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James C. Williams
About this issue, pp. x-xii
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Articles
Edmund N. Todd
Coordinating the Local: Building Water Regimes in the Ruhr and Louisiana, pp. 1-34
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States along the Rhine and Mississippi Rivers built themselves through water. The Rhine River Commission’s member states oversaw work on their segments of the Rhine, and the Ruhr region developed watershed agencies. By contrast, the Mississippi River became a national issue, with Louisiana and New Orleans looking to Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers to resolve many problems. Prussian officials gained reputations as centralising authoritarians by coordinating multi-level development and attending to local natural, social and political variations. This empirical orientation is clearly seen in the Ruhr region’s current watershed agencies, created before World War I. By seeking votes and Congressional support to resolve water problems, politicians in Louisiana helped create institutional arrangements that have diverted attention from local variations and helped fashion an image of a weak, invisible, even muddled, federal system. This essay stresses local and regional development of infrastructure and historical perspectives toward the topic.
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Darwin H. Stapleton
Oswald T. Avery and the Technological Basis for the Discovery of DNA at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, pp. 35-44
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The pursuit of the ‘transforming principle’ in the Rockefeller laboratory of Oswald T. Avery was aided by several scientific instruments and resulted in the identification of DNA as the genetic material in 1944. This discovery, fundamental to modern molecular biology, has not been understood as having an important technological dimension. This article concludes by suggesting reasons why the history of scientific discovery underplays the role of technology.
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Michael Martin and Heiner Fangerau
Seeing Sounds? Styling Vision? The Visualisation of Acoustic Phenomena in Cardiac Diagnostics around 1900, pp. 45-62
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During the nineteenth century, physicians and physiologists attempted to translate heart sounds into graphs with the help of phonocardiographic instruments. This shift required the adaption for changing diagnostic concepts from feeling to seeing. On a technical level, complicated tools had to be invented to transform sounds and murmurs into optically accessible graphs or images. The reasoning for why physicians were striving to transform one sense into another has yet to be addressed. In this paper, we analysed the transduction of sound signals in graphs in medical diagnostics and discuss the driving forces behind phonocardiography, which was developed around 1900. Using Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought collectives and thought styles, we explain specific diagnostic style developments in phonocardiography as an intertwined process that reconciles hearing, seeing and thinking styles with engineering technology. Our hypothesis is that self-evident concepts of mechanically produced images drove the development of technology-based diagnostic procedures that use sound to produce images.
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Chen-Pang Yeang
The Sound and Shapes of Noise: Measuring Disturbances in Early Twentieth-Century Telephone and Radio Engineering, pp. 63-85
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In this paper, I examine efforts of telephone and radio engineers and researchers from 1910 to 1940 to measure noise as unwanted signals. Two approaches were adopted, one aural, the other visual. The staff of American Telephone and Telegraph Company employed an ear-balancing method, in which a measurer determined the intensity of noise by comparing it with a standard referential tone. This method relied on assumptions about the human measurer’s aural perception. It had a close relationship with the research at Bell Laboratories on speech recognition and hearing physiology. Also, it was used to measure the electrical noise in telephone transmission lines and atmospheric electromagnetic static that interfered with radio communications for the purpose of gauging and improving the performance of the telecommunication systems. On the other hand, physicists at the U.K. Radio Research Board applied the oscilloscope to record the waveforms of atmospheric static. Built upon work on cathode-ray displays, this method inherited a long visual tradition of curve tracing. The choice of this method was associated with their aim of measurement: to reveal the detailed processes of meteorological events that incurred electric discharge and, more importantly, to determine the exact locations of such events. These attempts to measure noise indicated a trend of conceiving concrete acoustic noise in terms of abstract, informational noise.
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Erich Pauer
The Search for (Social) Identity: Japanese Engineers, 1910–1940, pp. 86-103
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In Japan, engineers are rarely seen as ‘big names’ in their country’s history, and they are not even mentioned in standard history books. This is in marked contrast to the situation in Western industrialised countries and is a result of Japan’s neglect of engineers since the start of Japan’s industrialisation in the nineteenth century. Since then, government officials, usually with a background in law, have primarily led development. At the start of the twentieth century, the Japanese engineering association began to defend its members’ profession against the officials’ supremacy. The engineer’s movement gained ground, but could not achieve its demands for a better social position for engineers because of economic problems in the 1920s. In the 1930s, a move to gain recognition was the push towards ‘technocracy’, in which collaboration between engineers and policymakers aimed to bring the hoped-for gain in prestige. But the Second World War and increasing militarisation of the administration brought an end to this promising venture. It was only during the economic recovery after the war that the goal of social recognition for engineers was achieved.
