International Committee for the History of Technology

Editorial

Dear Colleagues and Friends,A long-standing member of ICOHTEC, Professor Tatsuya Kobayashi, passed away last month; to keep him in mind please find an obituary written by our President. The Newsletter continues to publish reports on the development of the history of technology in the countries of our members. Thanks to Thomas Kaiserfeld, this edition informs about Sweden. Most of us will meet in Victoria, BC in August; thus it might be interesting to know about new books of ICOHTEC members, published since our last conference; please find short comments in addition to bibliographic information. In 1968 ICOHTEC was found; to celebrate this and to think about ICOHTEC an anniversary session was organised by Wolfhard Weber. It will be a pleasure to meet you in Victoria.
Best wishes
Yours Stefan Poser

Content
I. ICOHTEC
II. Swedish History of Technology, a review
III. Conferences and series of lectures
IV. Recently Published Books

I. ICOHTEC

Obituary

I was very sorry to learn from his wife that Professor Tatsuya Kobayashi passed away on May 12th 2008 after a sudden heart attack. I have written Mrs. Kobayashi a letter of condolence telling her that all ICOHTEC members and friends share her sorrow. Professor Kobayashi was a long-standing ICOHTEC member and a member of the ICOHTEC executive committee for many years. Apart from this he supported ICOHTEC in many other ways. ICOHTEC members learned a lot from him about Japanese history of technology and it was always interesting to compare Japan with other industrialized countries. But apart from his scholarly achievements we will remember Professor Kobayashi as a kind and helpful person; it was always a pleasure to be in his company.Hans-Joachim Braun

I.1 ICOHTEC 40th Anniversary Session
Chair: Wolfhard WeberForty years are a quite long time, in which the conditions of scientists and their research in the history of technology changed tremendously. Thus ICOHTEC takes its 40th anniversary as a reason to analyse the past, to discuss the contemporary development of the society and to think about the future. Our speakers are the past Presidents, the President and the Secretary General of ICOHTEC:

Angus Buchanan (Bath University):
From Cold War Peacemakers to Environmental Crusaders: The Development of ICOHTEC over Forty Years

Carroll Pursell (Macquarie University, Sydney): ICOHTEC – Some Recollections and Observations

Hans-Joachim Braun (Helmut-Schmidt-University, Hamburg):
Giant and Dwarf? The SHOT-ICOHTEC Relationship and Other Matters

Timo Myllyntaus (University of Turku): ICOHTEC: Today and Tomorrow

I.2 Books of ICOHTEC Members - Bibliography 2007-2008

Brandstetter, Thomas; Troitzsch, Ulrich (eds.): Hugo Theodor Horwitz, Das Relais-Prinzip. = Schriften zur Technikgeschichte. Löcker-Verlag, Wien 2008. The book is dedicated to an innovative Austrian historian of technology, Hugo Theodor Horwitz (1882-1941), who was murdered in an NS-concentration camp. Seven papers of the author are combined with a biography, a study of his opus from a historical point of view and a bibliography.

Braun, Hans-Joachim (ed.): Gesundheit durch Technik? Technik und Medizin seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. = Die Technikgeschichte als Vorbild der modernen Technik, Schriftenreihe der Georg-Agricola-Gesellschaft, vol. 32, Agricola-Gesellschaft, Freiberg 2007. The authors of this sampler (proceedings of a congress of the German Georg-Agricola-Society for the Advancement of the History of Science and Technology) analyse the development of technology-based medicine since the end of the 19th century. Especially since the 1970/80s the application of technology in medicine has become more and more important. The far-reaching impacts of technology on the development of medicine are discussed.

Braun, Hans-Joachim (ed.): Geschichte des Schiffbaus. = Die Technikgeschichte als Vorbild der modernen Technik, Schriftenreihe der Georg-Agricola-Gesellschaft, vol. 33. In print: Agricola-Gesellschaft, Freiberg August 2008. The book contributes to the history of shipbuilding and shipyards in Germany. The main emphasis is on ocean-going vessels of the post-war period, when the size and production of ships was growing impressively.

Farrenkopf, Michael a.o. (eds.): Vom Entwurf zum Depositum. Über den wissenschaftlichen Umgang mit dem zeichnerischen Nachlas der Industrie. Das architektonische Werk der Architekten Fritz Schupp und Martin Kremmer. Bochum 2007. The book is dedicated to the scientific approach to cultural heritage: How to deal with the legacy of architects and engineers who erected industrial sites? This volume is the first out of three volumes on the architects Fritz Schupp und Martin Kremmer who had been rather important in buildings for the German mining industry.

Hård, Mikael; Misa, Thomas J. (eds.): Urban Machinery. Inside Modern European Cities. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2008. The book investigates the technological dimension of modern European cities, describing the most dramatic changes in the urban environment over the last century and a half. Written by leading scholars from eight countries, the book views the European city as a complex construct entangled with technology. The chapters examine the increasing similarity of modern cities and their technical infrastructures (including communication, energy, industrial, and transportation systems) and the resulting tension between homogenization and cultural differentiation.

Jones, Stephen K.: In Trevithick's Tracks. = Brunel in South Wales, vol. 1. Tempus, Stroud 2005, reprinted 2006, 2007. This is the first in a series of three volumes examining the achievements and legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in south Wales (Reaching into Mid and north Wales, Bristol and the borders), beginning with the historic background of Merthyr ironworks and Richard Trevithick and covering the involvement of Brunel in sourcing the chains for the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the development of the Taff Vale Railway.

Jones, Stephen K.: Communications and Coal. = Brunel in South Wales, vol. 2. Tempus, Stroud 2006, reprinted 2007. The Brunel bicentenary event has raised the profile of the engineer, but much of the spotlight on his achievements has fallen outside Wales. This series attempts to address and this volume details his broad gauge railway work and his associations with other engineers such as Stephenson, against the background of local industrial history. Volume 3 will hopefully be published next year.

König, Wolfgang: Wilhelm II. und die Moderne. Der Kaiser und die technisch-industrielle Welt. Schöningh, Paderborn u.a. 2007. The book's focus is on Wilhelm’s II biography, and his technological and industrial interests and activities. It deals with the castle, yachts, trains, automobiles, the radio, the airship and the airplane, the navy, and the construction of canals and storage dams against the high floods. It discusses the Kaiserreich's modern and anti-modern tendencies and Wilhelm’s role in them.

König, Wolfgang; Schneider, Helmuth (eds.): Die technikhistorische Forschung in Deutschland von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart. KasselUniversity Press, Kassel 2007. The sampler consists of three parts. The first one is dealing with recent authors who are relevant for the history of technology, e.g. Johann Beckmann and Karl Marx. The second and the third part are dedicated to overviews of German research in the history of technology; they include examples of research on ancient cultures as well as on contemporary times.

Kurrer, Karl-Eugen: The History of the Theory of Structures. From Arch Analysis to Computational Mechanics. Ernst und Sohn, Berlin 2008. Kurrers compendium of the history of static’s and theory of structures discusses the development from the Renaissance period until today, from early attempts to analyse building construction by the help of mathematics up to computational mechanics.

Maier, Helmut: Forschung als Waffe. Rüstungsforschung in der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft und das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Metallforschung 1900 bis 1945/48. = Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus, hrsg. von Reinhard Rürup und Wolfgang Schieder im Auftrag der Präsidentenkommission der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, vol. 16, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2007. Before and during the First World War, cooperation between science and military intensified significantly. After the war, armament research continued illegally. The example of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute of Metal Research reveals, how the techno-sciences mushroomed up during National Socialism, becoming a crucial element of the German war machine.

Maier, Helmut (ed.): Gemeinschaftsforschung, Bevollmächtigte und der Wissenstransfer. Die Rolle der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im System kriegsrelevanter Forschung des Nationalsozialismus. = Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus, hrsg. von Reinhard Rürup und Wolfgang Schieder im Auftrag der Präsidentenkommission der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, vol. 17, Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2007. The "success" of German armament research during National Socialism was based on a system of inter-institutional advisory committees. Often, directors of Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes became leading figures in this system. The anthology presents eleven studies about the Kaiser-Wilhelm Society in the military-industrial-academic complex.

Naumann, Friedrich: Georgius Agricola. Berggelehrter, Naturforscher, Humanist. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007. Georg Agricola (1494 – 1555), the well-known founder of mineralogy and mining science and author of "De re metallica libri XII" was the most influential author on mining for centuries to come. But he was also a physician, mayor of the town Chemnitz, diplomat and constant advocate of peace. Friedrich Naumann gives a useful survey of the life and achievements of this eminent scholar.

Royen, Harry van: Cette usine nommé la blanche. De brouwerij van de abdij Sint-Sixtus en de Trappist Westvleteren (1839- ). Alveringem, Westhoek Monumenten, 2007, 64 p. (no ISBN or ISSN). The book describes the history of the brewery of the Trappist Abbey of Sint Sixtus in Belgium, internationally renowned for their own production of abbey ale since 1839. The abbey of Sint Sixtus is one of 7 Trappist monasteries who still brew their own beer. In this monograph the abbey archives have been screened to write the first general history on their brewery.

Wosk, Julie: Alluring Androids, Robot Women, and Electronic Eves. Fort Schuyler Press, New York. Date of Publication: August 2008. The idea of artificial women who seem alive has fascinated artists, photographers, filmmakers, video game designers, and robotics engineers. Based on a New York museum exhibit curated by Julie Wosk, this book with a lengthy introductory essay features compelling illustrations – many in colour – of facsimile females from past to present.

II. Swedish History of Technology, a review

Thomas Kaiserfeld
Dep. of History of Science and Technology, Royal Inst. of Technology, Stockholm
thomas@kth.se

Introduction

Swedish history of technology may not be an oxymoron by definition, but is still a concept laden with such an unconformity as to make it virtually impossible to handle in a stringent manner. In Sweden, research problems connected to technologies of the past are pursued within such a wide range of institutions and intellectual fields that it is a hopeless task indeed to give a full account without missing important themes, topics and projects. The task is not simplified if one is to include all those historians of technology interested in empirical material that can be denoted Swedish in one way of another. Thus, the following is not to be regarded as a full report, but rather a superficial and personally biased review with ambitions set far too high. [1]
These problems of abundance, surely surfacing for anyone who wants to compose a survey of Swedish history of technology, are of course to be viewed as favourable. They are an indication of the institutional and intellectual multitude of history of technology in this country. The reasons for these developments over the past decades can only be speculated upon. The institutional spread can be attributed to strengthening interests in research at museums and authorities such as The Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) or The Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten). The intellectual spread can be attributed to traditional interests in history of technology in fields such as archaeology or economic history as well as centrally developed support for interdisciplinary research environments and projects, investments where history of technology are often seen as worthwhile to take on board.

