 Subjects -> MUSEUMS AND ART GALLERIES (Total: 56 journals)
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- Cover Essay: Visual Images in Sound Studies
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Abstract: [View Cover Image]As a sound studies scholar, this is the second time that I have looked closely at this unusual photograph. Initially, one of my colleagues shared a web link to the photograph. This visual image, particularly the two pairs of horns resembling tubas, made me wonder about the story behind the development and use of this military technology—an exercise of interest not only in my field but also in others, including the history of technology. This encounter motivated me to conduct further research on the theme of wartime listening and technology and to write the research article "Mobilizing Citizens' Ears."1 Working on this essay made me reflect on how a single historical image pushed a sound studies ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Debating New Media: Rewriting Communications History
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Abstract: Historians of communications live in interesting times. New scholarship on myth, materiality, and political economy jostles uncomfortably with an older literature on innovation and large-scale technical systems. Juvenile "boys of all ages" paeans to heroic inventors and visionary promoters incubate a seductive techno-futurism that divorces history from technology and the present from the past.1 A naive media centrism—both dystopian and utopian—has taken root not only in politics, journalism, and literature but also in NGOs, regulatory agencies, and even authoritarian regimes. This essay draws on the past fifteen years of historical writing on Victorian communications networks in Europe, North America, Asia, and ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Patents In Miniature: The Effects of Microfilm as an Information
Technology, 1938–68-
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Abstract: Media technologies, whether paper based or digital, give rise to questions about how patents were processed and construed historically. Technological changes reconfigured the way people accessed, read, and circulated patents. Such technological changes have affected perspectives of the patent system over time. Patent offices adopted a more constructive and sympathetic attitude toward the emergence of a patent information industry because of media technologies. While recent studies have examined the history of patent document digitization, one area requiring scrutiny involves the early attempts to standardize, process, and convert patent files into microfilms at different times throughout the twentieth century.1 ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Engineer as Economist: Sewers and the Making of the Water Consumer in
Colonial Cairo, 1890-
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Abstract: As a new technology, the modern sewage system spread globally at the turn of the twentieth century, offering an effective solution to problems of urban growth and public health.1 In 1889, the British colonial government in Egypt hired engineer Baldwin Latham to design a sewage system for the capital city of Cairo. Latham, a distinguished sanitary expert from London, proposed a scheme for Cairo that would replace the existing waste disposal system, based on cesspools and waste collectors, with a network of sewers that mechanically conveyed all liquid waste out of the city. Latham specialized in what was then called "the water carriage system of sewerage." As the name implies, the system diluted waste with water to ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- To Dam or Not to Dam: The Social Construction of an Ottoman Hydraulic
Project, 1701–02-
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Abstract: In 1701, a segment of the Euphrates River south of Baghdad about 140 miles in length abandoned its channel and adopted a new one eastward, the Dhiyab River (see figure 1). The rupture in the river's flow, called avulsion by earth scientists, caused havoc in Iraq, which the Ottoman Empire ruled from Istanbul (see figure 2). The river's shift robbed settlements on the old channel of their fresh water, flooded settlements that stood in the way of the new course, and created enormous marshes where formerly submissive tribes challenged state authority. Sultan Mustafa II quickly ordered his administration in Baghdad to dam the Dhiyab River and restore the Euphrates to its original course, promising to provide all the ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Search for Independence: Planning for France's Information Technology
Autonomy, 1958–66-
