Anthropologist and science journalist Meredith F. Small has turned her scholarly talents to the city of Venice to research and construct a list of over 200 inventions (both ideas and objects) that happened in Venice over its 1,200-year history. During numerous long visits to the city, Dr. Small heard about, read about, and stumbled across these many firsts, eventually coming to the conclusion that Venice had invented much of our modern age. Her recent book, ”Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization,” presents these inventions not in chronological order but by subject, emphasizing how Venice impacted modern-day global exploration and trade, finance and money, healthcare, leisure time, and the written word. Dr. Small will also illustrate how the Venetian pattern of ingenuity continues today, as the city rises to again remake itself as a place for invention with an emphasis on sustainability and creativity.
Venetians invented, for example, government bonds, public banks, global currency, quarantine, the thermometer and body scale, the blood pressure device, evidence-based medicine, public street lighting, child labor laws, the paperback book, the semicolon and comma, public casinos, the regatta, and tiramisu, among so many other things. These inventions are set in a narrative that uses the past to connect to the present, and that story is imbued with the Venetian scholars, physicians, inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, civil servants, publishers, and writers who are the faces behind the great palazzi.
