| Summary: | Ships have had a profound effect on civilization. Since prehistoric times man has used them to explore, to trade and to conquer. Control of the sea, in both commerce and war, has built great empires; loss of that control has often brought their destruction. Today, ships are as important as they have been. This book is largely devoted to the many ships of the present - their design, their construction and their employment. It sketches their evolution, and describes the expanding technology - based on such diverse disciplines as hydrodynamics, applied mathematics, metallurgy, electronics, nuclear physics, even aerodynamics - that in the past hundred years has helped to keep naval architecture in step with the rest of a fast-moving world. Each text chapter is accompanied by a supplementary picture essay, though each may be read independently. For example, Chapter 1, "The Floating Box," tells of the design and construction of ships; it precedes a picture essay, "Ships on the Assembly Line," which describes in detail the building of a ship in one of the world's first automated shipyards.
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