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Abstract: In 1966, France established its first large-scale information technology (IT) program. Plan Calcul was one of the instruments that President Charles de Gaulle used to realize his foreign policy objective of economic and technological independence.1 This nationwide program, which imitated the U.S. "state-industry" model, aimed to create an autonomous IT industry independent of U.S. technical and financial dominance. Although France has a tradition of statism in its industrial policy, state intervention in the field of science and technology became more pronounced after World War II. However, the de Gaulle government's technological policies leaned more toward an amalgamation of statism and economic liberalism.2 ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Improving Swedish Steelmaking: Circulation and Localized Knowledge-Making
in Early Modernity-
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Abstract: In 1772, Sven Rinman, a Swedish civil servant working in the iron sector, published his first book, Anledningar til kunskap om den gröfre jern- och stålförädlingen och des förbättrande (Reasons for knowledge about coarse iron and steel processing and its improvement), to "benefit" the public with his recollections of the "practical part" of iron- and steelmaking. His aim was to spread the knowledge of metal processing and to investigate potential ways of improving the trade.1 Few authors were better suited for such a mission, as Rinman's career had alternated between supervising Swedish metalworking, making study tours, and conducting private experiments. His writings were eventually recognized, occupying a central ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Taking Up Neglected Histories
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Abstract: Let me start by expressing my gratitude to the Da Vinci committee for this great honor and to the SHOT community for the support they have offered me as an editor and a scholar. SHOT has traditionally asked its Da Vinci awardees to provide an intellectual biography. Given our brief format this year, I am focusing on one theme that has meant a good deal to me as scholar and editor: the connection between expanding geographic boundaries in the history of technology and the intellectual development of the field. Since I started studying the history of technology in 1993, growing numbers of scholars have widened the field's geographical reach, insisting on the relevance of technology situated in places unexplored by ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Society for the History of Technology Awards and Fellowships 2022
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Abstract: The highest recognition from the Society for the History of Technology is the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, presented to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the history of technology through research, teaching, publication, and other activities.Donald MacKenzieThe Society for the History of Technology is delighted to present its prestigious 2022 Leonardo da Vinci Medal to Donald MacKenzie for his outstanding contributions to the history of technology through innovative research, imaginative teaching, sustained publications, and significant contributions to Technology and Culture and other society activities. For an astonishing four decades, MacKenzie has been at the forefront of advancing scholarly ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Portuguese History since the Late Middle Ages through the History of
Technology: A Four-Volume Overview-
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Abstract: How better to write an account of the making of the Portuguese Empire, nation, and society than through the history of science, technology, and medicine' Granted, 2,071 pages on the history of science, technology, and medicine in Portugal is not everyone's cup of tea. And yet, this massive endeavor explicitly targets a general audience and, as such, is beautifully designed, attractively written, and reasonably priced. More specifically (and more realistically), the four volumes appeal to those interested in Portuguese history.Getting eighty-one authors to write eighty-six chapters covering five centuries and a wealth of disciplines and approaches is no easy feat. Rather, it is the very ambitious end product of the ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History by Arnold Pacey
and Francesca Bray (review)-
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Abstract: Arnold Pacey collaborates with Francesca Bray in a new edition of his classic survey, Technology in World Civilization (TWC). What a delight it is! A wealth of examples appears: cooking stoves with ceramic linings (Kenya), gas-engine dynamos (England), astrolabes with beautifully etched tympans (Marrakesh), a machine for reeling silk (China)—and these examples come just from the illustrations—alongside concise and satisfying technical descriptions: how block printing was done and early guns cast and the significance of semiconducting materials. The first edition offered a strong interpretive framework, which is slightly different and more precisely drawn in the new one. Less apparent is the interest in technology ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects ed. by Barbara Penner et al.