Education

In Swedish compulsory schools, history of technology is to be an important part of courses in technology according to a centrally formulated syllabus. [2] In practice, however, courses in technology deal far more with scientific principles and construction problems than with historical and present cultures of technology. Efforts to change this approach can only be successful by radical transformation of teacher training, a venture still to be launched by Swedish historians of technology.
History of technology in higher education is mostly taught at engineering schools. Courses are given at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Luleå University of Technology, Faculty of Engineering at Lund University, Mälardalen University etc. The courses given are typically survey courses, either structured thematically or chronologically.
Apart from courses exclusively devoted to history of technology, problems and literature from the field also arise in a number of courses given in other fields such as history of ideas, economic history, archaeology, history of architecture, history etc. Especially, themes from history of technology are enrolled in courses in the broader STS-field. Thus, history of technology exists in a larger number of courses in Swedish higher education than can be deduced from course titles only.
Despite the number of courses given in history of technology, it is usually hard to attract students to these classes. Engineering curricula are usually crammed and students are often enough instructed to add other engineering or science topics before turning to humanities and social sciences. One notable and important exception is engineering programme “Systems in technology and society” launched at Uppsala University in 2002 and focusing both on technology and its social aspects including adequate measures of history of technology. Where courses in history of technology are followed by a larger part of the student body, there are usually centrally coordinated efforts to encourage them to study history of technology, for instance at Lund University.
Important instrument to improve teaching potential are good textbooks. Fortunately, there are at least two such educational instruments in Swedish that can be used in higher education: Prof. Staffan Hansson’s Den skapande människan (first publ. 1987, 2002) and Prof. Bosse Sundin’s Den kupade handen (first publ. 1991, 2006). Both these textbooks have been used thoroughly by Swedish teachers in the history of technology on different levels of the educational system.
That history of technology generally speaking has a weak position in the different education programmes offered by engineering schools throughout Sweden is perhaps best shown by the lack of undergraduate programmes and master’s programmes exclusively devoted to the field. Launching master’s programmes in history of technology is another future challenge for Swedish historians of technology.

Research

Swedish history of technology is decisively research oriented. Different research institutions including the Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Lund University, Luleå University of Technology, Uppsala University, University of Gothenburg etc have been very successful in conquering research funding for projects involving history of technology. Research in history of technology is thus pursued at different institutions also reflecting a vast multitude of research themes. In some of these, approaches from history of technology are central. In other they play a supporting role, although still clearly visible.
For instance history of technology is important in many studies on work environment, especially changes in working conditions. In addition, programmes in energy policy have often enough had a component of history of technology. Moreover, history of technology is to some extent related to topics in innovation management as well as research policy. Other important research themes where history of technology often is viewed as an important supporting discipline include history of science and environmental history.
More specifically, history of technology has been of central interest in a rather recently terminated decade-long effort to supply alternative models for the interaction between science, technology and industry, the so-called VTI-programme. The programme was successfully launched in the late 1990s by one of the founding fathers of history of technology in Sweden, Prof. Svante Lindqvist, who managed it as a joint venture between Department of History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology and Department of History of Ideas and Department of Business Studies at Uppsala University resulting in circa 20 PhDs as well as a number of anthologies and related articles.
Systems and networks of different kinds have historically attracted attention from Swedish historians of technology and continue to do so to this day. This is especially valid for energy and transportation systems. Another historically important and presently still very lively theme within Swedish history of technology is research in industrial heritage. A third theme with heavy historical weight that continues to make strong imprints on Swedish history of technology is history of science, some years ago strengthened with a donated professorial chair at Uppsala University.
Other more recently surfacing themes in the history of technology include media technologies as well as the mediation of knowledge in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, historical research on the exploitation of the polar areas are expanding in Sweden and includes strong components of history of technology as do indeed research of urban environments, not the least efforts connected to research in sustainability and resilience. In this vein is also an on-going research programme on the history of biofuels at Umeå University.
Research in Swedish history of technology is to a large extent financed by soft money provided by research councils, foundations as well as agencies and other authorities. This implies that history of technology is exposed to short-term trends in the Swedish research sector, for example including regionalization and interdisciplinary efforts. Nevertheless, historians of technology have often enough proved not only well adapted to new trends, but also very able in using possibilities to create new opportunities. Thus, over the past years, important studies of regional systems of innovation and technology have been produced over for instance Dalecarlia and Northern Sweden. [3]
Another important trend is internationalization. In comparison to many other fields in humanities and social sciences, Swedish history of technology has been very successful in reaching out and creating lasting projects in cooperation with scholars from abroad, especially Europe. When the European Science Foundation made a call for applications to the EUROCORES-programme “Inventing Europe”, the Swedish Research Council funded one collaborative research projects under the management of Prof. Arne Kaijser at the Royal Institute of Technology, “Europe Goes Critical”, and one more research project connected to “European Ways of Life in the ‘American Century’”.
In addition to research themes, projects and programmes pursued by Swedish historians of technology, it is important to point out that much research in Sweden is achieved by Ph.D. students enrolled in graduate programmes. There are graduate programmes in the history of technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology and Luleå University of Technology. In addition to these programmes, there are strong STS-programmes at for instance Linköping University and programmes in history of science at for instance the universities of Lund, Uppsala, Umeå and Gothenburg well suited for advanced students in the history of technology as well.

Museums

It is no exaggeration to claim that Swedish history of technology was born out of museums and an interest in industrial history. The field was introduced in engineering education in the 1960s by the first director of The National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Torsten Althin. There are still close connections between the museum sphere and different institutions of research and higher education in Sweden. This is evident not only from projects pursued at for instance the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, founded and managed by Prof. Svante Lindqvist, or The National Museum of Science and Technology, but also from corresponding investments at universities, for instance Museion at University of Gothenburg and Theme Cultural Studies at Linköping University. Although museum tours are regularly used in education, connections can be developed further still. Coordinated research programmes involving both university and museum resources, intellectual as well as material, are scarce to say the least. Here is evidently another future challenge for Swedish historians of technology.

Associations and Journals

There is one major association supporting Swedish history of technology, the National Committee for the History of Science and Technology affiliated to ICOHTEC and the Division of History of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and under the auspices of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science. There are about 15 members of the committee (the number varies over time) evenly distributed geographically as well as intellectually. The most important undertaking of the committee is its biannual conferences in history of technology and science where junior scholars as well as senior ones participate. The latest occurrence of such a meeting was in April 2008 when almost a hundred scholars, predominantly Swedes, convened at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm. Next meeting is planned for the spring of 2010 in Umeå.
In addition, the Committee has been publishing a Swedish quarterly in the history of technology named Polhem established by another founding father of history of technology in Sweden, Prof. Jan Hult. In order to qualify for necessary financial support, it has been transformed into a peer-review publication. In recent years, Polhem has been published as a yearbook and today, there are discussions regarding its future, not the least its form of publication.

Discussion

Swedish history of technology stands strong in national as well as international comparison. It is no coincidence that the president-elect of the Society of the History of Technology (SHOT) is a Swede and that there are two additional Swedes in the SHOT executive council as well as two other in the executive council of ICOHTEC. Also intellectually, Swedish history of technology is represented in EUROCORES-programme “Inventing Europe” sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Still, there are important challenges for the future. Most importantly, to raise visibility in different programmes of higher education, especially engineering programmes, and to create a master’s programme in history of technology, perhaps in cooperation with existing programmes in Europe and elsewhere. Another challenge, probably not altogether disconnected from the effort to raise visibility in higher education is to involve museum resources not only in education, but also in research activities.
As should be evident from what has been stated here, both universities and engineering schools constitute important institutional foundations for Swedish history of technology. There are indeed strong links between them, but more often than not relying on personal ties rather than institutional bridges with the National Committee for the History of Science and Technology as a notable exception. In order to further strengthen the institutional status of the field, it would advantageous to create even stronger institutional links, for instance through active electronic billboards or email-lists. In doing this, it is however important to formulate goals where such links are necessary. Only with lively and all-encompassing discussions regarding the future of Swedish history of technology can its position be strengthened even further, making it a resource for intellectuals and practitioners alike, both at universities and outside.

Bibliography

Althin, Torsten: Teknisk-historisk forskning och undervisning, in: Suenoni Lübeck Sexagenario. Vänners skrift, Stockholm 1937, 51-58.
Avango, Dag / Lundström, Brita: Inledning, in: Avango, Dag / Lundström, Brita (eds.) Industrins Avtryck: Perspektiv på ett forskningsfält, Eslöv 2003, 9-17.
Ehn, Billy / Löfgren, Orvar: Hur blir man klok på universitetet, Lund 2004.
Götlind, Anna: Vardagens teknik, Exemplet Dalarna 1700-1900, Hedemora 1999.
Hansson, Staffan: Innovationer och industriell utveckling, Om elektricitet, överföringsteknik och industriell utveckling i nor—Porjus Smältverk 1917-1958, Luleå 1999.
Hansson, Staffan: Den skapande människan, Om människan och tekniken under 5000 år [1987], Lund 2002.
Hägerstrand, Torsten: Perspektiv på teknik och teknikhistoria, Polhem, Tidskrift för teknikhistoria 12 (1994), 2-72.
Jakobsson, Eva: POLHEM 1983-1989, Polhem, Tidskrift för teknikhistoria 8 (1990), 342-351. Lindqvist, Svante: Teknikhistoria som akademisk disciplin, in: Forskning i ett föränderligt samhälle, Hedemora 1990, 398-417.
Olsson, Carl-Axel: Teknikhistoria som vetenskaplig disciplin, Några kommentarer, Meddelande från Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen, Lunds universitet 11, Lund 1980.
Olsson, Lars O.: Teman och perspektiv i Polhem 1983-1996 och tidskriftens spegling av den svenska teknikhistoriska forskningen, in: Hedin, Marika och Larsson, Ulf (eds.): Teknikens landskap, Stockholm 1998, 333-348.
Sundin, Bosse: Den kupade handen, Historien om människan och tekniken [1991], Stockholm 2006.
Sörlin, Sverker / Öckerman, Anders: Jorden en ö: En global miljöhistoria [1998], Stockholm 2002.

III. Conferences and Series of Lectures

10 July 2008
(1st Lecture) Understanding Technology

Series of lectures of the National Museums Scotland and the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, Edinburgh The first lecture is delivered by Trevor Pinch, Cornell University; his paper is named “In the Moog: The Social Construction of the Electronic Music Synthesizer”For more information please visit: http://shotnews.net/?p=555 Please contact Klaus Staubermann, National Museums Scotland, K.Staubermann@nms.ac.uk

4-5 September 2008
Towards Postcarbon Societies
Trondheim, Norway CFP – Deadline 20 July 2008

The workshop is meant as an occasion to explore what ‘post-carbon societies’ might mean, and what forces of and strategies for transformation that are present, drawing on the ideas and concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). We particularly invite contributions that focus on the present situation with respect to the production and consumption of energy, about new and/or established energy technologies, political and scientific strategies to support new renewables, the phenomenon of CCS and the involved political, economic and scientific activities, and the role of social sciences – including economics – in shaping present ways of understanding energy. Another set of important issues concern global warming as a historical and cultural phenomenon and the way government, industry and science is preparing (or not) for the consequences of a changing climate. Please visit http://postcarbonsocieties.net/ Please contact Thomas Berker, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, berker@EML.CC

10-12 September 2008
Styles of Thinking in Science and Technology.

