Our planet is currently in the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis. Yet solutions do exist: the history of energy has seen plenty of good ideas left by the wayside.

This book invites readers to travel through time, exhuming all sorts of little-known or forgotten energy innovations from the past, because the authors believe that the past is where we will find solutions for the future. The presentation of some 60-odd inventions –?many of them improbable, but all ingenious – introduces readers to large swaths of the history of energy that have been ignored or forgotten: from Lavoisier’s warming soles (1780) to Jean-Luc Perrier’s hydrogen car (1979), Claude and Nicéphore Niépce’s Pyréolophore motor (1807) and the girobus (1950), via Bell’s photophone (1880), Jean Pain’s compost (1969) and much, much more.

Each invention is illustrated with a full-page visual –a contemporary photograph, post card or illustration– and described in a few lines. The book is also studded with short essays offering overarching reflections on the notion of progress, the importance of both archives and patents, relations between the sciences and the arts, and more.