(review)-
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Abstract: Ever since Neil MacGregor published A History of the World in 100 Objects in 2010 as a joint project between the British Museum and BBC Radio 4, there have been imitators. Richard Kurin upped the ante by one to tell The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects. Adrian Hon took a futuristic account in A New History of the Future in 100 Objects, in which he imagined a curator in the year 2082 writing an object-based book as a fictional commentary of the twenty-first century.With Extinct, editors Barbara Penner, Adrian Forty, Olivia Horsfall Turner, and Miranda Critchley go in a different direction. Unbound by geography or chronology or even the round number of one hundred (they feature eighty-five objects) ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- L'animal et l'homme: De l'exploitation à la sauvegarde ed. by Anne-Marie
Flambard-Héricher and François Blary (review)-
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Abstract: This edited collection, which gathers papers around the theme of the exploitation and protection of both domestic and wild animals, is one of several collections of the proceedings of the 141st French National Congress of Historical and Scientific Societies (Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques) devoted to the theme "Animal and Man." In line with the Congress's multidisciplinary approach, this volume brings together contributions in history, archaeology, archaeozoology, sociology, anthropology, and geography, as well as fields including architecture, information and communication sciences, ethics, and (ethno)pharmacology. The associated diversity of heuristic and methodological issues is reinforced by ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The History of Forensic Science in India by Saumitra Basu (review)
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Abstract: "Forensic science," the application of science for purposes of law and justice, entails the uses of biology, physics, chemistry, and general scientific principles and methods to solve legal problems. Thus, legal setup and requirements play a crucial role in the evolution of forensic science. In India, argues Saumitra Basu in The History of Forensic Science in India, the rise, growth, and development of forensic science can be located in the colonial period (p. 19). The British Raj not only drastically altered the precolonial concept of crime and criminal justice but also revolutionized the nature and magnitude of criminal investigation. Extensive use of forensic science in criminal jurisprudence was part and ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- From Savage Minds to Savage Machines: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century
Design by Ginger Nolan (review)-
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Abstract: In this book, Ginger Nolan endeavors to trace the influence of primitivism on design, from nineteenth-century education in industrial arts to the design of technologies for children in the Global South. She argues that understanding primitivism's influence is central (1) to reflect critically on design's goal to support or drive social integration at the expense of political dissensus and organized social movements; and (2) to reconsider the assumptions behind "good" design—that is, design that can be used intuitively due to matching innate human sensory and cognitive proclivities.Her book responds to the architecture and fine arts scholarship on primitivism (Nolan points to Jo Odgers et al., Primitive, 2006, and ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Performance Space and Stage Technologies: A Comparative Perspective on
Theatre History ed. by Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs (review)-
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Abstract: Nawata Yuji and Hans Joachim Dethlefs's edited collection arises from "Towards a Global History of Culture," a research project based at Chuo University in Tokyo. In March 2020, the project was forced to pivot from in-person exchanges at a symposium to the alternative format of this volume. Consequently, until the final chapter in which Nawata seeks to offer categorizations and sketch out the global circulation of "cultural techniques," the book offers a starting point for comparison rather than an overarching comparative argument.As someone trained in early modern studies, I found Ishida Yuichi's analysis of the role of central perspective in Catholic churches (with a focus on Italy) particularly illuminating: ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union by
Christina E. Crawford (review)-
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Abstract: During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union sought to catch up with (and overtake) its economic rivals by undergoing a process of accelerated industrialization—an ambitious venture that quickly transformed the entire country into a mega construction site. With Spatial Revolution, Christina E. Crawford examines the relationship between this "hyperindustrialization drive" and the emergence of a distinctly socialist approach to architecture and urban design (p. 1). Focusing on major projects in "geographically peripheral" but economically significant Soviet industrial centers (p. 2), Crawford positions these sites as critical "experimental enclaves" and argues that on-the-ground experience at these remote ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Robo sapiens japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation by