3rd International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science ESHS Hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Please find the program at http://conf.ifit.uni-klu.ac.at/eshs/index.php

18-19 September 2008
Kann ich mal anfassen? Technikgeschichte am Objekt / May I touch this? History of technology and artefacts. Workshop of the German Society for the History of Technology, Gesellschaft für Technikgeschichte GTGPlease visit http://www.gtg.tu-berlin.de/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=723&Itemid=42
Please contact Christoph Henseler, Technology and Society Centre, Berlin Technical University, henseler@ztg.tu-berlin.de and Sören Marotz, Nexus Institute of the Technical University, marotz@nexus.tu-berlin.de

11-14 October 2008
SHOT 50 Looking Beyond, Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology Lisbon
Please visit http://www.shotlisbon2008.com//

20-22 November 2008
Mobility, the City and STS. Workshop at the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen
CFP – Deadline 31 August 2008

Mobility is at the very centre of the dynamics of contemporary cities. From bikes to subways, wifi hotspots to sewage infrastructure; our cities are increasingly becoming spaces of flows through which a growing number of people, materials and information move on a daily basis. These growing levels of movement represent not only a technical challenge for planners or the increase of pollution and congestion for authorities and environmentalists. Beyond this we can observe the development of new kinds of highly complex socio-technical systems of urban mobility that radically reconfigure the practice and experience of living in cities.This situation has been acknowledged by a series of developments in the fields of urban studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, and others related areas in which the study of these multiple mobilities appear as its main subject. Even a particular area of social research and theory called “mobility studies” has been established with the explicit aim to study the mobile aspects of social life in all its complexity and heterogeneity; from everyday interactions at the local level to wider issues regarding themes like globalization, exclusion, and sustainability.In this context the aim of this workshop is to bring together social scientists and other researchers to present and discuss empirical or theoretical work about the relationships between mobility and the city from one particular perspective: Science and Technology Studies (STS). In the last two decades STS has grown from being a discipline mainly focused on scientific practice and places to develop a general interest in the interconnections between science, technology and society in an increasing number of highly diverse places. Especially through the development of constructivist and Actor-Network approaches STS offers a very sophisticated array of theoretical concepts and methodological tools to study contemporary societies. In this workshop the general idea is to apply these concepts and tools to the analysis of the role of mobility in urban societies through the presentation of material based on specific case-studies. In order to keep the invitation as open as possible, we welcome submissions of paper proposals from a wide variety of perspectives in relation with the connections between mobility and STS: Different kinds: from private to public, from transport of people to mobility of information and materials. Different scales: from individual mobilities to large socio-technical transport systems.Different actors: from technologies (buses, cars, mobile phones) and mobility infrastructures (bus stops, travel information, information networks, etc.) to users and quotidian practices. Different locations: from developed to developing countries, from megacities to small towns. The workshop will be chaired by Professor Ulrik Jørgensen from the Technical University of Denmark and Professor Knut Sørensen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The papers presented are planned to be compiled, edited and published as a book or a special issue of a relevant, peer-reviewed, journal.Please send your abstracts (no more than 500 words) to Andrés Valderrama ava@ipl.dtu.dk or
Sebastián Ureta sureta@uc.cl.

21-22 November 2008
Technology Assessment Reloaded? Konzepte, Methoden, Erfahrungen/ Thinking about Technology Assessment: Concepts, Methods and Experiences. Annual meeting of the Society of research on Science and Technology, Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung (GWTF e.V.)
TechnicalUniversity of Berlin
CFP – Deadline 30 July 2008

Please visit: http://www.gtg.tu-berlin.de/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=735&Itemid=267
Please contact: Martin Meister, Leon Hempel, Cornelius Schubert, Jan-Peter Voß, TU Berlin, meister@ztg.tu-berlin.de

27-29 November 2008
Work and Makeshifts.
Workshop of the Research project “The Production of Work: Welfare, Labour-market, and the Disputed Boundaries of Labour (1880-1938)" at the Institute of social and economic history, University of Vienna, Austria
CFP - Deadline 3 July 2008

This is the first in a series of workshops on the history of work organized by the research project “The Production of Work: Welfare, Labour-market, and the Disputed Boundaries of Labour (1880-1938).” Historians dealing with similar issues, regardless of period or place, as well as researchers in other disciplines (sociology, anthropology, economics, etc.) are expressly invited to collaborate in the workshops. This first workshop will focus on the relations between work and makeshifts. Since the 1970s, the term economy of makeshifts has proven an innovative and useful tool for historians of poverty, welfare, and work. It highlights the fact that making a living is not limited to income from gainful (self)-employment or alternatively to (sufficient) welfare support. Making a living has very often relied – and still relies – on an irregular mix of different resources. Moreover, the term economy of makeshifts has helped to free historical research from an earlier fixation on the public administration of poverty and on its representations of the poor. Please visit Homepage http://pow.univie.ac.at/sitemap40062/ Please contact Sigrid Wadauer, Vienna University, sigrid.wadauer@univie.ac.at or Alexander Mejstrik, Vienna University, alexander.mejstrik@univie.ac.at

4-5 December 2008
Intermediaries in Labour Relations.
From Pre-industrial Societies to the XXth Century. Business History Center/Groupe d'histoire des entreprises Free University of Brussels/Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels Institute for the Study of Europe/Institut d'etudes europeennes CFP - Deadline 1 September 2008 At the present moment, when some economic historians (e.g. Peter Temin) estimate the market efficiency by the degree of activity of market-intermediaries, it seems necessary to wonder about the permanency of this "actor" in the economy. Since the first waves of economic globalization up to the traders’ desks of the XXth century, the perspective this workshop intends to address is to focus on the role of intermediaries in the long run in Western Europe. Please visit <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=9475> Please contact Kenneth Bertrams, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, kbertram@ulb.ac.be or pkusman@ulb.ac.be

4-5 December 2008
Wenn sich Kriegsgegner wieder mit „pestverseuchten Kühen“ bewerfen, oder: Computerspiele – Geschichte – Wissenschaft. Workshop on history as virtual framework of computer games.
Universität Siegen, Germany
CFP – Deadline 31 July 2008
Please visit: http://www.gtg.tu-berlin.de/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=731&Itemid=267
Please contact: Angela Schwarz, Universität Siegen, schwarz@geschichte.uni-siegen.de

20-22 February 2009
Staat, Bergbau und Bergakademie. Montanexperten im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert / State, mining and mining academy. Mining experts in the 18th and early 19th centuries. International Symposium TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany
CFP – Deadline 31 October 2008

For the history of mining in Central Europe, the 18th and early 19th centuries represent a central period. Not only did the economic interest of the Absolutist State connect with a thorough administrative reform. The scientific knowledge also underwent a significant reorganisation. The combined effect of these factors led, among other things, to a new type of institution of higher education: the Mining Academy. The mining academies formed scientific and technical experts as a new type of functional elite. The formation and establishment of this type of expert as a consequence of scientific, institutional, economic and bureaucratic reorganisations until the mid-19th century is the thematic frame for this symposium.
We wish to discuss questions regarding the knowledge cultures and spaces in which the experts were trained and consequently served as the main actors. We wish to ask how the mining experts of the 18th and 19th centuries implemented their knowledge, and how their education and training affected their careers within the mining administration. Furthermore, we wish to ask how this culture of learning was practised among mining experts, how the transfer of experts and knowledge proceeded, and how the differentiation of knowledge related to mining and metallurgy was part of the simultaneous formation of scientific disciplines.
The symposium addresses these subjects in subsequent four sessions: 1. Mining and metallurgy in the process of differentiation of scientific disciplines; 2. State and mining in the transition to modernity; 3. Mining and metallurgy experts in the 18th and 19th centuries; 4. Transfer of knowledge in mining and metallurgy.
Abstracts of papers (max. 2 pages) should be sent to Peter Konečný (University of Regensburg) or Hartmut Schleiff (TU Freiberg) until 31 October 2008. The program of the symposium will be finalised in December 2008.For more information please visit:
http://www.wiwi.tu-freiberg.de/iwtg/index0.php?iwtg=montangeschichte2009en
Please contact: Peter Konečný, University Regensburg, peter.konecny@stud.uni-regensburg.de and Hartmut Schleiff, Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, hartmut.schleiff@iwtg.tu-freiberg.de

12 March 2009
"Crossing the Atlantic: Travel and Travel Writing in modern times" History Department at the University of Texas at Arlington
CFP - Deadline 1 February 2009

"Crossing the Atlantic: Travel and Travel Writing in modern times" is the title of the 44th Walter Prescott Webb Lecture Series to be held March 12, 2009, at the University of Texas at Arlington. The lectures will explore travel and travel writing of Germans and Americans who crossed the Atlantic during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Speakers will include Dieter Buse (Laurentian University), Andrew Lees (Rutgers University), Nils Roemer (University of Texas at Dallas), and Thomas Adam (University of Texas at Arlington).

We invite students and scholars who work on the topic of travel and travel literature to submit essays in English or German of no more than 10,000 words plus endnotes. Travel accounts played an important role in the construction of geographic, social and cultural identities and in the creation of long-lasting images and stereotypes connected with the visited places. Cultural superiority of Old Europe and natural beauty of North America became stereotypes that dominated the minds of people in the transatlantic world. The study of travel reports, thus, helps us to understand the mindset of the traveler and of the culture he/she belonged to. We invite submissions on any aspect of travel between Europe and North and South America as well as on travel writing for the time period from 1800 to 1939.

Please contact: Thomas Adam, The University of Texas at Arlington, adam@uta.edu

24-26 March 2009
Geschichte der Materialforschung / History of Materials Research. Gemeinsame Tagung des Fachverbands Geschichte der Physik der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft und der Fachgruppe Geschichte der Chemie der Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker
Goettingen, Germany
CFP – Deadline 15 September 2008

Please visit: http://www.gtg.tu-berlin.de/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=733&Itemid=267
Please contact Klaus Hentschel, Stuttgart University, klaus.hentschel@po.hi.uni-stuttgart.de
or Carsten Reinhardt, Bielefeld University, carsten.reinhardt@uni-bielefeld.de

2-4 July 2009
German Images of ‘the West’ in the ‘long 19th century’ University of St Andrews and German Historical Institute London
CFP – Deadline 1 October 2008

Images of ‘the West’ have played a decisive role in modern German history. In the first half of the 20th century, the ‘German ideas of 1914’ were pitted against the ‘Western ideas of 1789’. ‘Western civilization’ was deemed to be utterly opposed to ‘German culture’. ‘Western democracy’ seemed irreconcilable with ‘German state’. In the second half of the 20th century, on the other hand, ‘the West’ often provided an ideal image which politicians and intellectuals in the Federal Republic sought to emulate. Frequently used as a shorthand in political discourse, ‘the West’ encapsulated the successful model of ‘consensus liberalism’ and ‘consensus capitalism’. ‘The West’ was considered to be the final goal of the secular process of modernization from which Germany had fatally been deviating since the beginning of the 19th century. Please visit the homepages http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history, http://www.ghil.ac.uk Please contact Riccardo Bavaj, University of St Andrews, rbflb@st-andrews.ac.uk.

