This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of 'religion' and 'belief', it offers an innovative rethinking of the history of secularisation that will appeal to students, scholars, and everyone interested in secularity, Victorian culture, the history of technology, and the temporalities of modernity.

More than any other technology, cars have transformed our culture. Cars have created vast wealth as well as novel dreams of freedom and mobility. They have transformed our sense of distance and made the world infinitely more available to our eyes and our imaginations. They have inspired cinema, music and literature; they have, by their need for roads, bridges, filling stations, huge factories and global supply chains, re-engineered the world. Almost everything we now need, want, imagine or aspire to assumes the existence of cars in all their limitless power and their complex systems of meanings. This book celebrates the immense drama and beauty of the car, of the genius embodied in the Ford Model T, of the glory of the brilliant-red Mercedes Benz S-Class made by workers for Nelson Mandela on his release from prison, of Kanye West's 'chopped' Maybach, of the salvation of the Volkswagen Beetle by Major Ivan Hirst, of Elvis Presley's 100 Cadillacs, of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost and the BMC Mini and even of that harbinger of the end - the Tesla Model S and its creator Elon Musk. As the age of the car as we know it comes to an end, Bryan Appleyard's brilliantly insightful book tells the story of the rise and fall of the incredible machine that made the modern world what it is today.

This book provides a concise overview of human prehistory. It shows how an understanding of the distant past offers new perspectives on present-day challenges facing our species - and how we can build a sustainable future for all life on planet Earth. Deborah Barsky tells a fascinating story of the long-term evolution of human culture and provides up-to-date examples from the archaeological record to illustrate the different phases of human history. Barsky also presents a refreshing and original analysis about issues plaguing modern globalized society, such as racism, institutionalized religion, the digital revolution, human migrations, terrorism, and war. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Human Prehistory is aimed at an introductory-level audience. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary, scientific study of human prehistory, as well as the theoretical interpretations of human evolutionary processes that are used in contemporary archaeological practice. Definitions, tables, and illustrations accompany the text.

This book deals with the simultaneous making of Portuguese engineers and the Portuguese nation-state from the mid seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. It argues that the different meanings of being an engineer were directly dependent of projects of nation building and that one cannot understand the history of engineering in Portugal without detailing such projects. Symmetrically, the authors suggest that the very same ability of collectively imagining a nation relied on large measure on engineers and their practices. National culture was not only enacted through poetry, music, and history, but it demanded as well fortresses, railroads, steam engines, and dams. Portuguese engineers imagined their country in dialogue with Italian, British, French, German or American realities, many times overlapping such references. The book exemplifies how history of engineering makes more salient the transnational dimensions of national history. This is valid beyond the Portuguese case and draws attention to the potential of history of engineering for reshaping national histories and their local specificities into global narratives relevant for readers across different geographies.

The history of science is not just a chronicle of technical achievements, but a human story of discovery intertwined with religion, philosophy, economics, and technology. The modern world began in the sixteenth century when Europeans began to acquire an appreciation for how their achievements surpassed those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Western Civilization organized itself around the idea that human progress, both technological and moral, was achievable and desirable. Science emerged during the seventeenth century in Europe when people learned to subordinate reason to empiricism. Inspired by the example of physics, men such as Robert Boyle began the process of changing alchemy into the exact science of chemistry. During the eighteenth century, European society became more secular and tolerant. Philosophers and economists developed many of the ideas that determine modern social theories and economic policies. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution fundamentally transformed the world by increasing productivity through specialization and the application of machine power. People became more affluent, better educated, and urbanized. Endemic poverty was eradicated, and the world entered an era of unprecedented prosperity and progress.

This is a new edition of an original and controversial book. As well as revising parts of the text and substantially updating the bibliography, the author takes a more polemical stance and enters into a discussion of the nature and range of different interpretations.