Jennifer Robertson (review)-
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Abstract: "Robotics" is a notoriously difficult field to define and delimit. The word "robot" has highly specific connotations in popular culture, shaped by science fiction ever since Czech writers Karel and Josef Čapek coined it in their 1920 play to describe artificial humans serving as tireless workers. Robotics is also a broad field of professional research and development in academic, commercial, and military institutions. It encompasses such a wide range of products, from Mars rovers to kitchen appliances, that it is almost impossible to specify what distinguishes them from many other machines.This tension between popular and professional, broad and specific understandings is central to Jennifer Robertson's ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data,
1880–1930 by Autumn Womack (review)-
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Abstract: As our varying cultures, societies, and communities embrace the changing nature of identity and we become more comfortable with the differences that define human existence, it is still relevant and important to investigate how we have gotten to where we are and examine the underpinning social, political, and cultural structures that have helped to fashion this reality. In a refreshingly interdisciplinary way, Autumn Womack takes up this task in The Matter of Black Living.The text launches this investigation with the provocative subheading "Undisciplining Data" in the introductory chapter, "Data and the Matter of Blackness." This beginning sets the stage for Womack's thoughtful and carefully argued study aimed at ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future by
James Morton Turner (review)-
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Abstract: With floods, droughts, and wildfires wreaking social and economic havoc around the world, policy-makers have begun taking climate change—and efforts to mitigate it—more seriously. Electric vehicles (EVs) have gained popularity because they operate without fossil fuels and produce no emissions. Government incentives in Norway, for example, helped make EVs the choice of 65 percent of new passenger car purchases in 2021. Meanwhile, California regulators approved policies in 2022 to require all new-car sales to be electric starting in 2035.The utility of electric vehicles depends on rechargeable batteries, which in turn require large amounts of exotic and often toxic materials. And here lies the crux of the EV policy ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe
by Ronan Bolton (review)-
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Abstract: As happens so often, the reader who hopes to find in this book a historical analysis of the title (Making Energy Markets) will be disappointed. Ronan Bolton's book, on the other hand, will provide much more enlightenment on the subtitle (The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe). The clarification is not insignificant, because the author does not deal with energy as a whole but only with electricity. Bolton presents a precise analysis of the movement initiated in the United Kingdom by the transformations of the Central Electricity Generating Board, which spread throughout Europe under the term "liberalization" during the 1990s. After a first part devoted to the United Kingdom, the author then describes ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Tóxicos invisibles: La construcción de la ignorancia ambiental ed. by
Ximo Guillem-Llobat and Agustí Nieto-Galan (review)-
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Abstract: Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger's work on agnotology opened a new research field in 2008, "ignorance studies." This volume, edited by Ximo Guillem-Llobat and Agustí Nieto-Galan, draws on their work, addressing both the "active" and the "passive" or "structural" types of ignorance production. "Active" types refers, for example, to the production of doubt, and passive or structural types—which seem to interest the authors more—result from the way that science or risk assessment is produced. The book aims to analyze the processes of invisibilization and ignorance production regarding the toxicity of products and territories from the end of the nineteenth century until today. All the chapters are based on Spanish ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion
by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing (review)-
