Essays
What Can Historians of Technology Contribute to the Anthropocene Debate?
Helmuth Trischler and Fabienne Will
Technosphere, Technocene, and the History of Technology, pp. 1-18
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454972
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Petter Wulff
Climate Change – How Can History Help? pp. 19-24
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454973
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Maria Paula Diogo, Ivo Louro, and Davide Scarso
Uncanny Nature: Why the concept of Anthropocene is relevant for historians of technology, pp. 25-36
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454974
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Ruth Morgan
The Anthropocene as Hydro-Social Cycle: Histories of Water and Technology for the Age of Humans, pp. 37-54
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454975
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Articles
John B. Stranges, Matthew M. Troia, and Claudette E. Walck
Limited Victory: Love Canal Reclaimed, pp. 55-82
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454976
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In March 2004, The New York Times announced that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had removed the Love Canal neighbourhood of Niagara Falls, New York from the Superfund National Priorities List of contaminated chemical sites. Much of the Love Canal area, infamous among contaminated chemical sites in the United States, was declared fit for human habitation. Some phases of Love Canal’s troubled history are well-known, at least from its settlement, contamination, and abandonment. But the story needs to be developed into a more coherent, post-impressionistic whole by granting a historically appropriate place to the long and disruptive process by which federal, state, municipal, and community agencies reshaped and reclaimed for residential use one of the most symbolic and notorious physical spaces in recent American history. The final twenty-year phase of the story provides a superb illustration of both the symbiotic relationship between science and technology and politics in determining habitability and the powerful and controversial shift in American environmental policy from remediation to redevelopment of contaminated properties. Finally, a series of interviews with the returnees over several years enabled the authors to abstract the core of argument and attitude behind their central role in reviving Love Canal.
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Jose A. Muñoz Alvis
Through a Technique of Building, pp. 83-112
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454977
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Building blocks are present in all stages of formal education, from the kindergarten to the university as well as in workplaces such as research centres and architecture studios. They have been fabricated from different materials. They have dissimilar forms and are arranged in sets. Since the 19th century, they have been used as toys for children as well as modelling materials in the laboratories, schools and kindergarten. What factors have sustained building blocks during the last two centuries in these fields? This paper focuses on the features of building with these materials, rather than the symbolic character of the representations made with them. Different examples of building block systems from Friedrich Fröbel’s at the beginning of the 19th century to Richard Rogers’ in the last decades of the 20th century are examined in the article. It shows how a common technique of building has remained constant over time independently of context. A close analysis of the historical adaptations of building blocks serve to identify additional perspectives to deal with the epistemological character of operating these materials.
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Stefan Krebs
The Failure of Binaural Stereo: German Sound Engineers and the Introduction of Artificial Head Microphones, pp. 113-144
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454978
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In 1973, binaural stereo was introduced to the German public during the International Broadcasting Fair in Berlin. Based on the development of artificial head microphones, binaural stereo provided facsimile sound recordings that enabled listeners, when listening with headphones, to experience the spatial acoustics of the original recording situation. During the fair, Berlin-based radio station Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) broadcast the first binaural radio play. Radio listeners and journalists praised it for its “super stereo” quality and highest fidelity, and expected that the future of radio would be three-dimensional. Despite this remarkable echo, German broadcasting stations were somewhat reluctant to adopt binaural stereo, and many sound engineers rejected to deploy artificial head microphones. They referred to certain technical shortcomings of binaural stereo in general, and available microphone models in particular. Based on contemporary publications, sources from broadcasting archives, and oral history interviews, this paper argues that recordists’ outright rejection of binaural stereo — its failure to be adopted in radio broadcasting — was rather grounded in their listening and recording ideologies than in actual shortcomings of artificial head recording technology.
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Research in Brief
Barbara Rymsza, Anna Mistewicz, and Zbigniew Tucholski
Kierbedź Bridge: A History of The First Permanent Bridge Across the Vistula in Warsaw, Poland, pp. 145-166
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454979
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There are different ways of preserving historical bridge that have been practiced in Poland. The unique idea of protection is offered by the Road and Bridge Research Institute in Warsaw through PONTISEUM that was officially opened in 2014 . The article presents the concept of this outdoor exhibition by discussing the history of the first metal bridge that was constructed over Vistula river in Warsaw between 1859 and 1864. The bridge was initially named Alexander Bridge and later Kierbedź Bridge. It was destroyed twice, during World War I and II. Finally, a new bridge structure was built at its location. However, some of Kierbedź Bridge fragments survived at the river bottom. In 2011 they were discovered and taken out of the Vistula. Following anti-corrosion treatment they have been displayed on the premises of the Road and Bridge Research Institute together with fragments of Warsaw’s other first permanent bridges.
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Book Reviews
Full text of all book reviews (pp. 167-205) listed below:
Artemis Yagou
Marilyn Palmer and Ian West, Technology in the Country House, pp. 167-168
Alexandra Moormann
Alexander Gall and Helmuth Trischler (eds.), Szenerien und Illusion – Ges-chichte, Varianten und Potenziale von Museumsdioramen, pp. 169-170
Roberta Biasillo
Tiago Saraiva, Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism, pp. 170-172
Louise Horvath
Stefan Poser, Glücksmaschinen und Maschinenglück: Grundlagen einer Technik- und Kulturgeschichte des technisierten Spiels, pp. 172-174
Jan Kunnas
Massimo Moraglio & Simone Fari eds., Peripheral Flows – A Historical Perspective on Mobilities between Cores and Fringes, pp. 174-175
Martin Meiske
Carl A. Zimring, Aluminum Upcycled. Sustainable Design in Historical Perspective, pp. 176-178
Hermione Giffard
Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times, 50th Anniversary Edition, pp. 178-180
John Z. Langrish
Benoît Godin, Models of Innovation: The History of an Idea, pp. 180-183
Dick Van Lente
Peter Ester and Arne Maas, Silicon Valley: Planet Startup: Disruptive Innovation, Passionate Entrepreneurship & High- tech Startups, pp. 183-185
Bahar Emgin
Barry M. Katz, Make it New: The History of Silicon Valley Design, pp. 186-188
Sonja Neumann
Hans-Joachim Braun ed., Creativity: Technology and Music, pp. 188-192
Stephanie Probst
Roland Wittje, The Age of Electroacoustics: Transforming Science and Sound, pp. 192-195
Leon Chisholm
Simone Tosoni with Trevor Pinch, Entanglements: Conversations on the Human Traces of Science, Technology, and Sound, pp. 195-197
Klaus Staubermann
Ben Russell ed., Robots: The 500-Year Quest to Make Machines Human, pp. 197-199
Colin Garvey
John M. Jordan, Robots, pp. 199-201
Alexios Zavras
Ed Finn, What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing, pp. 201-203
Hans-Joachim Braun
Annika Frye, Design und Improvisation: Prozesse, Produkte und Methoden, pp. 203-205
