In this section, we will be presenting books authored by members of ICOHTEC, or other outstanding works on history of technology. If you wish to see your book, or something you would like to share with others, feel free to send your proposal through this link.
Real Academia de Ingeniería
+ Institución Fernando el Católico + Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza
Year
2011
Binding
Hardcover with jacket, 18 x 24 cm, 832 pages
Language:
Spanish
ISBN-13:
978-84-9911-151-3
From the back cover:
The assimilation and development of various technological disciplines and the corresponding heritage legacy is a main concern in this volume. The introductory essay deal with topics as “know-how and knowledge: technology and engineering sciences”, were the precedence of the steam engine over the thermodynamics or the construction with iron over the numerical and graphical techniques of structural analysis are pointed out. The first seven out of its sixteen chapters are devoted to the basic languages of technology: langue, here Spanish; drawing (styles in: cartography, architecture and civil engineering, and machines); mathematics as an indicator in the compromise between theory and practice, and the materials taught both for military and civil professions related to engineering. Moreover, there is a chapter devoted to the difficult introduction of the metric system in Spain. The second part (nine chapters) is devoted to different technical and scientific developments, which in turn can be seen as structured into three blocks. The first comprises five chapters centered in applied mechanics, ranging from the mechanics of continuous mediums, up to the theory of machines and combustion engines. This part includes contributions devoted to the design of structures built with iron or steel, and a panorama of Spanish bridges. Although from very different perspectives, the second block considers two substantive branches of physics that become mature during the Nineteenth century: thermodynamics and electricity. Finally, the third block deals with the industrial landscape, more properly with the factories, and the design of the new bourgeois city. Factories and bourgeois cities will share emerging concerns (mobility, safety, hygiene, etc.), reaching very different degrees of development. The volume also contains an annex dedicated to a unique and interesting album of drawings of machines presented by the Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona at the World Exhibition in Vienna (1873). Written by 23 co-authors, it is a lavishly illustrated volume.
This book sets the questions of energy and the environment in the North in the global context and further addresses historical developments, views on energy taxation and tariffs, and effects of EU energy policy. Climate change appears more frequently than ever on the top of global and national policy agendas. In the current situation traditional environmental concern and environmental policy may not suffice in the face of the global challenge as manifested by climate change and the depletion of fossil energy resources. But as new data comes to light, new energy policies and changes in economic structures are crucial for putting into action global climate policy. Crucial tasks in environmental policy are the sustainable utilisation of natural resources and the conservation of natural and human-made habitats. One of the areas of the world where this comes into play the most is in the Nordic countries. Northern societies are predominantly high tech, high consumption and high energy supply societies. And with the transition from older energy sources (wood for heating and stream water for power production) to newer ones (oil and nuclear energy) discussions on the environmental impact have led to public and corporate action. The Northern countries have been at the forefront in finding sustainable alternatives to solve conflicts arising from the rise in energy needs. However, these countries have taken different pathways with different policies in attempting to achieve this. As the needs and concerns from climate change arise, a Northern dimension, involving policies that contrast to European and global trends, emerges. Energy, Policy, and the Environment: Modeling Sustainable Development for the North explores that dimension.
