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A survey of U.S. Air Force air-to-air armament from World War II through Vietnam's Operation ROLLING THUNDER reveals the institution's focus on developing advanced technologies and tactics designed to thwart hordes of Soviet bombers. Challenged by nimble MiGs over Vietnam, the service was reluctant to investigate "low-tech" armament solutions. When the value of a gun in air combat was finally acknowledged, the Air Force elected to field it as part of an integrated weapons system on the F-4E. In the interim, pilots at DaNang air base cobbled together an inelegant but effective air-to-air external gun system. The episode reveals the significant potential, and fragility, of unit-initiated tactical innovation and the peril that can arise when an organization's technological exuberance obfuscates less technologically-appealing solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic cigarettes are advertised as the latest technological gadget--the smoking equivalent of smart phones. I challenge this sense of novelty by tracing their history to the 1960s, when researchers at British American Tobacco first recognized that smokers' brains were dependent on nicotine. This discovery enabled British American Tobacco to develop a novel kind of smoking device under the codename "Ariel" between 1962 and 1967. Whereas filters were meant to eliminate specific harmful constituents of tobacco smoke, Project Ariel tried to reduce smoking to its alkaloid essence: nicotine. By heating instead of burning tobacco, the scientists working on Ariel managed to produce an aerosol smoking device that delivered nicotine with very little tar while retaining the look and feel of a cigarette. However, after receiving two patents for Ariel, British American Tobacco ultimately decided to abandon the project to avoid endangering cigarettes, its main product. Today, as ecigarettes are surging in popularity, it is worth revisiting Ariel because it is not just an episode in the history of aerosol smoking devices but its starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We build on the analysis in Akcigit, Grigsby, and Nicholas (2017) by using US patent and census data to examine the relationship between immigration and innovation. We construct a measure of foreign born expertise and show that technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent between 1880 and 1940 experienced more patenting and citations between 1940 and 2000. The contribution of immigrant inventors to US innovation was substantial. We also show that immigrant inventors were more productive than native born inventors; however, they received significantly lower levels of labor income. The immigrant inventor wage-gap cannot be explained by differentials in productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of IoT appears to be based on trading off security for convenience. The futuristic technology brings with it a landscape scattered with vulnerabilities. The paper traces the exponential growth of IoT and its business potential. It then journeys into the dark alleys of IoT exposing the real and present dangers that the technology poses to all demographics and Nation- States. The paper then explores the cyber policy landscape in the USA, the EU and in India and analyses the procedural hazards for enforcement emanating fromthe principle of territoriality, which the cyber domain clearly poses a challenge to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on theories in organizational sociology that argue that transpositions of people,/ skills, and knowledge across domains give rise to innovations and organizational foundings that institutionalize them, we conducted a mixed-methods study of the employment biographies of staffers working in technology, digital, data, and analytics on American presidential campaigns, and the rates of organizational founding by these staffers, from the 2004 through the 2012 electoral cycles. Using Federal Election Commission and LinkedIn data, we trace the professional biographies of staffers (N = 629) working in technology, digital, data, or analytics on primary and general election presidential campaigns during this period. We found uneven professionalization in these areas, defined in terms of staffers moving from campaign to campaign or from political organizations to campaigns, with high rates of new entrants to the field. Democrats had considerably greater numbers of staffers in the areas of technology, digital, data, and analytics and from the technology industry, and much higher rates of organizational founding. We present qualitative data drawn from interviews with approximately 60 practitioners to explain how the institutional histories of the two parties and their extended networks since 2004 shaped the presidential campaigns during the 2012 cycle and their differential uptake of technology, digital, data, and analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Standard productivity measures indicate large fluctuations in technology during the Great Depression. This article's historical technology series (1892–1966), controlled for aggregation effects, varying input utilization, non-constant returns, and imperfect competition, does not indicate technology regress such that could trigger the downturn. In contrast, technology improvements in the recovery were so rapid that, over the whole Great Depression period, technology growth was highest among pre-WWII decades. This article also finds that output changed little and inputs fell when technology improved in the pre-WWII period. Real-business-cycle models have difficulty in explaining pre-WWII business cycles characterized by such responses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The word “innovation” tends to bring to mind the USA, rather than Europe or Japan. In the ICT industry, in particular, revolutionary companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have succeeded in bringing about numerous innovations. Because of this, it has become second nature to think of innovation as a US phenomenon. What, then, gives rise to so much innovation in the USA? In this article, the author will first provide an overall view of innovation from the perspectives of economics and of management theory and examine the ways in which innovation has been interpreted and defined. Then, the author will consider the question of why the USA is so innovative as a nation from the three perspectives of its historical background, national character, and systems supporting innovation. It will be demonstrated that one of the characteristics of innovation—discontinuity—is well entrenched in the USA, as is a national character that stresses individualism and a culture that forgives failure. The author will suggest that new innovations will continue to be the driving force of US economic growth into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the mid-1800s, the construction of canal and rail networks profoundly affected ceramic manufacturing in New York. State by lowering the cost of transporting stoneware clay and finished vessels. Consumer demand for stoneware storage containers, energized by lower prices and increased availability, spurred the development of stoneware potteries across the state. Many American earthenware potters shifted partially or entirely over to stoneware production. This paper contends that the difficult transition between ceramic manufacturing technologies played a role in the decline of the handicraft pottery industry in the early 20th century. Stoneware production required firsthand instruction, large capital investments and resource networks, new labor structures, and an understanding of changing consumer expectations. The analysis uses documentary and archaeological evidence from the potter Elijah Cornell as a case study of technological change in the operation of a traditional American earthenware business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of amusement parks in the U.S., focusing on the technological innovations that led to mechanized and industrialized entertainment. Other topics of the article include the social aspects of amusement parks, the inventors/engineers who developed amusements, such as Gustav Dentzel, Charles W. Parker, and Antonio Maguino, and information on various amusement park rides including carousels, ferris wheels, and roller coasters.