The book is divided into three parts: Interpretation, Evidence and Later Developments. The first part presents several new interpretations of the idea of ratio in early Greek mathematics and illustrates them in detailed discussions of several texts. Part Two focuses on the sources themselves, and questions the depth of modern knowledge of Plato's Academy during his lifetime, the source of our text of Euclid's Elements, and modern understanding of early Greek mathematics. The final part contrasts some of the evidence from early and late antiquity and then gives a historical account, since the seventeenth century, of the theory of continued fractions, our version today of the mathematics underlying the reconstruction.

From reviews of the first edition:

"...a real treat." Greece and Rome

"...he enters into classical scholarship here with a really "new reconstruction" of early Greek mathematics." Nature.

In the folklore of mathematics, James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897) is the eccentric, hot-tempered, sword-cane-wielding, nineteenth-century mathematician who, together with the taciturn Arthur Cayley, developed a theory and language of invariants that then died spectacularly in the 1890s as a result of David Hilbert's groundbreaking `modern' techniques. This, like all folklore, has some grounding in fact but owes much to fiction.

The present volume brings together for the first time 140 letters from Sylvester's correspondence in an effort to establish the true picture. It reveals--through the letters as well as through the detailed mathematical and historical commentary accompanying them--Sylvester the friend, man of principle, mathematician, poet, professor, scientific activist, social observer, and traveller. It also provides a detailed look at Sylvester's thought processes as it shows him acting in both personal and professional spheres over the course of his eighty-two year life. The Sylvester who emerges from this analysis--unlike the Sylvester of the folkloric caricature--offers deep insight into the development of the technical and social structures of mathematics.

J. B. S. Haldane's life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama-from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him "the last man who might know all there was to be known." He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio-all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think. Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian's A Dominant Character recounts Haldane's boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics-questions that resonate even more urgently today.

This is a volume of chapters on the historical study of information, computing, and society written by seven of the most senior, distinguished members of the History of Computing field. These are edited, expanded versions of papers presented in a distinguished lecture series in 2018 at the University of Colorado Boulder - in the shadow of the Flatirons, the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Topics range widely across the history of computing. They include the digitalization of computer and communication technologies, gender history of computing, the history of data science, incentives for innovation in the computing field, labor history of computing, and the process of standardization. Authors were given wide latitude to write on a topic of their own choice, so long as the result is an exemplary article that represents the highest level of scholarship in the field, producing articles that scholars in the field will still look to read twenty years from now. The intention is to publish articles of general interest, well situated in the research literature, well grounded in source material, and well-polished pieces of writing. The volume is primarily of interest to historians of computing, but individual articles will be of interest to scholars in media studies, communication, computer science, cognitive science, general and technology history, and business.

The Albatross was the premier fixed-wing rescue aircraft for the U.S. Air Force and Coast Guard. Its very colorful history begins in 1946 and spans nearly a quarter of a century, including service with twenty-two foreign nations. With a total of 466 built by Grumman, more than eighty examples still thrive on the civil register. The Albatross also saw extensive service in the Korean and Vietnam wars. The fascinating history of this unique aircraft is complemented by over 200 photographs including many in color showing the great variations in color schemes and markings.

This book is a unique attempt to capture the growing societal experience of living in an age unlike anything the world has ever seen. Fueled by the perception of acquiring unprecedented powers through technologies that entangle the human and the natural worlds, human beings have become agents of a new kind of transformative event. The ongoing sixth mass extinction of species, the prospect of a technological singularity, and the potential crossing of planetary boundaries are expected to trigger transformations on a planetary scale that we deem catastrophic and try to avoid. In making sense of these prospects, Simon's book sketches the rise of a new epochal thinking, introduces the epochal event as an emerging category of a renewed historical thought, and makes the case for the necessity of bringing together the work of the human and the natural sciences in developing knowledge of a more-than-human world.

Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203024370

Since 1900, the connections between art and technology with nature have become increasingly inextricable. Through a selection of innovative readings by international scholars, this book presents the first investigation of the intersections between art, technology and nature in post-medieval times. Transdisciplinary in approach, this volume's 14 essays explore art, technology and nature's shifting constellations that are discernible at the micro level and as part of a larger chronological pattern. Included are subjects ranging from Renaissance wooden dolls, science in the Italian art academies, and artisanal epistemologies in the followers of Leonardo, to Surrealism and its precursors in Mannerist grotesques and the Wunderkammer, eighteenth-century plant printing, the climate and its artistic presentations from Constable to Olafur Eliasson, and the hermeneutics of bioart. In their comprehensive introduction, editors Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam and Jacob Wamberg trace the Kantian heritage of radically separating art and technology, and inserting both at a distance to nature, suggesting this was a transient chapter in history. Thus, they argue, the present renegotiation between art, technology and nature is reminiscent of the ancient and medieval periods, in which art and technology were categorized as aspects of a common area of cultivated products and their methods (the Latin ars, the Greek techne), an area moreover supposed to imitate the creative forces of nature.

The successful laying of a transatlantic cable in 1866 remade world communications. A message could travel across the ocean in minutes, shrinking the space between continents, cultures, and nations. An eclectic group of engineers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and media visionaries then developed this technology into a telecommunications system that spread a particular vision of civilization-but not everyone wanted to wire the world the same way. Wiring the World is a cultural and social history that explores how the large Anglo-American cable companies won out over alternative visions. Bitter rivalries emerged over telegram prices, visions for world peace, scientific innovation, and the role of the nation-state. Such struggles determined the growth of cable technology, which in turn influenced world history. Filled with fascinating characters and new insights into pivotal events, Wiring the World traces globalization's diverse paths and close ties to business and politics.

A history of the United States' systematic expulsion of "undesirables" and immigrants, told through the lives of the passengers who travelled from around the world, only to be locked up and forced out aboard America's first deportation trains. The United States, celebrated as a nation of immigrants and the land of the free, has developed the most extensive system of imprisonment and deportation that the world has ever known. The Deportation Express is the first history of American deportation trains: a network of prison railroad cars repurposed by the Immigration Bureau to link jails, hospitals, asylums, and workhouses across the country and allow forced removal with terrifying efficiency. With this book, historian Ethan Blue uncovers the origins of the deportation train and finds the roots of the current moment, as immigrant restriction and mass deportation once again play critical and troubling roles in contemporary politics and legislation. A century ago, deportation trains made constant circuits around the nation, gathering so-called "undesirable aliens"-migrants disdained for their poverty, political radicalism, criminal conviction, or mental illness-and conveyed them to ports for exile overseas. Previous deportation procedures had been violent, expensive, and relatively ad hoc, but the railroad industrialized the expulsion of the undesirable. Trains provided a powerful technology to divide "citizens" from "aliens" and displace people in unprecedented numbers. Drawing on the lives of migrants and the agents who expelled them, The Deportation Express is history told from aboard a deportation train. By following the lives of selected individuals caught within the deportation regime, this book dramatically reveals how the forces of state exclusion accompanied epic immigration in early twentieth-century America. These are the stories of people who traveled from around the globe, only to be locked up and cast out, deported through systems that bound the United States together, and in turn, pulled the world apart. Their journey would be followed by millions more in the years to come.

The draining of the Fens in eastern England was one of the largest engineering projects in seventeenth-century Europe. A series of Dutch and English "projectors," working over several decades and with the full support of the Crown, transformed hundreds of thousands of acres of putatively barren wetlands into dry, arable farmland. The drainage project was also supposed to reform the sickly, backward fenlanders into civilized, healthy farmers, to the benefit of the entire commonwealth. As projectors reconstructed entire river systems, these new, artificial channels profoundly altered both the landscape and the lives of those who lived on it. In this definitive account, historian Eric H. Ash provides a detailed history of this ambitious undertaking. Ash traces the endeavor from the 1570s, when draining the whole of the Fens became an imaginable goal for the Crown, through several failed efforts in the early 1600s. The book closes in the 1650s, when, in spite of the project's enormous difficulty and expense, the draining of the Great Level of the Fens was finally completed. Ash ultimately concludes that the transformation of the Fens into fertile farmland had unintended ecological consequences that created at least as many problems as it solved. Drawing on painstaking archival research, Ash explores the drainage from the perspectives of political, social, and environmental history. He argues that the efficient management and exploitation of fenland natural resources in the rising nation-state of early modern England was a crucial problem for the Crown, one that provoked violent confrontations with fenland inhabitants, who viewed the drainage (and accompanying land seizure) as a grave threat to their local landscape, economy, and way of life. The drainage also reveals much about the political flashpoints that roiled England during the mid-seventeenth century leading up to the violence of the English Civil War. This is compelling reading for British historians, environmental scholars, historians of technology, and anyone interested in state formation in early modern Europe.