Contents:
Part I Energy, Policy and the Environment in the North
1
Introduction: Energy, Policy and the Environment:
Modeling Sustainable Development for the North by Marja Järvelä and Sirkku Juhola
2
Climate Change and Energy Issues in the North by Marja Järvelä, Sirkku Juhola, and Margareta Wihersaari
3
Farewell to Self-sufficiency: Finland and the Globalization
of Fossil Fuels by Timo Myllyntaus
4
Trends in EU Energy Policy 1995–2007 by Susanna Horn and Angelina Korsunova
5
The Legacy of the Oil Industry in Tomsk Oblast:
Contradictions Among Socio-Economic Development,
Political Legitimacy and Corporate Profits by David Dusseault
Part II Challenges of National Energy Policy and the Environment
6
Innovative Democracy and Renewable Energy Strategies:
A Full-Scale Experiment in Denmark 1976–2010 by Frede Hvelplund
7
Disregarding Wind Power: Introduction to Finnish
Feed-in Tariff Policy by Miikka Salo
8
Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in
Swedish Forests: Promoting Forestry, Capturing Carbon,
and Fueling Transports by E. Carina H. Keskitalo, Jenny Eklöf, and Christer Nordlund
Part III Modeling Local Sustainable Development for the North
9
Energy Policy or Forest Policy or Rural Policy? Transition
from Fossil to Bioenergy in Finnish Local Heating Systems by Taru Peltola
10
Bioenergy Production and Social Sustainability
on Finnish Farms by Suvi Huttunen
11
Energy Sustainability: The Role of Small Local Communities by Pia Laborgne
The historical and cultural aspects of the Cold War have been much studied, yet its physical manifestations - its buildings and structures - have remained largely unknown. To the great landscape historian W G Hoskins writing in the 1950s they were profoundly alien : 'England of the ...electric fence, of the high barded wire around some devilment... Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men, and the politicians.' Now these survivors of the Cold War are, in their turn, disappearing fast, like medieval monasteries and bastioned forts before them - only with more limited scope for regeneration and reuse. this book looks at these monuments of the Cold War. It is heavily illustrated with photographs of the sites as they survive today, archive photographs (many previously unpublished), modern and historic air photographs, site and building plans, and specially commissioned reconstruction drawings. It also looks at the installations within the military and political context of what was one of the defining phenomena of the late late 20th century.
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. The Cold War: military and political background
3. MAD - 'Mutually Assured Destruction'
4. The United States 'umbrella'
5. Early warning and detection
6. Warning of ballistic missile attack
7. The response - air defence
8. Observation and monitoring
9. The home front
10. The 'white heat' of defence technology
11. The legacy of the Cold War - an international perspective
Thinking through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History is a collection offering global perspectives on the intersections of mind and environment across a variety of discourses – from history and politics to the visual arts and architecture. Its geographical coverage extends to locations in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. A primary aim of the volume is, through the presentation of research cases, to gather an appropriate methodological arsenal for the study of environmental history. Among its concerns are interdisciplinarity, eco-biography, the relationship of political and environmental history and culturally varied interpretations and appreciations of space – from Bangladesh to the Australian outback. The approaches of the indigenous peoples of Lapland, Mount Kilimanjaro and elsewhere to their environments are scrutinised in several chapters. Balancing survival – both in terms of resource exploitation and of response to natural catastrophes – and environmental protection is shown to be an issue for more and less developed societies, as illustrated by chapters on Sami reindeer herding, Sudanese cattle husbandry and flooding and water resource-use in several parts of Europe. As the title suggests, the volume exposes the lenses – tinted by culture and history – through which humans consider environments; and also foregrounds the importance of rigorous ‘thinking through’ of the lessons of environmental history and the challenges of the environmental future.
This study offers both an account of twentieth-century technology in the Netherlands and a view of Dutch history through the lens of technology. It describes the trajectory of modernization through technology in certain characteristically Dutch contexts—including the omnipresence of water, the pervasiveness of urbanization coupled with a high-tech agricultural sector, and the legacy of colonialism—but at the same time makes it clear that Dutch struggles over technology choices, infrastructure development, mass production, and the role of government are comparable to the experience of any Western industrialized country.
Reviews:
"In this thoughtful and synthetic work, contested modernization yields a fresh interpretation of twentieth-century Dutch history. Changes in technology, consumption, war, the nation state, colonialism—even the efforts of activist Dutch housewives--are clearly in view. This is an account alive to the nuances of the distinctive Dutch experience with modernity." Thomas J. Misa, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, coeditor of Urban Machinery
ICOHTEC sessions dealing with technology and the environment between 1998 and 2000 laid the foundation for the creation of Envirotech, a special interest group in the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History. The Illusory Boundary is an exciting collection of essays coming from Enivrotech and, in a very real sense, stems from the pioneering sessions in technology and environment at ICOHTEC symposia.