5–7 August 2009
THE 2009 IEEE CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF TECHNICAL SOCIETIES
Philadelphia, USA In 2009 the IEEE History Committee and the IEEE History Center will hold the eighth in a series of historical conferences. The 2009 IEEE Conference on the History of Technical Societies will take place in Philadelphia from Wednesday 5 August through Friday 7 August 2009. The theme of the conference will be the history of professional technical associations, a theme chosen because 2009 will be the 125th anniversary of the IEEE. The location is appropriate because the IEEE, then the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, was founded in Philadelphia.We will invite papers on the history of the engineering profession, particularly on the role of professional societies in engineering, and emphasis will be on the technical fields served by the IEEE. The historical papers will be presented in focused sessions over the two-and-a-half days in two tracks, though there would be one or more plenary sessions. The papers written for the conference will be a valuable contribution to researching the history of engineering organizations, a topic that deserves more attention than it has received. In connection with the conference there will be an IEEE anniversary celebration at the Franklin Institute on Thursday 6 August from 6:00 pm until 11:00 pm. A call for papers will be issued in August 2008. In the meantime, additional information is available on the IEEE History Center's website http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/

6-7 November 2009
Technology transfers: Switzerland as a case study between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries University of Lausanne
CFP – Deadline 15 October 2008

Forum theme The history and sociology of technologies have overwhelmingly focused on the R&D phase of innovation, neglecting the international dissemination of new technologies and the ways in which their social uses have evolved. In reality, endogenous innovation represents only a relatively small share of the technologies used by a national economy, as the bulk comes from the international circulation of innovation. This evolution of the history of technologies has limited its integration into a history aimed at analysing major changes in modern-day societies. Innovation is of limited use in explaining most historical questions. This is not at all the case with broadly disseminated technologies, whether it is in the military, the world of work or the media. Accordingly, within the economic sphere, technology transfer plays a key role, not only in the process of industrialization, but also in the development of a consumer and leisure society. Although this topic has not been studied in depth, some preliminary analyses have been conducted abroad, essentially from an economic history perspective, giving rise first to several monographs and case studies in the 1970s and 1980s, then to consolidated essays by David J. Jeremy and Kristine Bruland, who highlighted the role of actors (multinationals, cartels and state, regional and local authorities) and vectors (men, capital, markets, technological know-how, etc.) in the transfer of technology. They demonstrated that the circulation of technologies worldwide, since the industrial revolution, has fitted into clearly defined, successive phases, characterized first by a predominance of flows from the United Kingdom to the rest of the world (1750–1880), then by the multilateralization of trade (1880–1960) and lastly by a transnational outlook (from the 1960s onwards). In Switzerland, however, the international circulation of innovations has not been analysed systematically. A few authors have indeed taken up the question in monographs on specific companies or economic sectors, but a more in-depth, systematic assessment has never been carried out. The lack of interest shown by Swiss historiographers is all the more surprising given that technology transfer, much more than innovation, has underpinned Switzerland’s economic development, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a “follower” economy, Switzerland has travelled a great many paths to acquire certain technologies developed in other European countries, especially in England. The textile industry is a particularly interesting case in point, featuring study tours, industrial espionage, machine imports and the poaching of foreign technicians. Starting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Swiss economy has managed to carve out a few technological niches in which its companies have excelled, such as colouring chemistry, pharmaceuticals, electrical engineering and milk chocolate. Even though technology transfer remains a key factor as far as imports are concerned, many Swiss producers have joined the innovation process. They have become exporters of technology, particularly through multinationals which export their know-how in the form of direct investment and licensed manufacturing. Topics proposed The Swiss framework therefore lends itself to a reflection on the question of technology transfer. It enables researchers to tackle a series of problems, which transcend the history of technologies to touch on not only economic but also social and cultural evolution of Switzerland in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. The aim of the forum is to gather together a body of original contributions making it possible to understand the various aspects of technology transfer to and from Switzerland. The following topics could be taken up.
(1) The first phase of Swiss industrialization, which was marked by massive technology transfer, poses the question of Switzerland’s ability to import new technological objects. What are the primary vectors of this technology transfer? Given the lack of advanced technological training, how did industrialists acquire the necessary technological know-how for this flow of technologies? What was the impact of the legislative vacuum with regard to the protection of inventions which persisted in Switzerland until 1888?
(2) The shift from importing to producing technologies was not the same throughout the country. Whereas the Lemanic Arc (northern shore of the Lake Geneva area) played a pioneering role in technology transfer in the field of transportation and energy throughout the nineteenth century, few companies in the region embarked on production. Technologies such as steamboats and funiculars, introduced at a later date in the eastern part of Switzerland, became major branches of production that were primarily export-oriented. How can we explain these disparities in the use of technology transfer? Were cultural blocks in French-speaking Switzerland due to the poor quality of production factors or the lack of commercial prospects? Or were these cultural blocks caused by a lack of corporate spirit and a distrust towards the industry among the elites?
(3) Technology imports and the shift to production followed a selective process. Whereas the Swiss economy was quick to transfer certain technologies, others either failed to take root or were slow to do so. This is partly due to technological causes (path dependence) or economic factors (cartels, small volume of defence spending). Yet socio-cultural factors also played a part, as in the case of opposition in certain professions to the introduction of new technologies.
(4) During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Swiss economy managed to become a leader in some technological fields, moving rapidly from the transfer of technology to innovation. How was this transition possible? What ingredients were needed to carve out high-tech production niches – capital, technological training or patent law?
(5) Prior to the First World War, most of the branches of industry which exported advanced technologies (chemicals, machines, food) had developed a multinational organizational structure for production and produced all over the world. What role did the multinationals and cartels play in the international circulation of Swiss technology? To what extent did the various forms of exports of Swiss technology further the economic development of the importing countries?
(6) From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, state, regional and local authorities, particularly the Federal State and its public corporations, have been major players in technology transfer. In some fields, such as transportation, energy or arms, they have actively sought to import new technologies. In addition, they have facilitated the transfer of technology in various ways: by building the necessary infrastructure for certain technologies, by placing orders and thereby launching production; by ensuring customs protection for the domestic market; and by passing laws guaranteeing the safety of users and the general public. What are the characteristics of intervention by the Swiss authorities? Are they different from those of other countries? Proposals should be sent by 15 October 2008 to the following three addresses: py.donze@gmail.com, cedric.humair@unil.ch, malik.mazbouri@unil.ch . Please send a summary (maximum 1 A4 page) of the proposed contribution, as well as a brief CV. The participants selected will be informed by mid-November 2008.Papers, which should be between 30,000 to 40,000 signs, should be sent by the end of July 2009. The forum languages are English and French, but papers may also be sent in German. A selection of the contributions presented will be published in the review Traverse (to appear in 2010). Please visit http://www.unil.ch/hist/page14404.html Please contact Pierre-Yves Donzé, Kyoto University / FNS; Cédric Humair,, University of Lausanne / EPFL; Malik Mazbouri, University of Lausanne, py.donze@gmail.com, cedric.humair@unil.ch, malik.mazbouri@unil.ch

March 2010 (Dates will be fixed later on)
Les expositions universelles en France, au XIXe siècle. Techniques, publics, patrimoine
The World Fairs in France in the 19th Century. Technology, public opinion and cultural heritage.
Paris
CFP – Deadline 15 October 2008

The congress is dedicated to the presentation of technology on World Fairs in 19th century and on the history of the artefacts and collections which had been presented on these fairs.
Please visit http://afhe.ehess.fr/document.php?id=488
Please contact Volker Barth, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, vbarth@ehess.fr

IV. Recently Published Books

Bollon-Mourier, Monique: Parols d´ un entrepreneur. Paul Berliet, entretiens avec un constructeur automobile. Éditions Delibreo, Neuchatel 2008. The book gives a portrait of Paul Berliet, who was the director of the automobiles company “Berliet”; the main emphasis of the book is on decision making by an entrepreneur and the question of how to deal with risks.

1st update • July 2008

Editorial

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Sad news: In July our dear friend and ICOHTEC member Michael Mende, Hochschule für Bildende Kuenste in Braunschweig, passed away.

In a few days we will meet in Victoria, B.C. for our next ICOHTEC conference. Please find the final programme and the schedule of the meeting in the Newsletter. Please also find some information how to come to Victoria University, which hosts the meeting this year. On the 2008 meeting, we will have two main scientific events, the traditional Kranzberg Lecture, delivered by Robert Post, and a session to celebrate the 40th anniversary of ICOHTEC.

Timo Myllyntaus prepared a report on ICOHTEC activities from 2007 to 2010, which is published in this Newsletter to prepare the Victoria meeting.

Best wishes for your travel; it will be a pleasure to meet you soon.
Yours Stefan Poser

Michael Mende
(23 June 1945 – 15 July 2008)

Our dear friend and ICOHTEC member Michael Mende suddenly passed away on the 15th of July. He has studied at Berlin Free University, was later on employed at Berlin Technical University and held his chair on Technology, organisation of work and history at the Braunschweig University of Arts since 1978. Michael Mende was very much interested in the history of machines and working processes as well as in industrial heritage. Thus he was involved in The International Committee for the Industrial Heritage, Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) and it would have been very interesting to discuss this topic with him on our joint meeting with TICCIH in Tampere 2010. Michael Mende had a great knowledge on history of technology and it was always a great pleasure to meet this friendly and pleasant man.

I. 35th ICOHTEC Conference, Victoria
Crossing Borders in the History of Technology - Program

Kranzberg Lecture
(Tuesday 17:30 Human and Social Development Building A240)

Robert Post: Invention and Enterprise: The Life and Times of Melvin Kranzberg

ICOHTEC 40th Anniversary Session
(Friday 11:00-12:15 Meeting Room Forestry Discovery Centre – Trip begins at 8:00)
Chair: Wolfhard Weber

Angus Buchanan: From Cold War Peacemakers to Environmental Crusaders:
The Development of ICOHTEC over Forty Years

Carroll Pursell: ICOHTEC – Some Recollections and Observations

Hans-Joachim Braun: Giant and Dwarf?
The SHOT-ICOHTEC Relationship and Other Matters

Timo Myllyntaus: ICOHTEC: Today and Tomorrow

A1. The Social History of Military Technology I
(Wednesday 8:30-10:00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Organizer: Barton C. Hacker, Smithsonian Institution and Michael Anton Budd, Salve Regina University
Chair: Barton C. Hacker, Smithsonian Institution

Dik Daso (National Air and Space Museum), Grunt, gallop, and guns to glory: Technological change and its impact on war and culture through Time
Hanna D. Lawson (Swansea University), Textiles in Greco-Roman Naval warfare
Ann M. Becker (State University of New York at Stony Brook), The Canadian campaign: An army “ruined with smallpox”

A2. The Social History of Military Technology II

(Wednesday 10.30-12.00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Organizer: Barton C. Hacker, Smithsonian Institution and Michael Anton Budd, Salve Regina University
Chair: Margaret Vining, Smithsonian Institution

Michael Anton Budd, Was there a military industrial complex in the age of revolution and war? World war and technological change: Britain & France, 1755–1815
Matthew Ford, Trust and Technology: officer-man relations and the development of the British infantry magazine rifle"
Barton C. Hacker, Art of war: Military technology in the First World War graphic arts

A3. The Social History of Military Technology III

(Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Organizer: Barton C. Hacker, Smithsonian Institution and Michael Anton Budd, Salve Regina University
Chair: Barton C. Hacker, Smithsonian Institution

Lisa L. Ossian, The ‘robomb generation’: Children of the Second World War playing with very real military technology
Matitiahu Mayzel, War for the masses: technology, industrialization, and the social and ethnic expansion of the Red Army in the 1930s.

