Search

ARRAY(0x55e3756c0d68) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ARRAY(0x55e3757821c8) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ARRAY(0x55e375baf5c0) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several decades, many students of technology have tried to make sense of the concept of technology and its origins. However, nothing similar exists in the literature on "technological innovation," a phrase that emerged after World War II. This paper suggests that technological innovation is a counter-concept to science--and more particularly to basic research--as a dominant cultural value of the twentieth century. Technological innovation emerged as a phrase or concept because in discourse, action, and policy, it was useful to include in understandings of economic growth a larger number of people than just scientists and more activities than just science or basic research. Technological innovation is a total process. "It integrates what would otherwise be separate activities and inquiries in order to redraw the intellectual world that society adopts" (Roy Harris, The Semantics of Science, [p. xi]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2016 witnesses the 150th anniversary of laying the first successful transatlantic telegraph cables. This review essay offers a critical rereading of existing scholarship while simultaneously suggesting new perspectives for research. Telegraphy = globalization, the history of wiring the world commencing with the Atlantic cable of 1866 seems to suggest. At the same time, this essay argues, this equation should make scholars uneasy and cautious of a possible technological determinism retracing its steps back into the middle of scholarly debates on globalization. More attention needs to be paid to whose globalization we are talking about, what the globalization of politics, markets, and media means in connection to communication, and whether the cables really started something radically new. 150 years after laying the "first" Atlantic cable, there is still room for research. New spaces, theories, and methodologies, as well as alternate user groups including women and subalterns, offer avenues to test established scholarship on global communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the authors' experience of revisiting the Bernese Alps approximately 50 years after their first visit during a childhood family vacation. Particular focus is given to the history of transportation technology in the region, especially that relating to air travel, and to technological change. Topics discussed include the relationship between personal and historical experience, propeller planes, the Hotel Bellevue in Interlaken, Switzerland, and railroads.

The article announces awards given to historians including the NASA Fellowship in the History of Space Technology to James L. Johnson of the Graduate Program in the History of Science and Technology at Case Western Reserve University, the Melvin Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship to Lino Camprubi of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize to Madhumita Saha of Iowa State University.

An essay that explores the history of technology for premodern Europe is presented. It examines the historiography of premodern European technology and discusses contributions made to the field by the Society for the History of Technology. It examines the study of premodern hydrology, mining, textiles and building construction. It also examines the importance of local history in premodern historical investigations.

The article discusses the research into crystal frequency control conducted by U.S. physicist and electrical engineer Walter Cady during and after World War I. His research started during the war with government backing, and continued afterward with funding from the telecommunication firm AT&T. Cady's work with high-frequency circuits using piezoelectric crystals became the basis for much of the electronics behind telephony, radio, and timekeeping, and the article explores the relations between wartime and peacetime science and technology research, and the relationship of scientists and inventors with universities, the government, and private corporations.

The article presents an exploration into the place of the U.S. patent system within the history of invention and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on the role of the professional patent practitioner. Details are given outlining the beginnings of patent law in the U.S. and the rise of professional clerks and lawyers to manage the commercial laws surrounding the commercial registration of technological innovations. Several individual figures are profiled specifically, including the first patent clerk William Thornton, Thomas Edison's colleague Lemuel Serrell, and legal scholar Thomas Fressenden.