Venetians Invented Everything with Meredith Small

Anthropologist and Science Journalist Meredith F. Small has turned her scholarly talents to the city of Venice and constructed and researched a list of over 200 inventions (ideas as well as objects) that happened in Venice over its 1,200-year history. Over many long visits in the city she heard, read, and stumbled across these many firsts, eventually coming to the conclusion that Venice had invented much of our modern age. Inventing the World presents these inventions not in chronological order, but by subject, emphasizing how Venice impacted modern day global exploration and trade, finance and money, health care, leisure time, and the written word.

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 common, public casinos, the regatta, and tiramisu among so many others. These inventions are set in a narrative that uses the past to connect to the present, and that story is imbued with the scholars, physicians, inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, civil servants, publishers, scholars and writers who are the Venetian faces behind the great palazzi.

During this presentation, Dr. Small will touch on why humans are so compelled to invent, and what, in particular, made Venice such a hotbed of invention. She will also explain that the Venetian pattern of creativity continues today as the city rises to reinvent itself once again as a place for invention with an emphasis on sustainability and creativity.

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