A4. Gunpowder

(Wednesday 15.30-17.00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Organizer: Brenda Buchanan, University of Bath
Chair: Dorotea Gucciardo

Brenda Buchanan, Charcoal: ‘the largest single variable in the performance of Black Powder’?
Bert Hall, What Underlay Improvements in 18th-Century French Artillery?
Jan Kunnas, The agricultural basis of the Napoleonic Wars
Yoel Bergman, Paul Vieille’s recollections of his mid 1880’s experimental work

A5. Crossing the Skies I: Military Aviation Technology

(Thursday 8.30-10.00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Chair: Peter Jakab

Jeremy Kinney, Aircraft Engines for the Great War: The Wright-Martin Corporation and the Hispano-Suiza Engine, 1916-1919
Shawn Cafferky, ‘Flying the Wire’: The Development of the Canadian Beartrap Haul-down System
Mike Tremblay, The Norden Bombsight and the Myth of Precision Bombing

A6. Crossing the Skies II: Professional and Popular Aviation Culture

(Thursday 10.30-12.00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Chair: Dik Daso

Peter Jakab, Embracing the Future: The Airplane and the Arts, 1903-1915
Roger Connor, Windmills and Air Flivvers – The Selling of Rotary Wing Aircraft 1930-1950
Matthew Chapman (University of Victoria), A Ruthless Education: The Formative Experiences of World War II Canadian Bomber Crews and the Founding of Post-War Aviation Culture

A7. For More Than Just the Love of Flying: Women Pilots Pushing Boundaries

(Thursday 13.30-15.00 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Organizer: Evelyn Zegenhagen, USHMM
Chair: Michael Neufeld, Smithsonian Institution

Dorothy Cochrane, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Pilot and Literary Light in Aviation
Evelyn Zegenhagen, Hanna Reitsch and Melitta Schiller – Two German Women Test Pilots of the Nazi Era
François Le Roy, “The War of the Two Jacquelines:” French and American Women in Jet Aviation

A8. Exchanges over the Science-Technology Relationship

(Saturday 9:00-10.30 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Chair: Alexandre Herlea

Lourdes Rocio Ramirez Palacios, Physics at the National Polytechnic Institute
Wolfhard Weber, Mechanics and modern technology

A9. Technology Transfer: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries

(Saturday 11:00-12:30 Arbutus/Queenswood Room)
Chair: Roland Wittje

Christoph Rosol, Identifying with Radar: On the Origin of RFID
Vahur Mägi, Estonian Oil-shale Technology in Australia
Martha Ortega, Atoms for Peace: nuclear technology transference to the ‘Third World’, Latin America between 1955 and 1968

B1. Political Machines I: Nationalizing Technologies

(Wednesday 8:30-10:00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Peter Jakab

Blanca Gutierrez Garcia-Gutierrez, The technology industrial development of the textile industry in Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century
Federico Lazarin-Miranda, Technological influences in the Mexican aeronautics, 1909-1919

B2. Political Machines II: Colonializing Technologies

(Wednesday 10.30-12.00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Susan Schmidt Horning

Alejandra Bronfman, Amateurs in the Tropics: Shortwave and the Waning ColonialState
Steven Serels, Acclimatization of Experts in Tropical Laboratories: Andrew Balfour, the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory and the Contemporary Study of ‘Medicine and the Colonies’
María Estela Báez-Villaseñor, Taming the prairies: Technological development and federal control in the American prairies during the second half of the nineteenth century

B3. Communicating culture: Mediating technologies

(Wednesday 13.30-15.00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Susan Schmidt Horning

Mats Fridlund, Terrorism of the Word: Insurrectionary Print Technologies and the Origins of Modern Terrorism
Karen J. Freeze, Theater Technology under Communism: A Czechoslovak Export
Roman Artemenko, Adventures of Herbert Marshall McLuhan in Russia: From Stoned Pseudo-Prophet of Bourgeois Culture to Generation "Z" Tribal Idol

B4. Cultivating Technologies

(Wednesday 15.30-17.00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Julie Wosk

(Kenny) Chun Wai Tang, The Tea Machine – Mechanizing the Traditional Tea Processing Industry in Late Imperial China
Susan Schmidt Horning, Channeling Sound: Technology, Control And Boundaries In The 1960s Recording Studio

B5. Electronic Technologies

(Thursday 8:30-10:00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Mats Fridlund

Roland Wittje, Acoustics between War and Peace: Sound Studies from the Great War to the WeimarRepublic
Vasily Borisov, To develop the domestic or to buy from abroad: the beginning of the electronic TV in USSR

B6. Medical Borderlands

(Thursday 10.30-12.00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Lars Bluma

Dorotea Gucciardo, "'Nature's Tonic': Exploring the Technologies of Electric Medicine in Canada,1850-1920."
Yun-Csang Ghimn, Skin Deep – or Ultra-violet Diagnosis, an Ignored Technology

B7. Crossing Spatial Borders

(Thursday 13.30-15.00 Harrow Room)
Chair: Nina Lerman

Geoffrey N. Swinney, Placing and materialising industry and technology – George Wilson (1818–1859) and the establishment of new spaces of intellectual endeavour
Lars Bluma, Cybernetic machines: or crossing the borders between nature, technology and society

B8. Visions of Technology I

(Saturday 9:00-10.30 Harrow Room)
Chair: James Williams

Julie Wosk, Images of Technological Disasters
Nina Lerman, Jim Crow and the White Way: Race, Region, and Progress in Early Electrification
Christopher Gainor, The Avro Arrow and Canada’s Unrealized Dreams

B9. Visions of Technology II

(Saturday 11:00-12:30 Harrow Room)
Chair: Julie Wosk

Paul Ceruzzi, The Early Development of Deep-Space Navigation: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Reality
Dimitrios Ziakkas and Aristotle Tympas, Building borders in the air: Technical protocols competition and international aviation route formation in the electronic era

C2. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life I: Cultivating the Automobile

(Wednesday 10.30-12.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Organizer: Timo Myllyntaus, University of Turku
Chair: Timo Myllyntaus

Christopher Neumaier, The Demise of the Diesel Car in the US and its Rise in Europe, 1973–2006
Olle Hagman and Martin Bae Pedersen, Encouraging Environmental Driving: The journey towards a definition of “Good” versus “Bad” cars in the Swedish system of subsidies and classifications
Riikka Jalonen, “I want to learn to change the tyres of my car!” The technical courses of the car for Finnish women in the 1970s

C3. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life II: Gendering of Transportation

(Wednesday 13.30-15.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Organizer: Timo Myllyntaus, University of Turku
Chair: Olle Hagman

Tiina Männistö-Funk, Bicycle, Gender and the Modernization of Finnish Countryside, 1900 – 1939
Monique Chapelle, Ladies and Automobiles in France, 1900 – 1920

C4. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life III: Equipping Homes

(Wednesday 15.30-17.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Organizer: Timo Myllyntaus, University of Turku
Chair: Paul Ceruzzi

Markku Norvasuo, Designing Properly Lit Homes: The question of daylight and innovation in apartments versus public buildings in the architecture of Alvar Aalto between 1927 and 1939
Tiina Huokuna, Leap from Modesty to Modernity, Refurbishing Finnish Homes in the Postwar Period
Timo Myllyntaus, The Entry of Males and Machines in the Kitchen: A Social History of the Microwave Oven in Finland

C5. Environment and technology

(Thursday 8.30-10.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Chair: James Williams

Anthony Stranges, Key scientists in the history of air pollution
Riikka Rajala and Petri Juuti, Water Use Strategies In Long Term Perspectives In Finland
Petri Juuti, Riikka Rajala and Tapio Katko, Path dependence in history of water supply technology

C6. Crossing Borders With Mixed Feelings: Sports and Technology I

(Thursday 10.30-12.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Organizer: Hans-Joachim Braun
Chair: Hans-Joachim Braun

Walter Kaiser, Materials Revolution, Engineering Sciences, and Synthetic Landscapes: the Shaping of Sports through Technology since 1960
Stefan Poser, Speed Based on High-tech for a Dated Technology: Rowing in the 19th and 20th Century

C7. Crossing Borders With Mixed Feelings: Sports and Technology II

(Thursday 13.30-15.00 Mackenzie/Sinclair Room)
Organizer: Hans-Joachim Braun
Chair: Stefan Poser

Hans-Joachim Braun, Automated Soccer? Science, Technology and the Development of Soccer Tactics
Swantje Scharenberg, Uneven Bars Revolution

Notes to Paper Presenters and Session Chairs

PowerPoint: Facilities for Power point will be available in all conference rooms. Please bring your presentation on a USB memory stick 10 minutes prior to the commencement of your session (This includes the 40th Anniversary Session).
Presentation Times: If you are in a four speaker session your presentation should be no more the 15 minutes long, a three person session no longer than 20 minutes and a two person session no longer than 25 minutes. Keeping to these times will allow for and question and answer session.
Session Chairs: CV’s of the presenters in your session will be made available when you register for the conference.