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Abstract: In The Paradox of Democracy, authors Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing do yeoman's work in reviewing the history of Western democracies, from the Greek city-states of the time of Socrates to the United States of today, to make the claim that it is democracy's very openness that can lead to its ultimate demise. Demagogues can exploit the ability to communicate freely to garner support from the masses for very illiberal, antidemocratic ends. The authors point out that today's instantaneous, disintermediated media environment only makes the impact of media on culture even more profound. When the "paradox" of democracy—that it contains the seeds of its own destruction—meets the power of new media, the authors argue that a ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- When the Nerds Go Marching In: How Digital Technology Moved from the
Margins to the Mainstream of Political Campaigns by Rachel K. Gibson
(review)-
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Abstract: There was a time when "internet" scholars, as they were at one point called, wondered when they would have a history to study. Now scholars of technology studies are contextualizing the evolution of and trends in the intersection of technology and politics (and society) in a more targeted way, providing a deeper understanding of models and conceptual development for twenty to thirty years of internet use that can, in turn, guide future research.Technology studies has done a better job at researching, contextualizing, and analyzing its history than the more contemporary iterations of the field: internet and social media studies. Although there is no longer a strong distinction between the broader and more specific ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media ed. by Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole
Starosielski, and Susan Zieger (review)-
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Abstract: This anthology feels like an eclectic, overcrowded academic panel. There is a theme, indeed even a compelling one, for which a few key chapters are perfectly aligned. Some other essays are tangentially connected, while others are connected only on an impossibly broad conceptual level. And, like a conference presentation, some of the works offer nuggets of insight rather than fully realized academic projects.John Durham Peters describes the collection in a foreword as a "refreshing counter-blast to the ethereal narrative" of modern media (p. vii). In contrast to hyperbolic rhetoric and public fascination with cloud computing and ubiquitous online access, this collection explores the intersection of media systems ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome by
Margaret Meserve (review)-
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Abstract: Historians of the Reformation have long emphasized the seminal role of printing in spreading Luther's critique of the papacy and galvanizing support for this cause. In associating printing with reform and innovation more generally, it has been thought that traditional religious authorities were suspicious of the new technology—hesitant to adopt it and prone to censorship of it. Margaret Meserve's Papal Bull sets out to challenge this narrative by showing how printing served the papacy in the period between Gutenberg's first publication and the posting of Luther's theses. Eight substantial, thematic chapters convincingly prove this point, highlighting the diverse publications that bolstered papal authority or ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child
by Morgan G. Ames (review)-
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Abstract: Global digitalization, connectivity, and the vision of "computers for all" are examples of how narratives of technology and education can be combined to invoke powerful and far-reaching promises of social change in contemporary society. In The Charisma Machine, Morgan G. Ames gives a fascinating case study of these visions. Launched in 2005 and developed at the MIT Media Lab, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project built on the idea of giving all children across the Global South a computer of their own. It was led by Professor Nicholas Negroponte, who during that year toured the world stage and promised that the laptop was to be cheap but at the same time cute, powerful, and robust. Furthermore, his message was ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Arte Programmata: Freedom, Control, and the Computer in 1960s Italy by
Lindsay Caplan (review)-
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Abstract: In the 1960s, an array of art-and-technology projects, exhibitions, and collaborations burst forth from artists' workshops, corporate laboratories, and museum galleries in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. Lasers, miniaturized electronics, and new multimedia environments all became materials for artistic experimentation. One of the new technologies that most intrigued artists was the digital computer. Engineers and artists alike experimented with using computers to generate images and music. At the same time, artists and curators displayed an increasing interest in abstract concepts like cybernetics, systems, and information. Given the often-rudimentary nature of the visual artworks ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society ed.
by Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick (review)-
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Abstract: ion and embodiment are two intriguing and stimulating entry points into the history of computing, as demonstrated by this much-anticipated edited volume. There are several reasons for this interest: the concepts at the core of the book of course, which could only provoke interest and invite a reexamination of current research through the prism of these ideas; and then the editors themselves, Janet Abbate (professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech) and Stephanie Dick (assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University), with their reputation in the field and ability to approach research into the history of computing in unusual and innovative ways. It is no ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Cyber and the City: Securing London's Banks in the Computer Age by Ashley
Sweetman (review)-
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Abstract: Ashley Sweetman's Cyber and the City is valuable reading for any historian researching the intersections of finance and digital technology. The book investigates computer security in London's clearing banks from the 1960s to the 1990s across six chapters. Three "overview" chapters provide wider technological, political, and industrial context on financial computer security from 1960 to 1977, and three "case study" chapters take deeper dives into the role of security in developing three important financial systems still in use: the Bankers' Automated Clearing Services (BACS), the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), and the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS).Sweetman ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- A History of Financial Technology and Regulation: From American
Incorporation to Cryptocurrency and Crowdfunding by Seth C. Oranburg
(review)-
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Abstract: This book is an important contribution for financial historians insofar as it shifts away from a purely institutional perspective. At first glance, Seth C. Oranburg's work appears to reconstruct the milestones of the regulations of the U.S. financial markets and their transformation through the introduction of technology. However, a closer reading reveals that the author focuses on a large panorama of actors such as investors, state institutions, financial institutions, and small investors. In doing so, Oranburg highlights that ordinary investors and small businesses are often left behind when it comes to investing. He argues that today's regulatory apparatus in America is incredibly cost intensive for the ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in
America by Gerardo Con Diaz (review)-
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Abstract: In Software Rights, author Gerardo Con Diaz sets out to trace the legal and business history of software in the United States over a period of fifty-five years, from the mid to late twentieth century. Although the primary focus of the work is on software patents, it is also necessarily a history of copyright, the complementary and alternative mode of intellectual property protection for software. Con Diaz draws on a wealth of industry and legal archives to survey a multitude of legal and business decisions that shaped the nature and character of the software industry.To manage this cast of thousands, Con Diaz focuses on individual vignettes, flitting between quick sketches of actors and events. The result is that ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Transparent Designs: Personal Computing and the Politics of
User-Friendliness by Michael Black (review)-
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Abstract: Michael Black begins Transparent Designs by describing Steve Jobs's design philosophy for Apple. In 1984, Jobs explained that the company aspired "to reach the point where the operating system is totally transparent. When you use a Lisa or a Macintosh. … You never interact with it; you don't know about it." Black uses this anecdote (and many others like it) to illustrate the idea of transparent design and how it is hyped. For its advocates, the complexities of the computer should be erased, to the point of becoming invisible. They believe simplifying the interface creates more user-friendly experiences. Black argues that these conceptions of transparent design and user-friendliness, which emerged in the early ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age
by James L. Nolan Jr (review)-
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Abstract: In this gripping book, James L. Nolan Jr. narrates the involvement of his grandfather James F. Nolan (hereafter Nolan) in the creation of the first nuclear bombs, while working as a physician at Los Alamos in the 1940s. The author, who is a highly regarded sociologist of technology, creates academic and personal distance from his subject in order to develop a critical analysis of Nolan's participation in early radiation research designed to cover up the risks of nuclear bombs (pp. 139, 184). The result is a compelling commentary on not only the ethics of atomic warfare but also the technological experiments of our own age, including artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.The author, who inherited his ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Une longue marche vers l'indépendance et la transparence: L'histoire de
l'Autorité de sûreté nucléaire française by Philippe Saint Raymond,
and: Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Gregory B. Jaczko
(review)-
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Abstract: The debate on including nuclear energy in the new EU energy taxonomy for a CO2-free economy has put this form of energy back on the political agenda, along with topics like technology, national independence, financial arguments, risk, and proliferation. Despite attempts in public debates, with the exception of the American case, there is surprisingly little research on nuclear regulatory institutions and their role in nuclear development.The books presented here target a different readership and objectives but complement each other in that they help explain regulators' fundamental role in nuclear policy. The authors are not professional historical researchers, so a certain indulgence is required regarding ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture by Alison
Fields (review)-
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Abstract: "Containment—the process of gaining control over something harmful," writes Alison Fields, "is a key mechanism for responding to traumatic memories" (p. 16). Her book proceeds to explore nuclear-themed artwork as locations where the containment of nuclear memories has fractured, revealing a disjointed and evolving memory culture in the wake of Hiroshima. Fields opens with an exploration of the so-called "Hiroshima Maidens," twenty-five young women who experienced the nuclear attack on Hiroshima as children and were brought to the United States ten years later to receive reconstructive and plastic surgeries. This bold start establishes that institutions may strive to contain historical traumas in narratives of ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Life in Space: NASA Life Sciences Research during the Late Twentieth