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Jung Sook BAE
Consumer Advertising for Korean Women and Impacts of Early Consumer Products under Japanese Colonial Rule, pp. 104-121
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This article examines colonial consumer advertising for Korean women and the impacts of early consumer goods during Japanese occupation in Korea. In analysing consumer advertising of women’s magazines and newspapers from the Korean colonial period, the results revealed that educated and westernised Korean women in the 1920s and 30s were proud of their new lifestyle, which was influenced by new consumption trends in their everyday lives. Even though early consumer products and their advertising were influenced by Japanese colonial political drive for cultural assimilation, Korean women’s new consumption trend was a selective, dialectic process between Korean tradition and Western modernity, between nationalism and colonialism. Finally, this selective process seemed to lead to the New Korean Women’s Movement in the 1920s and 1930s. The rapid change in social, political, technological and industrial context reveals strong links between colonial environments and the respective weight of typical aspects of advertising, including the shift in usage from the Korean to the Japanese language.The contrast between the advertised goods in Korea and in the West was related to a difference in goals: sales in the West; sales and colonial politics in Korea.
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Benjamin B. Olshin
A Revealing Reflection: The Case of the Chinese Emperor’s Mirror, pp. 122-141
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Mirrors have a long history in both Western and Asian cultures. In the East, besides their standard uses, mirrors have been associated with special or ‘magical’ powers. Several early Chinese texts present accounts of mirrors that were capable of a particular medical capability – seeing the internal organs of the human body. How should we read such accounts? The Chinese work known as the Xijing Zaji (‘Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital’), dating from around C.E. 500, provides one such account. What is particularly interesting is that this and other texts on these strange mirrors include not just ‘fantastical’ language, but also what appear to be technical descriptions. The explanation may be found in the Chinese art of ‘magic mirrors’, with their technologically sophisticated design involving dual reflecting surfaces.
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Olle Hagman
A Technology in Permanent Transition: 200 Years of Cordwood Building with Consumers as Producers, pp. 142-156
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Cordwood building is an almost 200 years old technology, which occurred in both Europe and North America in the first half of the 19th Century. Since then it has survived as a niche technology with a few but enthusiastic followers. In North America it has seen a minor boom in the last 35 years, with about one thousand new houses raised. Unlike many other technologies it has never been standardised into a ‘one best practice’. Instead, practices have diverged rather than converged. A major reason for this is that it has attracted innovative people who want to try new ways of doing things. It has been able to do so because it builds on common and cheap raw materials, firewood and mortar based on cement, lime or mud, and simple masonry techniques. It is also very flexible. A cordwood house can look like any other house, if the walls are covered with plaster or boarding, but it can also look like no other house, if the wood masonry work is exposed. In early cordwood construction the motives of the builders were mostly practical and economical. They were trying to find new building methods for better indoor climate and more effective use of materials. The recent developments in cordwood technology have been led by do-it-yourself builders. They not only want to give their houses unique and expressive designs, many of them also want to experiment, and develop their own technical variations of cordwood building.
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Alexia Sofia Papazafeiropoulou
Technology Users as Empirically-trained Mechanics: Assembly and Decoration of Improvised Vehicles in Greece during and after World War II, pp. 157-178
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This paper examines the Car Culture developed in Greece by mechanics who trained empirically by tinkering with vehicles during and after World War II. It aims to depict the cultural biography of industrial products in interaction with their users’ role outside the production process. More specifically, it describes practices such as the vehicles’ assembly from the spare parts of military vehicles during World War II and the early post-war years, the customised modifications from the late 1950s to the present and the decoration of vehicles between the 1950s and 1970s. These practices are examined in relation with the change in their cultural significance and purpose. Drawing on the hermeneutic tool of ‘interpretative flexibility’ this paper discusses whether flexibility in the use and signification of automobiles is a specific phase in a standardised procedure or whether it follows different paths in time and in different social groups.
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Jytte Thorndahl
Introducing New Technology to Danish Housewives, 1900–1960, pp. 179-199
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The article deals with the introduction and acceptance of new electric technology in Danish households from 1900 to 1960. The first central power plant opened in Denmark in 1892, but only electric light and the radio was widespread in most Danish homes through World War II. After the war, electric appliances were accepted and bought by the majority of Danish households. At first, the refrigerator was the electric appliance preferred by most Danish housewives, along with freezing technology in the countryside. Later the washing machine became widely distributed. The co-operative movement was strong in Denmark, as illustrated by the many small co-op freezing houses in the countryside as well as co-op washing facilities. Electric companies had worked to introduce electric appliances to Danish housewives since the late 1920s, but in this early period a refrigerator and an electric stove were considered a luxury by most housewives. Only when the refrigerators became cheaper they were considered rational and economic devices by the general housewife. Also there was a limit to the distribution of power, since Denmark, to a large degree, used only direct current until the 1950s. Compared to several other European countries, Denmark was an undeveloped country in regards to electricity.