ICOHTEC 2008 Schedule
Tuesday 5 August
10:00 - 16:30	Pre-Conference Trips to Airport or to Dockyard/Fort Rodd HillMeet in Parking Lot 5 Near Housing Office/Cadboro Conference Centre
16:00 - 17:30	Registration
17:30 - 19:00	Conference Opening and Kranzberg LectureRobert Post: Invention and *Enterprise: The Life and Times of Melvin Kranzberg* (Human and Social Development Building A240)
19:00 - 21:00	Opening Reception, University Club, Fireplace Bar
Wednesday 6 AugustCadboro Conference Centre
8.30-10.00	A 1. The Social History of Military Technology I(Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 1. Political Machines I: Nationalizing Technologies (Harrow Room)
10:00 - 10:30	Coffee Break, Village Greens
10.30-12.00	A 2. The Social History of Military Technology II(Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 2. Political Machines II: Colonializing Technologies(Harrow Room)	C 2. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life I(Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
12:00-13:30	Lunch, Village Greens
13.30-15.00	A 3. The Social History of Military Technology III(Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 3. Communicating culture: Mediating Technologies(Harrow Room)	C 3. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life II(Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
15:00 - 15:30	Coffee Break, Village Greens
15.30-17.00	A 4. Gunpowder (Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 4. Cultivating Technologies (Harrow Room)	C 4. Technology encountering cultural values of everyday life III (Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
17:00 - 19:00	ICOHTEC Executive Meeting(Arbutus/Queenswood)
19:00 - 21:00	Barbecue, Village Greens
Thursday 7 AugustCadboro Conference Centre
8.30-10.00	A 5. Crossing the Skies I: Military Aviation Technology(Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 5. Electronic Technologies(Harrow Room)	C 5. Environment and technology (Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
10:00 -10:30	Coffee Break, Village Greens
10.30-12.00	A 6. Crossing the Skies II: Professional and Popular Aviation Culture(Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 6. Medical Borderlands(Harrow Room)	C 6. Crossing Borders with mixed Feelings: Sports and technology I (Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
12:00 - 13:30	Lunch, Village Greens
13.30-15.00	A 7. For more than just the love of flying: Women pilots pushing boundaries (Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 7. Crossing spatial borders I: Creating technological spaces (Harrow Room)	C 7. Crossing Borders with mixed Feelings: Sports and technology II (Mackenzie/ Sinclair Room)
15:30-17:30	ICOHTEC General Assembly, (Arbutus/Queenswood)
18:30 - 23:00	Reception and Annual Jazz Night, University Club, Main Dining RoomCo-sponsored by the Society for Military History
Friday 8August
8.45-17.30	Conference Trip to the British Columbia Forestry Discovery Centre and Kinsol Trestle including ICOHTEC 40th Anniversary Session
Evening	Free Evening No-host dinner at local restaurants

Saturday 10 AugustCadboro Conference Centre
9:00-10.30	A 8. Exchanges over the Science-Technology Relationship (Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 8. Visions of Technology I(Harrow Room)
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee Break, Village Greens
11.00-12.30	A 9. Technology Transfer: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries (Arbutus/Queenswood)	B 9. Visions of Technology II (Harrow Room)
12:30 - 13:30	Lunch, Village Greens
13:30 - 1800	Free Afternoon
18:00-20:30	Banquet – Golden City Restaurant, 721 Fisgard St
Sunday 11 August
9:00 - 13:00	Whale Watching Meet in Parking Lot 5 near Housing Office/Cadboro Conference Centre

Arrival and Travel Information

Conference Registration and Cadboro Conference Centre

The Cadboro Conference Centre, on the campus of the University of Victoria, is the location of the conference office and most conference sessions. Registration will take place in the Henderson Room. The conference centre is located across the courtyard from the Housing office, just around the corner from Village Greens (VGs) restaurant in the Cadboro Commons Building. (see below for directions)
Registration will be open on Tuesday 5 August from 16:00 to 17:30 and on Wednesday 6 August from 8:00 onwards.

From the Airport for those staying in University Housing, including Craigdarroch House and Cluster Housing.

An airport shuttle bus service is available which will take you directly to the university’s
Housing office (map available), where you can check into your room (open 24 hours a day). Tell the driver to take you to the housing office in Parking Lot 5 at the University of Victoria, which is located off Sinclair Road. The cost is $21 per person, and run approximately every 30 minutes. Parties of three or more may find it more economical to take a taxi. Fares are approximately $45 plus tip.

From the Airport for those staying in downtown hotels:
Take shuttle bus or taxi to your hotel.

To get to the university from Downtown and Victoria Clipper/Coho Ferry Terminal:
By Public Transportation:
Fare $2.25 (Exact Change or Tickets. Tickets can be purchased at the Student Union Building Information Booth)
Buses to and from downtown: Routes 4,11,14 and 26 go from the University to and from Downtown

Get off at the University Bus Exchange. Walk across Finnerty Road and turn right to the Ring Road. Turn left at the ring road, walking passed the Student Union Building (SUB) on your left. After the SUB you will see, setback from the road, two concrete buildings separating by a concrete pathway, you should also see the sign for Village Greens restaurant. Walk between the buildings just passed Village Greens. The entrance to the conference centre is on your right. If you are going to the housing office the entrance is on your left across the courtyard from the conference centre.

To get to the University and Conference Centre by Car

From Downtown: Go out of town on Blanshard and get off the highway at Mackenzie (First exit after Blanshard becomes the Pat Bay Highway) and turn right. Proceed down Mackenzie 6 kilometres or 2.5 miles to the University Campus. Stay on Mackenzie (now renamed Sinclair) driving past the main entrances to the University. After the traffic light at Finnerty Road look for the entrance to Parking Lot 5. Turn right and purchase parking ticket from the ticket machine and park. (Weekly and daily parking permits available, payment by cash or credit card.) The conference centre and housing office are located at the top of Parking lot 5.

From the BC Ferries Terminal:

Stay on the Pat Bay Highway (Highway 17) into Victoria, about 20 Kilometres. Exit at Mackenzie and turn left onto Mackenzie. Proceed down Mackenzie 6 kilometres or 2.5 miles to the University Campus. Stay on Mackenzie (now renamed Sinclair) driving past the main entrances to the University. After the traffic light at Finnerty Road look for the entrance to Parking Lot 5. Turn right and purchase parking ticket from the ticket machine and park. (Weekly and daily parking permits available, payment by cash or credit card.) The conference centre and housing office are located at the top of Parking lot 5.

To Get to the University from the BC Ferries Terminal by Coach or Bus

You have two options: 1) Stay on the Pacific Coach Lines Bus or Purchase Ticket for the Bus onboard. Take bus to downtown bus terminal take taxi or bus to university as described above. 2) Walk off ferry and board BC transit bus, flat fare of $2.25. Ask driver for a transfer. Ask driver where to get off to transfer to a bus that will take you to the university.

Weather

Victoria’s daytime summer temperatures are usually in the low to mid-20s° Celsius. It can be quite chilly in the evening, so a fleece or sweater is recommended. While summer is the dry season you should come prepared for light rain showers.

In the Old and New World – ICOHTEC Activity Report for 2007 – 2010

ICOHTEC – A Global Organisation of Expertise
The International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) was established during the Cold War in 1968. A major objective was to provide a forum for scholars working on the history of technology from both sides of the “iron curtain.” It was constituted as a Scientific Section within the Division of the History of Science and Technology, which is in turn associated with the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS/DHST). “The fall of iron curtain” had immediate impacts on the interaction of our field. After the reforms in the 1990s, ICOHTEC became a prominent global organisation in the history of technology discipline based on high-level scholarship and direct personal interaction instead of hierarchical communication between national committees.
The membership base of ICOHTEC is mainly in Europe but also in the Americas, Japan, India and Australia. Research activities of ICOHTEC members reflect this special interest in early industrialised countries. Issues investigated are mostly country specific but also on a comparative cross-country basis, stressing aspects of cooperation between various nations, regions or institutions.
ICOHTEC is a worldwide organisation that promotes the research, education and publishing related to various kinds of the history of technology. Our organisation has two main fields of activity. First, it holds annual symposia and venues are spread round the world. Every fourth year the ICOHTEC symposium is held in conjunction with an IUHPS/DHST congress. Second, it has a long tradition in academic publishing. ICON is the organisation’s journal containing scholarly articles. Most of ICON’s articles are based on papers delivered in ICOHTEC’s symposia. However, the journal is open to other submissions as well. Current issues are recounted in the Newsletter, which also contains country reports on activities in the history of technology and bibliographical surveys. Further information on the benefits of membership is available at the website: http://www.icohtec.org/

ICOHTEC Symposia Connecting Scholars

The organisation’s symposia provide forums for scholars to present their research results and discuss them. The informal part of their five-day programmes gives opportunities to networking and learning more about each other. Symposia help to build up a long-standing bond that unites the membership. There new colleagues are met and old friendships are revitalised.

Between the IUHPS/DHST congresses in Beijing and Budapest, ICOHTEC is going to organise three annual symposia of its own; the venues of them are in chronological order: Leicester, Copenhagen and Victoria.

The 34th Symposium was held in Copenhagen on 14th – 18th August 2007. The main theme was Fashioning Technology. Design from Imagination to Practice. The idea was to examine how design and technology have been related to each other. However, some papers were dealing with this relationship vaguely, because there were some subthemes, the elaboration of which continued from earlier symposia. The question on design was, nevertheless, discussed in a great many of 37 sessions that were held in the meeting. More than one hundred papers were delivered, and in total 133 participants from 28 countries attended the symposium. The hosting organisation, The Danish University of Technology, provided excellent facilities and efficient services that made a major contribution to the relaxed ambience of the symposium.

ICOHTEC was founded 40 years ago in Paris, and the next anniversary symposium will be held farther away from the capital of France than any of the previous meetings. The venue of the 35th symposium will be Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. While this will be the first independent ICOHTEC meeting outside Europe, it also emphasizes ICOHTEC’s endeavours to broaden its activities to other continents and enhance its global character.

The forthcoming symposium will take place at the campus of Victoria University on 5th to 10th August 2008. It will be focusing on Crossing Borders in the History of Technology. This main theme is to be approached from various perspectives including the social history of military technology, aviation culture, science – technology relationship, interaction between technology, politics and culture, technology in everyday life, and sports and technology. The elaboration of this main theme will aim to analyse the multitude links of technology to surrounding society and to show that technology is no autonomous, isolated sphere directed by its internal forces.

The scientific programme of the Victoria symposium will be complemented with a special 40th anniversary session that will be focussed on summarising and evaluating the past and future activities of ICOHTEC. Speakers will be former and present members of the Board. Excursions, museum visits, a barbeque and receptions will supplement the academic side of the symposium.

ICOHTEC will participate enthusiastically in the 33rd Congress of History of Science and Technology to be held in Hungary in July 2009. This time our organisation is proposing more sessions than in any other previous IUHPS/DHST congresses. Furthermore, we expect that Ph.D. students and other young researchers will account for a larger proportion of the “ICOHTEC delegation” than usually. Reasons for this active participation are many but it must be mentioned that while Budapest is an attractive city in the centre of the continent, almost all Europeans can reach it with quite reasonable costs. The size and versatility of the Budapest congress attract numerous researchers, because a similar “spectacular display window to the history of science and technology” is fairly seldom available in Europe.

The thematic range of sessions proposed by ICOHTEC to the Budapest congress will be broad and stimulating. The session submissions vary from socializing instrumental practices, and 60 years of cybernetics and information theory to ideological and environmental issues, and furthermore to playing with technology, and the impact of cold war politics in technology. In the 2009 meeting, the interaction between science, technology and society will be emphasised by ICOHTEC researchers. We expect that ICOHTEC sessions in the Budapest congress will provide new knowledge and interpretations on the history of technology as well as pleasant forums for lively discussions.

The submission process to the Budapest congress continues to mid-December of 2008. Decisions on the acceptance of symposia, sessions and papers will be made during the spring 2009. The academic activities of the congress will be organised by the Local Organising Committee and the International Programme Committee; in the latter ICOHTEC is represented by its Secretary General.

