A Social History of American Technology

Ruth Schwartz Cowan

ISBN 10: 0195046056 / ISBN 13: 9780195046052

Editore: Oxford Univ Pr, 1996

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2nd printing edition. 352 pages. 9.75x6.25x1.00 inches. In Stock.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: A Social History of American Technology
• Editore: Oxford Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1996
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0195046056
• ISBN 13: 9780195046052
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: Brand New
• Peso: 0,5 chilogrammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

For over 250 years American technology has been regarded as a unique hallmark of American culture and an important factor in American prosperity. Despite this American history has rarely been told from the perspective of the history of technology. A Social History of American Technology fills
this gap by surveying the history of American technology from the tools used by the earliest native inhabitants to the technological systems -- cars and computers, aircraft and antibiotics -- we are familiar with today. Cowan makes use of the most recent scholarship to explain how the unique
characteristics of American cultures and American geography have affected the technologies that have been invented, manufactured, and used throughout the years. She also focuses on the key individuals and ideas that have shaped important technological developments. The text explains how various
technologies have affected the ways in which Americans work, govern, cook, transport, communicate, maintain their health, and reproduce. Cowan demonstrates that technological change has always been closely related to social development, and explores the multiple, complex relationships that have
existed between such diverse social agents as households and businesses, the scientific community and the defense establishment, artists and inventors. Divided into three sections -- colonial America, industrialization, the 20th century -- A Social History of American Technology is ideal for courses
in American social and economic history, as a correlated text for the American history survey, as well as for courses that focus on the history of American technology. It offers students the unique opportunity to learn not only how profoundly technological change has affected the American way of
life, but how profoundly the American way of life has affected technology.

Recensione

In brief, American historians of technology have focused on the social and economic contexts and implications of technology and this book is a very useful summary of their endeavours./david J. Jeremy Manchester Metropolitan University/Labour History Review vol 64/31 1999.

Cowan offers a reliable and thoughtfully selected review of the dynamics of invention and innovation which generated an increasing pace of technical change and the constitution of vast technological systems in the United States ... Professor Cowan has met the challenge of synthesis with a sure hand, fashioning a text that will have lasting value for students and scholars alike. (Philip Scranton, Business History)