Rethinking the History of American Technology

A Vantage Point at the Juncture of Historiography and Lessons Learned

By Michael E. Dobe, Sr.Last Updated: July 2013

The Craft of the Historian and the Popular Imagination

Questions to Address About Technology as History

Example of the Uses of HistoryWinthrop Group Research On Corporate Histories

Does Technology Drive History?The Problematic Nature of “Progress”

Technology’s StorytellersAnd the Philosophy of History

What to Study and Why?Historians Who Broadened the Focus

What to Study and Why?Historians Who Broadened the Focus

What to Study and Why?Historians Who Broadened the Focus

How to Study the Social Construction of Technological Systems

Thomas P. Hughes The Evolution of Large Technological Systems

Technology in Today’s World

Beginning Chronologically European Roots & Pacey’s Maze of Ingenuity

Beginning Chronologically European Roots & Gimpel’s Medieval Machine

Colonial Technologies, 1492-1770

American Revolution and Early Republic, 1763-1800

Emergence of Republican Technology

Regional Interests and Military Needs

The Machine in the New Nation

Engines of Change:Resources

Engines of Change:Agriculture and “Farmer Artisans”

The American Middle Period, 1800-1865

Railroads, Markets, and Mills: The North and the West

The Transportation Revolution

The Mechanization of Northern Society

Harper’s Ferry Armory and the New Technology

The Factory as Republican Community

Housework and Industrialization

The American System of Manufactures

Emulation and Invention

Engines of Change

Rockdale: A Case Study In Early Industrialization

Response to Industrialization, 1865-1900

The Machine Age, 1877-1920Topics in People and a Nation

Special Areas of Focus in Making America Textbook

Foundation for Industrialization (MA)

Railroads and Economic Growth (MA)

Entrepreneurs and Industrial Transformation (MA)

Railroads, Mining, and Agribusiness (MA)

The Vitality and Turmoil of Urban Life, 1877-1920 (PN)

The New Urban Environment (MA)

Agricultural Distress and Political Upheaval (MA)

Networks of PowerComparative International View

Sewing Machines, Reapers and Bicycles

Material Culture: Furniture and Meat Processing

Karl Marx and Technology

Twentieth Century America, 1900-1945

Prosperity Decade (1920s)

Henry Ford and Mass Production

Boss Kettering

Building the American Highway System

Technology and Masculinity: Boys and Their Toys

Social History of the Telephone

The Culture of Electricity

Twentieth Century America, 1945-Present

Society During the Postwar Boom, 1945-1970

Successful TechnologiesNuclear Guidance Systems

Failed Technologies Videodiscs

Questions?

Thanks to My Advisors, Dr. Robert A. Rosenberg and Dr. Paul Israel

of the Thomas Edison Papers, For Their Generosity With Their Time and Knowledge.

Completion of The MA RequirementsSimply Would Not Have Been Possible

Without Their Kindness and Understantng.

Resources Consulted and CitationsIncluded on the Following Slides

Textbooks Consulted in 1998: Now Kindle Print Replicas (2013)

•(MA) Miller, Egerton, Berkin, Cherny, Gormly, and Woestman. Making America: A History of the United States, Brief. 6 edition. Wadsworth Publishing, 2013.

•(PN) Norton, Bailey, Sheriff, Blight, Chudacoff, and Logevall. Cengage Advantage Books: A People and a Nation: A History of the United States. 9 edition. Wadsworth Publishing, 2013.

•(EV) Clark, Rieser, Boyer, Kett, Hawley, Salisbury, Sitkoff, and Woloch. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Concise. 6 edition. Wadsworth Publishing, 2013.

Sources: P. Thomas CarrollOnline Digital History Pioneer

H-Net Resources

Sources: SHOT Resources

Web Resources for the History of the Cold War: David Hounshell

Example of Museum Exhibit Engines of Change at the Smithsonian

Sources: Stanford UniversityHistory & Philosophy of Science & Technology

Historiography: The Role of Interpretation

Bijker, Wiebe E, Thomas Parke Hughes, and T. J Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.

Smith, Merritt Roe. Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

Staudenmaier, John M. Technology’s Storytellers Reweaving the Human Fabric. Cambridge, Mass: Society for the History of Technology and the MIT Press, 1985.

European Background For Colonial Technologies

Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.

Pacey, Arnold. The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.

Relevant Readings: 1492-1770Labor History & Native American History

Innes, Stephen. Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-century Springfield. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War. Madison Books, 2012.

McGaw, Judith A. Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things from the Colonial Era to 1850. Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Relevant Readings: 1763-1800

Kasson, John F. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.

Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology the Challenge of Change. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1977.

Emulation and Invention. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008.

Hindle, Brooke, and Steven D Lubar. Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986.

Relevant Readings: 1800-1865

Cowan, Ruth. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Heart to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Kasson, John F. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.

Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology the Challenge of Change. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1977.

Emulation and Invention. ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008.Hindle, Brooke, and Steven D Lubar. Engines of Change:

The American Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986.

More Relevant Readings: 1800-1865

Hounshell, David A, and American Council of Learned Societies. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 the Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

McGaw, Judith A. Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801-1885. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Relevant Readings: 1865-1900

Giedion, S, and American Council of Learned Societies. “Mechanization Takes Command,” 1948.

Hounshell, David A, and American Council of Learned Societies. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 the Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Hughes, Thomas Parke. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

More Relevant Readings: 1865-1900

Kasson, John F. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.

Rosenberg, Nathan. Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Relevant Reading: 1900-Today

Hounshell, David A, and American Council of Learned Societies. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 the Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Leslie, Stuart W. Boss Kettering. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Seely, Bruce Edsall. Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

Fischer, Claude S. America Calling: a Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

More Relevant Readings: 1900-Today

Graham, Margaret B. W. RCA and the VideoDisc: The Business of Research. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

MacKenzie, Donald A. Inventing Accuracy: a Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.

Nye, David E. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.

Rothschild, Joan. Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology. New York: Pergamon Press, 1983.

Smith, Stephanie. “Boys and Their Toys?: Masculinity, Class, and Technology in America (review).” Technology and Culture 43, no. 3 (2002): 634–635.

Photo Credits(Book Covers From LibraryThing.com)

Cliff. Men of Progress, August 26, 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3406981893/.

“File:CRVDisc.jpg.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CRVDisc.jpg.

“File:Henry Ford 1919.jpg.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_ford_1919.jpg.

“File:Time-magazine-cover-charles-kettering.jpg.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed July 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time-magazine-cover-charles-kettering.jpg.

Fleischmann, Sandy. SDIM8501 Telecosm Conference, Nicholas Carr, June 4, 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandyfleischmann/2551295514/.