Globalisation means among various other things the geographical transition of industry. In advanced countries, the restructuring of the economy includes also deindustrialisation and especially downfall of the old smoke stack industries. How has industrial restructuring been carried out in various countries? What has been the legacy of the smoke stack industries? How should industrial heritage be conserved? Those will be the pivotal questions that will be discussed on 10th – 15th August 2010 in the conference that ICOHTEC together with The International Committee for the Industrial Heritage, Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) will jointly organise in Tampere, which is the largest inland city of the Nordic countries. The city used to be the major industrial centre in Finland, famous for its cotton mill, engineering works, paper and pulping mills, their smoke stacks, hydropower plants and huge reciprocating steam engines. Almost all of those have stopped working. Factory buildings remained. However, large industrial quarters in the heart of Tampere are not quiet and dead. They have been filled with modern activities, and they are again humming with new life. The city is therefore a fascinating place to examine the reusing the industrial past, which will be the main theme of the conference.

The Finnish local organising committee has already started preparations of this unique meeting where historians of technology, industrial archaeologists, labour historians, social historians, cultural historians, urban historians and museum curators gather to exchange their views on the fate of our industrial past.
Since the period of détente and peaceful co-existence, ICOHTEC has dedicated a lot of efforts to the first rate scientific quality of its annual activities and also to the amiable atmosphere of its symposia, informal conversations and enjoyable social events. Consequently, communication is not limited to scholarly exchange of ideas and knowledge. To sum up, ICOHTEC provides rewarding experience of genuine international cooperation.
Timo Myllyntaus
Secretary General of ICOHTEC

II. Other Conferences

29-31 August 2008
Industriearchäologie, Industriekultur, Industriedenkmalpflege – in der Schweiz und in internationaler Perspektive/ Conference on Industrial Heritage and Industrial Archaeology.
Jahrestagung der Georg-Agricola-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik. Annual meeting of the German Georg-Agricola-Society for the Advancement of the History of Science and Technology Eisenbibliothek, Klostergut Paradies, Schlatt, Swizerland
For more information please contact Norman Pohl, TU Freiberg, Norman.Pohl@iwtg.tu-freiberg.de

10-11 October 2008
Studienkreises Rundfunk und Geschichte in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Nachwuchsforum Kommunikationsgeschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK), Workshop on the history of communication – especially for younger researchers. Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany
CFP - Deadline 17 August 2008
Please visit http://www.rundfunkundgeschichte.de/kolloq.html Please contact krampe@ifkw.lmu.de or Sebastian Pfau, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, sebastian.pfau@medienkomm.uni-halle.de

13-14 November 2008
Rethinking Urban History: Technology, Environments, and Politics
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
An international symposium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for the History of Technology at Case Western Reserve University
Symposium lectures and papers will address a range of issues in the history of cities, from a variety of perspectives. They are international and global in scope. Presentations will be held on the CWRU campus on University Circle in Cleveland, Ohio, and are free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Kalli Vimr, kallisto.vimr@case.edu, or see the web page link: http://www.case.edu/artsci/hsty/news.html.

4-5 December 2008
Representation and Practices of Living Spaces: Revisiting the 'Urban' and the 'Rural'.
Les Humanités Associées - Young Researchers in Social Sciences and HumanitiesCampus Walferdange, University of Luxembourg
CFP - Deadline 1 October 2008
The “urban” and the “rural” have been of scientific interest to human and social studies at regular intervals. The global market, knowledge economy and sustainable development – influential agents and watchwords of our times – are reshaping public as well as private, urban and rural spaces. The conceptual opposition between the “urban” and the “rural” has been considerably blurred with the emergence of urban sprawl, periurbanisation and rurbanisation phenomena. However, while scientific discourses proceed to a levelling out of the city/country dialectic, the opposition appears to persist in the collective imagination (conveyed by politicians, artists or local associations for instance). To tackle this very complex trans- and interdisciplinary issue, the conference will focus on the discourses of – and the actual living in – these spaces. What are, for instance, the instruments that assess not only social relations but also relations to space and time (e.g. everyday practices of mobility) and that allow us to analyse and differentiate “being” and “doing” in environments traditionally considered “urban” and “rural”? This conference proposes to rethink the intricate urban-rural paradigm, regarding, on the one hand, diverse modes of appropriation (physical, visual, temporal) available to the resident, and, on the other hand, public and shared representations (as found in literature, the arts, political and scientific discourses). The objective of the colloquium is to offer a genuine interdisciplinary exchange platform for current research projects, the main target audience being young researchers and doctoral students. The working language is English. Conferences may also be held in French, if accompanied by a powerpoint presentation in English. Abstracts of approx. 300 words, written in French or English, and a short CV should be sent before 1 October 2008 to the following e-mail address: conference@humanites-associees.lu Organizational Committee:Jeanne E. Glesener (Comparative Literature), Roberto Gomez(Linguistics), Sonja Kmec (History), Rachèle Raus (History), Tonia Raus(French Literature), An Schiltz (Anthropology), Christiane Weis (Sociology). Please visit www.humanites-associees.lu/conference Please contact Jeanne E. Glesener, University of Luxembourg, conference@humanites-associees.lu

11 March 2009
C-HIM: Conference on the Historical Use of ImagesVrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels) and FARO - Vlaams Steunpunt voor Cultureel
CFP – Deadline 20 October 2008
This international workshop addresses the importance, significance and value of images for contemporary historical and archaeological research and the study of cultural heritage (1880-1980), focusing both on the positive insights that might be garnered from visual material as well as on the possible difficulties.
Photographs, posters, drawings, comic book illustrations et cetera will be examined on different levels: the author and his/her intentions, the representation of a reality, the construction of identities, rights and inequalities and the reception of images. The workshop aims at debating and evaluating various methodological and theoretical approaches to using images as historical sources and interpret the images as valuable historical evidence that is equal to and supplements other sources available to historians, archaeologists and researchers in the field of cultural heritage.
We invite paper submissions on a range of topics related to the use of images as historical evidence and encourage papers on the following themes:\

aspects of everyday life (e.g. housing)
material culture and the cultural life of objects
advertising
the impact of visual sources on our vision of the past
cultural and representational issues (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, power)
consumer culture
methodological approaches to visual sources
images as cultural heritage

Please visit http://www.vub.ac.be/C-HIM
Please contact Joeri Januarius and Nelleke Teughels (C-HIM), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), Vakgroep Geschiedenis/Kunstwetenschappen, c-him@vub.ac.be

13-14 March 2009
Representing Poverty: American and European PerspectivesGerman Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
CFP – Deadline 31 August 2008
This conference invites historians, literary and cultural critics, and journalists to discuss representations of poverty in contemporary North America and Europe. The focus rests on the United States and Germany, two societies marked by – albeit very specific – forms and discourses of poverty in recent years. The conference organizers hope to establish a dialogue between academic perspectives on the subject and contributions by writers, filmmakers and photographers. The conference, the organizers hope, will establish a multi-faceted context for conversations of central importance in the contemporary US and in Germany. Please send a proposal of no more than 500 words and a brief CV to Bärbel Thomas at B.Thomas@ghi-dc.org The conference will be held in English and focus on the discussion of pre-circulated papers of about 5,000 to 6,000 words (due by January 30, 2009). Cost of travel and accommodation will be covered. Please send inquiries to one of the conveners: Anke Ortlepp, ortlepp@ghi-dc.org) and Christoph Ribbat (ribbat@mail.upb.de).

26-28 March 2009
The Green Nineteenth Century30th Annual Conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies AssociationMilwaukee, Wisconsin
CFP – Deadline 3 October 2008
We welcome paper and panel proposals concerning any aspect of "green" studies in the long nineteenth century, including, but not limited to "ecocriticism" in nineteenth-century studies; history of ecological science, environmental ethics, and environmentalist activism; nineteenth-century studies and animal welfare; ecofeminist philosophy and gender politics; contemporary discourses on nature; nineteenth-century ecotourism; Romantic "ecopoetics" and the politics of nature; "green" program music and tone poems; sustainability, including sustainable architecture and interior design; landscape painting and nature imagery; dramatic scenery; color associations and color theories; gardening and farming; conservation movements; and the idea of the "natural" or "unnatural."
Please contact Christine Roth, Program Chair, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, or submit abstracts (no longer than 250 words) for 20-minute papers as well as a one-page c.v. to roth@uwosh.edu.

12-17 July 2009
Maps, Myths and Narratives: Cartography of the Far North
23rd International Conference on the History of Cartography,
The Black Diamond, Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
CFP – Deadline 1 October 2008
The International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) is the only scholarly conference solely dedicated to advancing knowledge of the history of maps and mapmaking, regardless of geographical region, language, period or topic. The conference promotes free and unfettered global cooperation and collaboration among cartographic scholars from any academic discipline, curators, collectors, dealers and institutions through illustrated lectures, presentations, exhibitions, and a social programme. Conferences are held biennially and are administered by local organizers in conjunction with Imago Mundi Ltd.
We call for papers and posters that propose or demonstrate new concepts, patterns, conditions, techniques, relations and interpretations. We also welcome contributions on newly discovered, important maps or map types as well as examinations of regional themes of wide interest. Contributions on a topic from specialists in disciplines such as geodesy, tourism studies, linguistics, history of science, art history, etc., are very welcome.
The ICHC2009 focuses on the four main themes that are briefly outlined below. However, contributions on any other aspect of the history of cartography are very welcome.

Cartography of the Arctic, North Atlantic and Scandinavian regions
Cross-cultural cartographies
Mapping mythical and imaginary places
Maps and the written word

and any other aspect of the history of cartography.
More information and the full Call for Papers is available at www.ichc2009.dk
Please contact ichc2009@bdp.dk.

16-18 September 2009
Forests and Landscapes. Conference of the French Association for the History of ForestsBesancon (France) 2009
CFP – Deadline 15 September 2008The Groupe d’Histoire des Forêts Françaises is pleased to announce its 10th international Conference on Forests and landscapes, which will be held in Besançon, France, September 16-18, 2009. visit the website at http://www.ghff.ens.fr/2009/colloque.html for further details.
Proposals (individual papers only) may be sent to the Organizing Committee before September 15, 2008. Please send all enquiries and proposals at ghff2009@mshe.univ-fcomte.fr

2nd update • August 2008

Editorial

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It was a pleasure to meet most of you in Victoria two weeks ago; please find a short report on the conference in this edition of the ICOHTEC Newsletter. The report of the General Assembly 2008 will follow in one of the next editions.

Best wishes for the last weeks of summer time
Yours Stefan Poser

I. ICOHTEC

„Crossing Borders in the History of Technology”, ICOHTEC Conference 2008

by Stefan Poser

Our 40th Anniversary Symposium of ICOHTEC, „Crossing Borders in the History of Technology”, hosted by the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was the second ICOHTEC Symposium on the American continent. Thus many Americans, especially from Canada and the United States participated. 24 sessions opened different perspectives on the main topic “Crossing Borders” and the fields of research of ICOHTEC. Among the most important events were the traditional Kranzberg-Lecture “Invention and Enterprise. The Life and Times of Melvin Kranzberg”, delivered by Robert Post, and the ICOHTEC Anniversary Session, organised by Wolfhard Weber.