In this work, Flexner chronicles the lives of three men, all striving to invent the first steamboat, and shows the pattern of their interwoven fates. In his introduction, Flexner profiles his first protagonist, John Fitch, as an archetypal wild man of genius ... born to create what would not be accepted, to fight man and God for what he considered justice, and in the end, destroy himself. Fitch's rival and enemy, James Rumsey, was A backwoods gambler, suave and humorous where Fitch was torrential, Rumsey was also (but how differently ) self-destroyed. Enter Robert Fulton, an inventor born to succeed, with whom the tale of anguished pioneering ends. Flexner paints the final hero as an able and cynical opportunist who became rich, socially elevated, and down through the generations, famous.

Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and vio lence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare's futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.

The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time-use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.

While so many books on technology look at new advances and digital technologies, The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence looks back at analog technologies that are disappearing, considering their demise and what it says about media history, pop culture, and the nature of nostalgia. From card catalogs and typewriters to stock tickers and cathode ray tubes, contributors examine the legacy of analog technologies, including those, like vinyl records, that may be experiencing a resurgency. Each essay includes a brief history of the technology leading up to its peak, an analysis of the reasons for its decline, and a discussion of its influence on newer technologies.

In the early twentieth century, the magic of radio was new, revolutionary, and poorly understood. A powerful symbol of modernity, radio was a site where individuals wrestled and came to terms with an often frightening wave of new mass technologies. Radio was the object of scientific investigation, but more importantly, it was the domain of tinkerers, "hackers," citizen scientists, and hobbyists. This book shows how this wild and mysterious technology was appropriated by ordinary individuals in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century as a leisure activity. Clubs and hobby organizations became the locus of this process, providing many of the social structures within which individuals could come to grips with radio, apart from any media institution or government framework. In so doing, this book uncovers the vital but often overlooked social context in which technological revolutions unfold.

Peoples of the distant past lived comfortably in cities that boasted well-conceived urban planning, monumental architecture, running water, artistic expression, knowledge of mathematics and medicine, and more. Without the benefits of modern technology, they enjoyed all the accoutrements of modern civilization. Technology of the Ancient Near East brings together in a single volume what is known about the technology behind these acheivements, based on the archaeological, textual, historic, and scientific data drawn from a wide range of sources, focusing on subjects such as warfare, construction, metallurgy, ceramics and glass, water management, and time keeping. These technologies are discussed within the cultural, historic, and socio-economic contexts within which they were invented and the book emphasises these as the foundation upon which modern technology is based. In so doing, this study elucidates the ingenuity of ancient minds, offering an invaluable introduction for students of ancient technology and science.

The book highlights women's contributions to science, which have often been marginalized and overlooked throughout history. The book first provides an overview of the development of the various science professions over time - placed in socioeconomic and cultural contexts - and women's role in the sciences throughout history. The author then exemplifies - through history, example, and case studies - that although women were denied a scientific education until fairly recently in our history, they have nevertheless demonstrated intellect and capability in mathematics, physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and computer sciences throughout time. Biographies of women who contributed to these fields since before the Common Era are interwoven into a discussion of the development of the scientific profession, the advancement of education, the professionalization of the various scientific occupations, and the advancement of women in society. This book is a follow up to the author's book "Engineering Women: Re-visioning Women's Scientific Achievements and Impacts" (Springer 2017). The author, Jill Tietjen, is the series editor for Springer's Women in Engineering and Science book series. Illuminates the many significant contributions of women in the sciences; Educates readers about the evolution of women's participation in the scientific fields over the last century; Demonstrates how key scientific advances are driven by socio-economic and cultural contexts.