The view that nature and technology inhabit totally different, even opposite, spheres persists across time and cultures. Most people would consider an English countryside or a Louisiana bayou to be "natural," though each is to an extent the product of technology. Pollution, widely thought to be a purely man-made phenomenon, results partly from natural processes. All around us, things from the natural world are brought into the human world. At what point do we consider them part of culture rather than nature? And does such a distinction illuminate our world or obscure its workings? [more]
Contributors: Peter Coates * Craig E. Colten * Stephen H. Cutcliffe * Hugh S. Gorman * Betsy Mendelsohn * Joy Parr * Peter C. Perdue * Sara B. Pritchard * Martin Reuss * William D. Rowley * Edmund Russell * Joel A. Tarr * Ann Vileisis * James C. Williams * Thomas Zeller
Science for Welfare and Warfare investigates the establishment of state-led science and technology in the economic and industrial development of Cold War Sweden. Written by Swedish historians the book examines how the state gradually took on a new role during and after the Second World War, how this role was justified and how it thoroughly transformed the Swedish society and economy over a few decades. In virtually all sectors of society, government committees were assigned to survey the needs and propose reforms, new institutions were formed to house and provide the necessary expertise, and large-scale technological programmes were launched. These comprehensive reforms resulted in the strong state that came to characterize Cold War Sweden – a state consisting of both welfare institutions and warfare machinery. The contributing authors demonstrate that science- and technology-minded actors by and large both designed and carried out these reforms. Science for Welfare and Warfare describes these architects, economists, engineers and scientists with ambitions to plan and build the society as reform technocrats. In order to realize their beliefs and visions, the reform technocrats needed reasons grand enough to justify a strong state commitment. The reasons they referred to were either to create welfare or to maintain national independence – or both.
This book is the only comprehensive study on the German Autobahn in English language. Guided by the theory of infrastructure the book addresses the traffic policy in the Weimar Republic and in the NS dictatorship and focuses on various regional lines, as
Bonn – Cologne, Frankfurt – Heidelberg and Munich – Salzburg.
2000
Dangerous Energy. The archaeology of gunpowder and military explosives manufacture
This book comprises a national study of Britain’s explosives industry and provides a framework for identification of its industrial archaeology and social history. Few monuments of gunpowder manufacture survive in Britain from the Middle Ages, although its existence is documented. Late 17th-century water-powered works are identifiable but sparse. In the later 18th century, the industry was transformed by state acquisition of key factories, notably at Faversham and at Waltham Abbey. In the mid-19th century developments in Britain paralleled those in continental Europe and in America, namely a shift to production on an industrial scale related to advances in armaments technology. The urgency and large-scale demands of the two world wars brought state-directed or state-led solutions to explosives production in the 20th century. A chapter also discusses the evolution of rocket test beds in England. The book's concluding section looks at planning, preservation, conservation and presentation in relation to prospective future uses of these sites.
The Gunpowder Symposium of 1994... "was particularly satisfying in that it provided an unprecedented opportunity for the international exchange of ideas and information. Covering a time period ranging from the mid-l5th century to the 20th century, the papers explored the sensitive technical and scientific skills essential to gunpowder's manufacture and use and its relationship to the development of weaponry, mining, and civil engineering... riveting, even for non-specialists"
Molly Berger in Technology and Culture (July, 1995)
Reviews in scholarly journals
By John Francis Guilmartin. Technology and Culture - Volume 39, Number 3, July 1998, pp. 547-549.
Reviews from Amazon:
Gunpowder in history at its best. "As an anthology of 24 essays submitted at the 22nd International Symposium of ICOHTEC in 1994, this book represents a real mine of information on black powder production and employment. The academic rank of the various entries is not perfectly even but the overall level is more than satisfactory. It is, as a matter of fact, a must for the serious military historian working up to the end of the XIX century." Marco Morin (December 1, 2003)
