science. These include developments in the field of materials science, examples demonstrating the critical role played by material instabilities and pattern formation, the control of microstructure formation, and new materials design.

The financial assets and entrepreneurial acumen of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti underpinned the mechanical orientation of futurismo, from the early days through to the demise of the movement. Marinetti’s iconoclasm disguised an awe of the machine understood as an emblem of industrial modernity stemming from the First Industrial Revolution. Charged with erotic and sexual power, a product of the technology of war, Marinetti’s machine braided flesh and metal. Cyborg-like couplings of human and machine, spanning technological conflict, electricity, futurist film, new metals and materials, gave rise to a particular brand of mechanic ‘machismo’, or machi(ni)smo: a hyper-virile posturing laced with psychoanalytical undertones. The literary work of Maria Goretti and the manual skills of the women workers in the Litolatta factory are explored here.

Exploitation of aquatic natural resources contributes to important economic and social services to the world’s population. According to the latest FAO statistics, aquaculture production reached 167.2 million tons in 2014, representing values of nearly USD285 billion. Particularly, crustacean production represents 9% of the total, representing almost 7 Mt, which generates a great amount of waste, mainly from the exoskeletons. The increasing tendency toward a responsible and sustainable production that combines economic development and the conservation of natural resources has generated changes regarding production management. Within this framework, the biotechnological use of waste not only provides an added value to materials that have been traditionally discarded but also can reduce the environmental contamination resulting from their chemical processing. Thus, there is an opportunity for the preparation of substances with high aggregate value, such as chitin and its derivatives (chitosan, chito-oligosaccharides, and glucosamine), proteins, lipids, and carotenoid pigments. Byproducts resulting from the processing of crustaceans have potential applications in the food, pharmaceutical, textile, biomedical, and agricultural industries as well as in bio- and nanotechnology. In addition, the biomimetic of the structures, functions, and properties of the exoskeletons of crustaceans and the processes involved in their formation constitute the basis for the development of diverse structures, such as laminates or buildings, the creation of new materials that are potentially useful in diverse areas, and the adoption of novel modes of technologies.

Herein we describe the extraordinary skills of Humphry Davy, the self-taught, woodcarver’s son from Cornwall, who combined brilliant scientific research with felicity of literary and poetic expression; and he became the toast of London. As well as his unique lecturing skills, he made fundamental discoveries in pure science and technology. He discovered the metals sodium, potassium, strontium, magnesium and chlorine; he invented the miners’ safety lamp; he did fundamental work in physiology; and founded the science of agricultural chemistry. He was also instrumental in founding the Geological Society and the London Club, Athenaeum. His marriage to a rich Scottish widow was not a happy one. He was a close friend of the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Byron, and he himself was a minor poet. He claimed that his greatest discovery was Michael Faraday.