Eadweard Muybridge is a pivotal figure in the evolution of moving image technology in that he was the first to employ photography in a comprehensive study of the dynamics of motion. Beginning in 1884 and working at the University of Pennsylvania, Muybridge took thousands of images of humans and animals in motion, with each subject simultaneously photographed by 12 cameras. Some were college baseball players; as a result, Muybridge created split-second-long moving images of ballplayers pitching, batting, catching, throwing, and running. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use technological advancements of the telephone in Montana. The article discusses businesses associated with the telephone such as the Montana Telephone Company, the Stuart, Cable City and Philipsburg Telegraph and Telephone Company, and the Rocky Mountain Bell Company. It also discusses how rural Montana residents utilized the telephone, party line systems, and the use of barbed-wire fences for transmitting.

This paper uses new data on the task content of occupations to present a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a "hollowing out" of the skill distribution whereby workers in the middle of the distribution lost out to those at the extremes. OLS estimates show that electrification increased the demand for clerical, numerical, planning and people skills relative to manual skills while simultaneously reducing relative demand for the dexterity-intensive jobs which comprised the middle of the skill distribution. Thus, early twentieth century technological change was unskill-biased for blue collar tasks but skill-biased on aggregate. These results are in line with the downward trend in wage differentials within U.S. manufacturing up to 1950. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertisements for internal combustion engines, commonly called gas engines, appeared regularly in farm magazines in the mid-1890s. By the century's turn, one hundred US companies produced stationary or portable gas engines for farmers. Fifteen years later, the number of gas engines on farms had exploded to one million. The skills gained by hundreds of thousands of farmers with these engines facilitated the rapid adoption of the automobile on farms and the more gradual adoption of the tractor. Yet the use of such engines has received scant attention. This paper examines the farm demand for stationary power and compares alternative power sources in 1895. It traces the development of the market for farm gas engines and its interaction with the markets for automobiles and tractors. It then presents evidence from magazines to show how farmers became engine mechanics and facilitated the adoption of automobiles and tractors across rural America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article "Clouds Over Technopolis" by Niall Ferguson, which was published in the magazine "Newsweek." It offers information on technoptimism and pessimism. It discusses about the changes that are noticed in past 25 years and changes that can occur in next 25 years especially in economics, Biotechnology, and IT sector. It also informs about the problems faced like cold wars and corruption.