The conference’s primary theme was to examine how technology influences and is influenced by the interaction over various types of boundaries. Crossing borders was discussed on the level of knowledge, of technical artefacts and processes as well as on the level of virtual technology: Knowledge and technology crossing boundaries was the topic of two sessions on the transfer of knowledge and technology from a general perspective, two sessions on crossing the skies were dedicated to aviation, a session, called medical borderland, discussed characteristics of technology-based medicine, crossing spatial borders was dedicated to cybernetic machines and crossing borders with mixed feelings discussed the ambiguous role of technology in sports. A large session was dedicated to the social history of military technology, another one to gunpowder, the long-standing ICOHTEC research topic, other strong fields were technology and environment as well as consuming technology and encountering cultural values.

Thanks to David Zimmerman and his team, the program committee of ICOHTEC, as well as the other colleagues, who were engaged in preparing the conference the Victoria meeting was wonderful. The ICOHTEC Jazz Night, performed by Hans-Joachim Braun, Dik Daso, Susan Schmidt Horning, Friedrich Naumann, Anthony Stranges and Jim Williams with Paul Ceruzzi as guest was again one of the highlights of the conference. Excursions provided impressive insights into technology, culture and nature of British Columbia. The most impressive site was the largest wooden railway bridge of Canada, the Kinsol Trestle (187 m), a girder construction dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.

Slawomir Lotysz agreed to present recent programs and abstracts of ICOHTEC meetings on our homepage; thus documents of the Victoria meeting will be available on the ICOHTEC's homepage www.icohtec.org soon.

II. Other Conferences

10 – 12 September 2008
3rd International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, ESHS
Hosted by the Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna

Please visit: http://conf.ifit.uni-klu.ac.at/eshs/index.php

18–19 September 2008
Kann ich mal anfassen? Technikgeschichte am Objekt/ May I Touch? How to deal with artefacts in the History of Technology? Workshop der Gesellschaft für Technikgeschichte im Deutschen Technikmuseum Berlin, Workshop for PhD Students of the (German) Society for the History of Technology
German Museum of Technology, Berlin

Please visit: http://www.gtg.tu-berlin.de/mambo/index.php?option =com_content &task= view&id=723&Itemid=42

18-21 September 2008
Sixth Annual Conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M)
Canada Science and Technology Museum,
Ottawa, Canada

The conference topic this year is: "Mobility and the Environment".
Please find the program on the webpage: www.t2m.org.

26-28 September 2008
"Wissenschaft, Medizin und Technik in einer(post-)kolonialen Welt"/ Science, Medicine and Technology in a (post)colonial world. 91. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik e.V. 91st Annual meeting of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology (DGGMNT)

Please find the program at http://www.geschichte.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=2427 und http://www.dggmnt.de

8-9 May 2009
Phobia: Constructing the Phenomenology of Chronic Fear, 1789 to the Present
Glamorgan Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science
The ATRiuM Campus, Cardiff
CFP – Deadline 1 December 2008

The history of phobias as disease entities is intimately connected to the phenomenology of modernity. Whereas the emergence of spatial phobias such as agoraphobia (Carl Otto Westphal, 1871) and claustrophobia (Benjamin Ball, 1879) coincided with growing urbanisation and the development of the modern metropolis, Sigmund Freud’s modern subject
theory situated phobia at the heart of his psychoanalytical practice (‘Little Hans’, Totem and Taboo, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety). The fin de siècle was rife with cultural and social fears about the present and the future, and the twentieth century—with its two global conflicts, its natural disasters and the threat of terrorism—has ushered in a period of postmodern panic. Fear and anxiety are omnipresent in the modern age. But when, how and why does fear become chronic, morbid or abnormal? And in what ways has fear been conceptualised by medical practitioners, cultural theorists and artists?

This interdisciplinary conference looks at the different ways in which writers, artists, historians, art historians, cultural and human geographers, scientists and medical practitioners have constructed, represented and theorised phobia and chronic fear.

We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of phobias and anxiety disorders in the period from 1789 to the present. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome. Topics may include but are not limited to:

- Spatial phobias
- Biophobias
- Social phobias
- Phobia and the Gothic
- The fin de siècle
- Phobia, modernisation and modernity
- Phobia and psychoanalysis
- Phobia and cultural geography
- Fear of science and technology
- Phobia, the senses and physical sensations
- Phobophobia

Please send paper proposals of 300 words to Dr Vike Martina Plock and Dr Martin Willis at rclas@glam.ac.uk before 1 December 2008. Proposals for panels (comprising three speakers) are also welcome—please submit the title and a brief description of the panel as well as abstracts for the individual papers.

Please contact: Vike Martina Plock, Cardiff University, plockvm@cardiff.ac.uk.

30-31 March 2009
Towards a Global History of Production I: Machine Tools and the International Transfer of Industrial Technology
Cambdrige, UK
CFP – Deadline 30 September 2008

Between the 1860s and the 1960s there was an extraordinary quantum leap in humanity’s capacity to transform raw metal into highly complex machines. Tracing the development of these productive forces and the discourses that surrounded and impelled their development is the subject of our conference, which seeks to explore and map the development of machine-tool technology from the late 19th century up to the 1960s. We concentrate on machine tools because they are the ubiquitous instruments of modern manufacturing and because right up to the 1980s they occupied an iconic position in debates about industrial modernization. To date, the historical literature has focused very heavily on the divide between the US and Europe. It has sought to understand this divide in terms of a distinction between “special purpose” and “general purpose” machine tools. A fundamental premise of our conference is that this has been over-hasty. We simply do not know enough about the development of this key technology and its geography for it to be useful to adopt such stark dichotomies.

The basic starting point for our conference, therefore, is that the dichotomy between special purpose and general purpose tools, which was widely used from the late nineteenth century onwards to describe the “revolution” marked by the emergence of American industry, should be treated not as a framework for analysis, but as an object of analysis in itself. Our conference therefore is double-edged. It addresses itself both to discourses about technology and to the objects to which this talk was directed. It is also symmetrical in the sense that it keeps in mind both the complex pattern of similarity and difference between the “United States and the rest” and the more general process of manufacturing development across the industrialized world. In this sense we hope to mark a departure from recent debates in comparative industrial history, which have been overshadowed by the European-American productivity gap and by questions of catch-up. The conference will bring together scholars from different parts of the world to investigate the topics for the period between late 19th century and 1960. The convenors would like to invite papers from a wide range of areas, such as history of technology, economic and social history, business history, organisation studies, cultural studies or industrial relations, applying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

The following questions are of primary interest:

- How did industrial producers across the world achieve the spectacular increases in metalworking capacity?
- What kind of metalworking machinery was applied in different countries?
- How did contemporaries interpret these products and processes?
- What were the channels of communication, imitation and appropriation that kept the development of the major industrial economies on such a fundamentally similar path?
- How did the use of different types of machine tools influence industrial relations?
- How did ideas about industrial modernity and the iconic status of machine tools, in particular, impact on the process of industrialization itself?

Conveyers:
David Edgerton (Imperial College London), Ralf Richter (Bielefeld
University), Cristiano Ristuccia (University of Cambridge), Adam Tooze
(University of Cambridge), Thomas Welskopp (Bielefeld University),
Cambdrige, UK, Centre for History and Economics, King’s College,
University of Cambridge, UK

For additional information please visit: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=9714
Please contact: Ralf Richter, Bielefeld University, Germany, ralf.richter@uni-bielefeld.de

9-11 July 2009
Cultural Histories of Sociability, Spaces and Mobility
University of York Department of History Cultural History Conference 2009
CFP - Deadline 28 November 2008

Spatial mobility has moved to the centre of lively debates in a number of key areas of social inquiry. Terms such as ‘travel’, ‘mobility’, ‘displacement’, ‘diaspora’, ‘frontier’, ‘transience’, ‘dislocation’, ‘fluidity’ and ‘permeability’ are central to thinking about the nature of subjectivity and hence the formation of identity on any number of geographical scales and social dimensions. In particular, some scholars argue that the contemporary meaning and practice of what it is to belong is changing as new technologies of transport, along with communications, help to reduce the power of traditional places to define personal and communal identities. Some commentators even suggest that unparalleled levels of mobility are shaping a ‘post-societal’ world of extreme individualization in which nation-states and civil societies are being replaced by global ‘citizens’ moving endlessly through worldwide ‘networks and flows’. Critics argue that this assumption of unbounded movement and geographically fluid identities is unwarranted, and that what matters is understanding how inequalities of mobility arise and with what consequences for social equity and ecological sustainability. But without a sure grasp of the historical precedents to these scenarios, it is all too easy to misconstrue the significance of the changes that are taking place.

This conference therefore aims to explore how, from the mediaeval period and earlier through to (post)modern times, what it means to be fully social has evolved in relation to spatial movement, whether of an everyday or an exceptional character. What role did mobility – and immobility – play in defining the meaning of participation in social, economic or political life and the spatial scale at which such participation took place? how were such meanings formed, sustained and dissolved by particular social structures, mechanisms or processes? and with what consequences for the lived practice of collective and individual life? The conference will address the complex and heterogeneous ways in which historical (im)mobilities were both produced and consumed in relation to human sociability in any sphere and at any geographical scale. It will explore how the modes of governance and organization, infrastructures, vehicles and other artefacts which together constituted transport or mobility systems as material cultures acted as intermediaries engaging, ordering and distributing the spaces, conceptions and practices of communal participation from micro to macro levels. Understood in this way, the highway, for instance, implicated in the making of mobility networks from mediaeval times to the computer age, emerges as a key notion. It has played an important role in conceptions of a civic sphere of free movement and speech since mediaeval law enshrined the right of passage along certain designated routes. Important for the movement of political correspondents in the 18th century and the formation of a nascent working-class politics in the 19th, a space of contestation between automobilists and those seeking to maintain it as a locale for the conduct of neighbourhood life in the 20th, the highway (as the ‘information superhighway’) is frequently invoked as a triumph of western liberal-capitalist democracy in the 21st.

We welcome proposals for papers from any perspective in relation to the historical connections between human sociability and mobility, including:

different kinds; from the transport of people to the mobility of goods, merchandise and ideas, from enforced movements to the discretionary consumption of mobility
different periods; from mediaeval or earlier to the contemporary
different scales; from large transport regimes to individual mobilities, from neighbourhood to global flows
different actors; from mechanical technologies to human- and animal-powered mobilities
different spaces; from developed to developing countries and transnational zones.

We intend to publish a selection of the papers as a edited book or as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.
Please send your proposals to Colin Divall cd11@york.ac.uk (to whom informal inquiries may also be sent). Please submit abstract of no more than 500 words and a one-page CV.