PDF-[EBOOK]-Technology in America: A Brief History

This brief history of technology in America begins with the colonial period but emphasizes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries The authors break new ground by concentrating on the impact of American society and culture on technology instead of taking the traditional approach considering the impact of technology on culture The organization of the text reflects this perspective by following conventional American history periodization rather than a more limited industryoriented outline preindustrial industrial and postindustrial Part Two employs systems and systemization as a theme The final section of the text post1950 has been completely rewritten to reflect recent scholarship and technological advances. Hypothesize - TPS. Where did horticulture begin? . Where will the history of horticulture originate? . Who invented it? . History of Horticulture. “. Garden of Eden. ”. Romanticized garden of paradise.. R U Ready?. Morley . Winograd. I 2 CSG Workshop . . January 10, . 2012. Generational Differences are Just as Great as National Cultural Differences but Are Rarely Perceived . Defining A Generation. Click each subclass for details Class E 11-143 America 151-909 United States Class F 1-975 United States local history 1001-11452 British America including Canada Dutch America 1170 French America 120 This book is the first volume in a cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.From 1629 to 1775, North America was settled by four great waves of English-speaking immigrants. The first was an exodus of Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts (1629-1640). The second was the movement of a Royalist elite and indentured servants from the south of England to Virginia (ca. 1649-75). The third was the Friends\' migration,--the Quakers--from the North Midlands and Wales to the Delaware Valley (ca. 1675-1725). The fourth was a great flight from the borderlands of North Britain and northern Ireland to the American backcountry (ca. 1717-75).These four groups differed in many ways--in religion, rank, generation and place of origin. They brought to America different folkways which became the basis of regional cultures in the United States. They spoke distinctive English dialects and built their houses in diverse ways. They had different ideas of family, marriage and gender different practices of child-naming and child-raising different attitudes toward sex, age and death different rituals of worship and magic different forms of work and play different customs of food and dress different traditions of education and literacy different modes of settlement and association. They also had profoundly different ideas of comity, order, power and freedom which derived from British folk-traditions. Albion\'s Seed describes those differences in detail, and discusses the continuing importance of their transference to America.Today most people in the United States (more than 80 percent) have no British ancestors at all. These many other groups, even while preserving their own ethnic cultures, have also assimilated regional folkways which were transplanted from Britain to America. In that sense, nearly all Americans today are Albion\'s Seed, no matter what their ethnic origins may be but they are so in their different regional ways. The concluding section of Albion\'s Seed explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still control attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.Albion\'s Seed also argues that the four British folkways created an expansive cultural pluralism that has proved to the more libertarian than any single culture alone could be. Together they became the determinants of a voluntary society in the United States. From colonial to modern-day times this narrative history, incorporating first-person accounts, traces the development of women\'s roles in America. Against the backdrop of major historical events and movements, the authors examine the issues that changed the roles and lives of women in our society. Includes photographs. Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans over nature through increasingly powerful innovations, he compares the evolution of technology in different parts of the world, providing a much broader account than is found in other histories of technology. We also discover how small changes sometimes have dramatic results--how, for instance, the stirrup revolutionized war and gave the Mongols a deadly advantage over the Chinese. And how the nailed horseshoe was a pivotal breakthrough for western farmers. Enlivened with many illustrations, Technologyoffers a fascinating look at the spread of inventions around the world, both as boons for humanity and as weapons of destruction. From the medieval farm implements used by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of society as well. Arguing that the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose, historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology\'s impact on the lives of women and men, on their work, politics, and social relationships—and how, in turn, people influence technological development.Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American system of manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities.In the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment. Today\'s scientists, policymakers, and citizens are all confronted by numerous dilemmas at the nexus of technology and the environment. Every day seems to bring new worries about the dangers posed by carcinogens, superbugs, energy crises, invasive species, genetically modified organisms, groundwater contamination, failing infrastructure, and other troubling issues.In Technology and the Environment in History, Sara B. Pritchard and Carl A. Zimring adopt an analytical approach to explore current research at the intersection of environmental history and the history of technology--an emerging field known as envirotech. Technology and the Environment in History They discuss the important topics, historical processes, and scholarly concerns that have emerged from recent work in thinking about envirotech. Each chapter focuses on a different urgent topic:- Food and Food Systems: How humans have manipulated organisms and ecosystems to produce nutrients for societies throughout history.- Industrialization: How environmental processes have constrained industrialization and required shifts in the relationships between human and nonhuman nature.- Discards: What we can learn from the multifaceted forms, complex histories, and unexpected possibilities of waste.- Disasters: How disaster, which the authors argue is common in the industrialized world, exposes the fallacy of tidy divisions among nature, technology, and society.- Body: How bodies reveal the porous boundaries among technology, the environment, and the human.- Sensescapes: How environmental and technological change have reshaped humans\' (and potentially nonhumans\') sensory experiences over time.Using five concepts to understand the historical relationships between technology and the environment--porosity, systems, hybridity, biopolitics, and environmental justice--Pritchard and Zimring propose a chronology of key processes, moments, and periodization in the history of technology and the environment. Ultimately, they assert, envirotechnical perspectives help us engage with the surrounding world in ways that are, we hope, more sustainable and just for both humanity and the planet. Aimed at students and scholars new to environmental history, the history of technology, and their nexus, this impressive synthesis looks outward and forward--identifying promising areas in more formative stages of intellectual development and current synergies with related areas that have emerged in the past few years, including environmental anthropology, discard studies, and posthumanism. This brief history of technology in America begins with the colonial period but emphasizes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors break new ground by concentrating on the impact of American society and culture on technology, instead of taking the traditional approach (considering the impact of technology on culture). The organization of the text reflects this perspective by following conventional American history periodization rather than a more limited industry-oriented outline (pre-industrial, industrial, and postindustrial). Part Two employs systems and systemization as a theme. The final section of the text (post-1950) has been completely rewritten to reflect recent scholarship and technological advances. Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineering—not superior military strategy or industrial advantage—as the critical determining factor in the war’s outcome.Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggled to cut supply lines and stop the Yankees from pressing any advantage.By presenting detailed case studies from both theaters of the war, Army clearly demonstrates how the soldiers’ education, training, and talents spelled the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat. He also reveals massive logistical operations as critical in determining the war’s outcome. Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans over nature through increasingly powerful innovations, he compares the evolution of technology in different parts of the world, providing a much broader account than is found in other histories of technology. We also discover how small changes sometimes have dramatic results--how, for instance, the stirrup revolutionized war and gave the Mongols a deadly advantage over the Chinese. And how the nailed horseshoe was a pivotal breakthrough for western farmers. Enlivened with many illustrations, Technologyoffers a fascinating look at the spread of inventions around the world, both as boons for humanity and as weapons of destruction. From the medieval farm implements used by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of society as well. Arguing that the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose, historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology\'s impact on the lives of women and men, on their work, politics, and social relationships—and how, in turn, people influence technological development.Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American system of manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities.In the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment. George Washington, our first president, began his professional life as a lead surveyor and remained devoted to the importance that landed property had in creating personal wealth for individuals and government stability for a developing nation.  Whether determining a colonial border, setting a boundary for a tract of land, accurately recording a sale, or making a map, the colonist’s relationship to the land was determined and recorded.  Washington promoted the idea that an accurate recording land ownership, borders, and boundaries was an integral part of American’s future economic stability.   At the age of 16, Washington headed west with a surveying company owned by Lord William Fairfax. Lord Fairfax noted the strengths that Washington possessed, and took an interest in his career. This relationship would shape the young Washington into the leader he would become. A year later, Washington formed his own surveying company and made several trips westward towards the Ohio River Valley. His knowledge of the western territories convinced the British government in Virginia to commission him into the Army in 1753, even though he had no real military experience.  Surveying the Ohio Country: George Washington and the Practice and Politics of Western Expansion award-winning photographer Dan Patterson and American historian Clinton Terry vividly and accurately document and retrace the steps surveyors took to map the Ohio River Valley.  Patterson and Terry thoroughly create detailed and historically accurate narratives paired with exquisite and vivid photographs of these little known expeditions of our founding father.  Working with Colonial re-enactors at sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, from Fort Normal to Colonial Williamsburg, Patterson recreates the effort of Washington and his team of surveyors to map the American wilderness and occasionally lay personal claim land to great expanses of land along the way. Through the lens of Patterson camera, readers will see what Washington saw as he worked to learn his trade and then lead expeditions into the American interior using instruments and methods employed 260 years ago.   Terry describes Washington’s journey providing extensively researched historical facts to the visually rich images photographed by award winning American photographer Dan Patterson. Together the authors document a stunning and authentic recreation of the early days of our first commander in chief and the mapping of the Ohio Country.   From the practice of land and survey measurement and development of Gunter’s Chain, a measuring chain based on the dimensions of an acre to the practices employed in property documentation, the authors illustrate and narrate the power and politics of the surveyors job.  Several chapters are dedicated to detailing the techniques used for individual instruments, and the responsibilities of each member of a full colonial surveying team, methods that did not substantially change until the invention of GPS technology.   Best Research in the General History of Recorded Sound from The Association for Recorded Sound Collections David L. Morton examines the process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of communications technology, using the history of sound recording as the focus. Off the Record demonstrates how the history of both the hardware and the ways people used it is essential for understanding why any particular technology became a fixture in everyday life or faded into obscurity. Morton’s approach to the topic differs from most previous works, which have examined the technology’s social impact, but not the reasons for its existence. Recording culture in America emerged, Morton writes, not through the dictates of the technology itself but in complex ways that were contingent upon the actions of users.Each of the case studies in the book emphasizes one of five aspects of the culture of recording and its relationship to new technology, at the same time telling the story of sound recording history. One of the misconceptions that Morton hopes to dispel is that the only important category of sound recording involves music. Unique in his broad-based approach to sound technology, the five case studies that Morton investigates are :     The phonograph recordRecording in the radio businessThe dictation machineThe telephone answering machine, andHome tapingReaders will learn, for example, that the equipment to create the telephone answering machine has been around for a century, but that the ownership and use of answering machines was a hotly contested issue in the telephone industry at the turn of the century, hence stifling its commercial development for decades. Morton also offers fascinating insight into early radio: that, while The Amos and Andy Show initially was pre-recorded and not broadcast live, the commercial stations saw this easily distributed program as an economic threat: many non-network stations could buy the disks for easy, relatively inexpensive replaying. As a result, Amos and Andy was sold to Mutual and went live shortly afterward.