The increasing interest in media history within the academic world has not yet resulted in an intensive examination of the relationship between photography and communications media. This article seeks to begin to address this lacuna by examining photography's insertion into the so-called revolution of communication in middle-nineteenth-century America. The first section of the present study links photography to the introduction of telegraphy, the development of the railway and the expansion of the postal system. The second section examines aspects of the reception of photography in nineteenth-century America and argues this is related to improvements in communication and transportation technologies. The conclusion calls for a broader consideration of the links between the history of photography and the history of media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "The Great American Hall of Wonders," at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., between July 15, 2011 and January 8, 2012.

This article takes advantage of an exogenous shift towards patenting in chemicals to test whether patents contribute to the geographic diffusion of innovations. Data on U.S. innovations that were exhibited at four world fairs between 1851 and 1915 suggest that innovative activity became less localized after patenting rates increased. These changes cannot be explained by changes in the localization of chemical production or economy-wide changes in the localization of innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since its founding in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has occupied a special niche in the complex ecology of advice-giving in the United States. Established as a small, private organization with special responsibilities and obligations vis à vis the American people and government, the Academy has expanded considerably in the past century and a half and now releases, through the National Research Council (NRC), its operating arm, more than 200 reports per year, on topics covering nearly the entire range of science, engineering, health, and education. The development of the organization, its basic ethos, and its evolving structures and processes can be seen as examples of what Herbert Simon called 'procedural rationality': the pursuit of reasonably good solutions to complex problems based on appropriate deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To identify successes in improving America's health, we identified disease categories that appeared on vital statistics lists of leading causes of death in the US adult population in either 1950 or 2000, and that experienced at least a 50% reduction in age-adjusted death rates from their peak level to their lowest point between 1950 and 2000. Of the 9 cause-of-death categories that achieved this 50% reduction, literature review suggests that 7 clearly required diffusion of new innovations through both public health and medical care channels. Our nation's health success stories are consistent with a triangulation model of innovation plus public health plus medical care, even when the 3 sectors have worked more in parallel than in partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 press is seminal to our knowledge and control of scientific and technological developments. The photographic essays in the early years of Life afford an opportunity to examine the role of a new medium in constructing narratives that visualized the hopes and priorities of a period when the United States became an international power, which was crucially enhanced by scientific and technological prowess. This study combined three methodological approaches—archival research, textual and narrative analysis, and content analysis—and found that compared to other magazines, Life's coverage of science and technology was extremely high. Its coverage actualized what James Carey called the "visual society, " which is both created by and made necessary by increasing urbanization and the growth of technologically mediated communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The article presents a profile of the American engineer and inventor Robert Fulton and his accomplishments in designing a reliable steam-engine for nautical travel. Details are given describing the various career trajectories which Fulton explored before establishing himself as an inventor, outlining the business partnership formed between Fulton and his financier Robert R. Livingston, and the events surrounding his completion of a steamboat. Accounts are also given relating to the legal and commercial struggles incurred after the invention and their eventual resolution in favor of Livingston and Fulton. The events of Fulton's death are also mentioned.

Examines the role of technical change in promoting the growth of large firms and concentrated markets in the late 19th century United States. Changes in the organization of manufacturing industry; Estimation of translog production function.

A reprint of the January 10, 1860, application to the U.S. agency the United States Patent Office concerning improvements to artificial legs by Springfield, Massachusetts, inventor Darwin De Forrest Douglass is presented. The document describes the construction and functions of Douglass's alterations.

The article presents the patent application of New York City inventor Marcellin Delluc for his invention known as the mechanical leech. According to the document, the application was filed with the U.S. agency the Patent Office on May 7, 1850. The document states that the mechanical leech was designed to bleed portions of the human body in place of animal leeches.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics including the history of technology, the African American innovations in technology throughout history and computational thinking.

The article presents the New Technologies Cathedral project in Madrid, Spain. The project aims to educate citizens and companies in new technologies and innovation. It will have a building suitability of 15,000 square meters and an area of 8,000 square meters for public spaces. It is divided into a New Technologies Innovation and Expression Center, an online version of the project and a Reference Center in free software technologies. It is also expected as an intelligent building.