Volume 22 (2016)

This article studies infrastructure building as an instrument to lure Yugoslavia into the Western orbit following the Tito-Stalin rift. Foreign aid flowed to Yugoslavia for infrastructural development as part of a broader set of flows that aimed at military support, economic growth and social development. The empirical cases presented here uncover the broader aims embedded in road and electricity network design, the conflicts provoked by their realization, and the material realities in which they resulted. Connecting Yugoslav networks into wider webs also benefited neighbouring Balkan states on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Everyday infrastructure technologies thus allowed Yugoslavia to seize the opportunity to strengthen its material networks, without fully entering the Western nor leaving the Eastern camp entirely. 

The introduction, development and decline of tramway systems in Latin American countries has usually been studied from a technical, commercial or an urban growth perspective. As an attempt to diversify and explore new angles, the following article will look at how different discourses and representations contributed to shape the way in which inhabitants perceived and adapted to these technologies. We propose that these discourses and representations shifted from idealistic and utopian images, produced by a small elite interested in the introduction of these devices, to a more democratic and critical production of meaning that arose from its everyday use. For this purpose, this article reviews existent studies on tramway history and combines them with other less visited sources from Spanish and Brazilian literature.

Quartz clock technologies played a central role in twentieth century timekeeping, telecommunication and society at large. This article explores the process of the invention and construction of the first quartz clock by Warren Marrison and his associate researchers at AT&T, who needed the clock to monitor the corporation’s self-maintained crystal-controlled frequency standard. The frequency standard was deemed essential for the needs of electronic telecommunication in the 1920s. Based on research notebooks and contemporary publications, this article examines the origins of the technology in the corporation’s earlier tuning-fork-frequency-standard, which included the first electronic clock. Providing a detailed examination of the various electronic methods used by Marrison and his colleagues and their origins, the article examines the way the modern, scientifically educated inventor, working within a large industrial laboratory and enjoying its rich material and intellectual resources, collected, combined and adjusted the resources at his disposal to produce novelty.

This paper describes the development of the Russian iron industry from the repeal of serfdom in 1861 to the First World War. It continues previous research on Russian iron production from the beginning of the eighteenth century and completes an account of the industry during the years of Tsarist rule. The paper explains that although bar iron remained as the preferred forgeable ferrous material in Russia up to the mid-1890s and the Urals remained as the largest regional producer, three significant events occurred during the middle of that decade through changes in technology and industrial location: bar iron production was surpassed by that of steel which then retained its dominant position; the south of the Empire (but chiefly present-day Ukraine) emerged as the majority regional producer of pig iron; and, as a consequence, the production of coke-smelted pig iron surpassed that from charcoal-based technologies although both charcoal and firewood remained as important fuels in the Ural region. Furthermore, Ukrainian ironworks were far larger and more modern than most of their Uralian counterparts.
The paper concludes that although Russian pig iron production was far outstripped by that of America, Germany and Britain immediately prior to the First World War, the industry had accumulated many years of experience in the production of a high-quality product, the majority of its infrastructure was modern, and its rate of expansion had been fast. The Soviet government consequently inherited a long-established skill- and asset-base in 1917 which, although damaged by the ravages of civil war from 1917–1921, provided a foundation for rapid expansion in the 1930s.

Finn Brunton
SPAM: A Shadow History of the Internet. (Martijn Grooten) 139

Amy Sue Bix
Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women. (Karin Zachmann) 140

William Thomas
Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940–1960. (Hermione Giffard) 143

Nick Bostrom
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. (Colin Garvey) 144

Ronald R. Kline
The Cybernetics Moment: or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age. (Christopher Miles) 146

Galit P. Wellner
A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies, Meanings, and Becoming. (Petter Wulff ) 149

Melody Davis
Women’s Views: The Narrative Stereograph in Nineteenth-Century America. ( Julie Wosk) 151

Gisela Parak
Photographs of Environmental Phenomena: Scientific Images in the Wake of Environmental Awareness, USA 1860s-1970s.(Susanne Leikam) 154

Andrea Wulf
The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science. ( John Z. Langrish) 157

Paul R. Josephson
Fish Sticks, Sports Bras and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologies. (Nina Lorkowski) 159

Alan Meyer
Weekend Pilots: Technology, Masculinity, and Private Aviation in Postwar America. (Peter L. Jakab) 161

Darryl Cressman
Building Musical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam: The Concertgebouw. (Bart Tritsmans) 163

Alexander Klose
The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think. (Artemis Yagou) 165

Clive Edwards (ed.)
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design. (Sebnem Timur Ogut) 166

James Rodger
Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Fleming Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern  Meteorology. (Carola Dahlke) 168

Robert B. Campenot
Animal Electricity: How We Learned That the Body and Brain Are Electric Machines. (John Z. Langrish) 170

David N. Lucsko
Junkyards, Gearheads, and Rust: Salvaging the Automotive Past. (Ben Bradley) 172