Century by Maura Phillips Mackowski (review)-
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Abstract: Several recent publications have shown an interest in the science and technology that is necessary to live in space. Early astronaut training has become a focus of historical research, as well as the conflicting roles of astronauts as both scientific field workers and test subjects in space (Hersch, "Spacework"; Bimm and Kilian, "The Well-Tempered Astronaut"; Fendley, "First Contact"). Other publications have delved into the history of closed-loop ecologies for long-term space flight (Höhler, Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age; Munns and Nickelsen, Far Beyond the Moon) and the psychology of living in space (Karafantis, "Sealab II and Skylab"; Grevsmühl, "Laboratory Metaphors in Antarctic History"). Questions ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Assured Access: A History of the US Air Force Space Launch Enterprise,
1945–2020 by David N. Spires (review)-
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Abstract: The establishment of the United States Space Force in December 2019 initiated a wide public discourse on the militarization of space. What much of that discourse failed to acknowledge was that space had been militarized long before the popular crewed space programs of the 1960s. This history of U.S. Air Force (USAF) involvement in space is the subject of Assured Access, the latest work from David Spires, who has previously published several books documenting the service's activities in the final frontier. Based almost entirely on secondary sources, Assured Access offers little new information but does present a useful single-volume overview of the evolution of USAF space launch capabilities over a broad ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race: The Origins of Global Satellite
Communications by Hugh R. Slotten (review)-
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Abstract: NASA Administrator James E. Webb asked a pointed question in 1964: "How did we get so much communication satellite technology for so little money'" Webb's question could not be satisfactorily answered at the time; this important new book offers the best explanation yet.Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race explores how government and industry shaped policy, expanded capabilities, and used this envisioned space-based telecommunications capability to propound the American way to the peoples of other nations, as well as to enhance American commercial profitmaking at the same time that it facilitated American geopolitical ends in the American-Soviet Cold War. Sometimes these objectives clashed, most of the time they ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Delta of Power: The Military-Industrial Complex by Alex Roland (review)
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Abstract: Delta of Power is partly an updating of Alex Roland's 2001 Military Industrial Complex, published in the joint AHA/SHOT Historical Perspectives series. The second half of the book is a new analysis of the military-industrial complex (MIC) after the Cold War. As part of the SHOT/Johns Hopkins University Press Technology in Motion series, Delta of Power is directed significantly at students, providing a full, detailed history of the MIC, as well as presenting the state of the field by engaging the principal historiographic questions and debates. The book succeeds in that purpose, but Roland goes further, also contributing an argument about the continuation of a transformed post–Cold War MIC.Though there have been ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell: A Cultural Sociology by Javier
Pérez-Jara and Lino Camprubí (review)-
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Abstract: This book is an analytic biography, from the perspective of cultural sociology, of Bertrand Russell as a public intellectual engaged with the promises and perils of science and technology. Russell was one of the great figures of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century analytic British philosophy, but he stepped away from academic life to become a public intellectual in response to the Great War. Whereas previously he had seen science and the scientization of philosophy as a promising fulfillment of the Enlightenment vision for a rational society, after the war he increasingly viewed science and technology as a civilizational peril. Javier Pérez-Jara and Lino Camprubí interpret Russell's trajectory as ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America by Mario
Daniels and John Krige (review)-
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Abstract: Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America is Mario Daniels and John Krige's foray into a subject heretofore seldom explored: How did knowledge regulation—in the form of export controls for otherwise unclassified material, objects, and the movement of people with know-how—shape U.S. foreign policy from World War II on' And how did the complex rules governing the exportation of technologies and technical knowledge shape not only the sharing but also the creation of knowledge'Daniels and Krige's attempt is remarkable because of the breadth of the research required, but also because it breaks new ground. Academic insularity has previously precluded the further exploration of the category of ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy by
Alex Sayf Cummings (review)-
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Abstract: In 1868, when Jefferson Davis first articulated the idea that the U.S. South "shall rise again," he could not have imagined one of its forms as a high-tech university-business partnership in North Carolina. And yet, more than a century later, an unlikely band of suburban developers and university leaders envisioned and built the so-called Research Triangle Park (RTP) as a means of transforming what was once deemed "cornbread country" (p. 77) into an organized series of "knowledge work" towns and cities, one of which bore the nickname "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees" (p. 135). In Brain Magnet, Alex Sayf Cummings gives scholars and local historians a fascinating and well-written account of this historical ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Chasing Automation: The Politics of Technology and Jobs from the Roaring
Twenties to the Great Society by Jerry Prout (review)-
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Abstract: Jerry Prout provides a valuable account of the policy debates and political tensions over technological unemployment from the 1920s to the 1960s. His subject is automation, and his detailed and nuanced study fills a gap in the literature about the politics and policy of labor, the workplace, and technological change in the twentieth century. Prout's aim is clear: people struggle with the "sheer unpredictability of technological progress," which turns "anticipating the next wave of job-eliminating machines" into a "formidable challenge" (p. 3).Although the forces Prout examines are global, his study makes only a single reference to important scholarship by the late David Noble and Amy Bix, whose Inventing Ourselves ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Strands of Modernization: The Circulation of Technology and Business
Practices in East Asia, 1850–1920 ed. by David B. Sicilia and David G.