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Review Essays
Stephen H. Cutcliffe
Taking a Reflective School Bus Ride Down Constructivist Lane, pp. 200-206
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Janis Langins
Engineers at the Centre and the Periphery, pp. 207-213
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Spyros D. Petrounakos and Maria Rentetzi
Evocative Objects, Inner Histories and Love Stories of the ‘Bricoleur’, pp. 214-220
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Book Reviews
pp. 221-258
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Manuel Silva Suárez, ed., Téchnica e Ingeniería en España, Vol. IV, El Ochoncientos: Pensamiento, Profesiones y Sociedad, and Vol. V, El Ochoncientos: Profesiones e Instituciones Civiles
(Darina Martykánová)
Manuel Silva Suárez, ed., Téchnica e Ingeniería en España, Vol. VI: El Ochocientos, De ios Lenguajes ao Patrimonio
(Maria Elvira Callapez and Anna Paula Silva)
Lea Haller, Cortison. Geschichte eines Hormons, 1900–1955
(Hans-Joachim Braun)
Cyrus Mody, Instrumental Community. Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology
(Christian Kehrt)
Joseph November, Biomedical Computing: Digitizing Life in the United States
(Paul E. Ceruzzi)
Mark Denny, Their Arrows Will Darken the Sun: The Evolution and Science of Ballistics
(Jeremy R. Kinney)
Efthymios Nicolaidis, trans., Susan Emanuel, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalisation
(Constantin Canavas)
Margaret J. Osler, Reconfiguring the World. Nature, God and Human Understanding from the Middle
Ages to Early Modern Europe
(Iain Harris)
Avner ben-Zaken, Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560–1660
(Manolis Patiniotis)
Steven Gimbel, Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics and the Intersection of Politics and Religion
(Alex Keller)
Anthony Heywood, Engineer of Revolutionary Russia: Iurii V. Lomonosov (1876–1952) and the Railways
(Reinhold Bauer)
Knut Kaiser, Bruno Merz, Oliver Bens, Reinhard F. Hüttl, eds., Historische Perspektiven auf Wasserhaushalt und Wasserenutzung in Mitteleuropa
(Edmund N. Todd)
Braden R. Allenby, Daniel Sarewitz, The Techno-Human Condition
(Alexia Sofia Papazafeiropoulou)
Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, Yannick Barthe, trans. Graham Burchell, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy
(Roman Artemenko)
Finn Arne Jørgensen, Making a Green Machine: the Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling
(Samantha MacBride)
Ari J. Hynynen, Petri S. Juuti, Tapio S. Katko, eds., Water Fountains in the Worldscape
(Alex Keller)
David Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920
(Simon Müller-Pohl)
Suzanne Lommers, Europe – On Air: Interwar Projects for Radio Broadcasting
(Paulina Faraj)
Simon Frith, Simon Zagorski-Thomas, eds., The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field
(Volker Smyrek)
Sonja Petersen, ‘Vom Schwachstarktastenkasten’ und seinen Fabrikanten: Wissensräume im Klavierbau, 1830 bis 1930
(Stefan Krebs)
Molly W. Berger, Hotel Dreams: Luxury, Technology, and Urban Ambition in America, 1829–1929
(Geoff D. Zylstra)
Rachel P. Maines, Hedonizing Technologies: Paths to Pleasure in Hobbies and Leisure
(Anika Schleinzer)
Katerina Vlantoni and Kornilia Papanastasiou
Historicising the Integration of Artificial Intelligence into Biomedicine, pp. 139-157
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This article introduces to a history of the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into biomedicine, based on accounts of AI that were published in journals of biomedical, medical, scientific and engineering communities during the last half century. These accounts were full of promises ab out the future of each new generation of AI, but, also, assessments of how the preceding generations of AI did not manage to deliver according to what was promised. We read such accounts together in order to capture both a narrative of unbound progress and of failure regarding the use of AI (and computing in general) in virtually all medical specialties and fields. This article contributes to the historiography of AI by retrieving this contrast between a progressivist ideology and a reality defined by limits in the integration of AI into biomedicine.
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