At various points in my career I’ve focused specifically on books dealing with technology and
invention. As an editor in this area I have experience of large reference projects aimed at a popular
readership including children. As a result, I believe I have special skills for organizing many
different areas of technology into a single work so as to bring out the historical and other
connections between them.
I worked as an in-house editor on two major technology encyclopedias aimed at the general reader.
These are:
The Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia of Invention and Technology (OUP, 1992)
The Encyclopedia of Technology and Applied Sciences (11 volumes: Marshall Cavendish, 2000)
In both cases I was the main person responsible for choosing the topics and article titles to appear in
the encyclopedias, length-grading articles for commissioning purposes, providing guidance notes
for authors, and optimizing the system of cross-references.
On the historically organized work Inventions & Inventors (10 volumes: Grolier/Brown Reference
Group, 2000) I not only helped plan the series but also wrote the chapters on metalworking,
agriculture, water technologies, and lighting and heating. I also contributed biographical articles to
Marshall Cavendish’s Inventors and Inventions set (5 volumes: 2008). More recently I wrote the
glossary for Dorling Kindersley’s The Aircraft Book (2013).