Wittner (review)-
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Abstract: This collection of essays aims to highlight the circulation of technology and business practices within East Asia and the central role that Japan played in this process in the 1850–1920 period. Hybridization in the transfer of technology and business methods is a recurring theme in several chapters, with an important role for the agency of local actors. In doing so, the book contributes to the increasing number of studies that consider the regions beyond the West not only as passive recipients of "advanced" Western technology but also pay attention to their active role as customizers, initiators, and also intraregional sharers. In the general introduction, the reader is introduced to the late nineteenth-century ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Railways' Economic Impact on Uttar Pradesh and Colonial North India
(1860–1914): The Iron Raj by Ian D. Derbyshire (review)-
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Abstract: Of all the innovative technologies introduced into India under colonial rule, the impact of the railways has been the most widely discussed and hotly debated. Controversy has raged over whether they were beneficial, not merely to the British who built, financed, and ran them but to the population at large; or, conversely, whether they were hugely detrimental and a salient factor in rural impoverishment, environmental degradation, and the recurrent famines of the mid to late nineteenth century. In a substantial reworking and updating of a doctoral thesis presented in 1985, Ian Derbyshire examines in singular detail, with the aid of more than a hundred maps, figures, and tables, the evidence relating to the ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building
in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 by Hsien-ch'un Wang (review)-
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Abstract: Hsien-ch'un Wang's book describes the process of transferring steam-engine technology to China in the nineteenth century and the subsequent impact on Chinese technical education and shipbuilding. It highlights how Chinese senior officials either welcomed or hindered technological innovation and progress. Steamship building depended on government subsidies. The book demonstrates the scientific and technological underpinnings of this transfer process. Wang presents the early attempts to build steamers in China in a very readable and even exciting way, with colorful descriptions enhanced by impressive images. Wang writes that once Chinese officials understood the importance of steam power for military purposes, they ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market by Meng Zhang
(review)-
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Abstract: Meng Zhang's engaging and empirically rich study deconstructs the "market," an institution that has surprisingly garnered little deep attention in Asian environmental history. More than an examination of the circulation of goods—in this case, timber—Timber and Forestry reveals how the timber market in Qing China was built at the intersection of a complex supply chain connected by multiple players along the Yangzi river and a rising demand for timber that fueled the felling of millions of trees. Deftly interweaving economic and environmental histories, the book demonstrates that—far from being an alternative to the state in forest management—the timber market worked with and around the state to produce ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States ed. by Thomas H.
Fehring and Terry S. Reynolds (review)-
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Abstract: A fiftieth anniversary is a milestone of longevity that many organizations never achieve. It takes a lot to maintain leadership continuity, overcome economic challenges, and keep membership involved for half of a century. To mark the golden anniversary of the History and Heritage Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the society commissioned Chronicles of Mechanical Engineering in the United States. This book is a collection of over seventy vignettes, mostly biographical and thematic with a few landmark stories. In a surprising organizational decision, 90 percent of the entries—many written by Fritz Hirschfeld between 1976 and 1980—are reprints from the last fifty years of the ASME ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Mobilizing Citizens' Ears: Aural Training as Civil Defense, 1941–45
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Abstract: In June 1944, the city of Kokura (now Kitakyūshū), Fukuoka Prefecture, suffered a U.S. military air strike. Fourteen-year-old Okamoto Nobuko was working at the Kokura Army Arsenal as part of high school mobilization efforts when she heard the roar of approaching Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers competing with the terrifying sound of Japanese antiaircraft guns. As she testified almost sixty years later in 2009, the resonance of those sounds signaling the attacking foreign military forces had a traumatic effect:In the dark, I heard propeller sounds. Machine guns sounded like "kata kata kata kata." Then, I heard antiaircraft guns, which sounded like "dokan dokan." These planes dropped bombs on the city, which ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- Sound on the Quiet: Speaker Identification and Auditory Objectivity in
Czechoslovak Fonoscopy, 1975–90-
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Abstract: Listening in on dissidents and foreign enemies but also unidentified ordinary citizens was central to Cold War surveillance operations. Wiretapping telephone lines, bugging hotel rooms, eavesdropping on private conversations, and recording phone calls were all part and parcel of monitoring and espionage practices both in the West and in Eastern bloc countries. Police officers, intelligence agents, radio operators, and others used various technological devices for listening secretly to voices believed to be communicating information of potential value. Apart from scanning conversations for specific information, it was also important to know whose voices they were monitoring. To identify anonymous speakers in ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
- The Machine Age: Curation and Memory in Two U.S. Exhibits
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Abstract: Beginning around 1900, the increasing scale and quickening pace of manufacturing had an ever-increasing influence on the pace of life in industrialized nations. In the Soviet Union and the ascendant authoritarian regimes in Europe and Japan, industrialization played a central role in movements that sought to establish new political and social orders in the wake of the upheavals of World War I. In this context, artists both challenged and celebrated the confluence of technology and politics, offering an alternative to the visual messaging of state propaganda.The form and function of industry in the United States were largely the same as in other parts of the world, yet industrialization was thrust on a nation still ... Read More
PubDate: 2023-05-04T00:00:00-05:00
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