After improving steadily for decades, the technology that brought unequalled productivity growth to the American electric utility industry appeared to stall in the late 1960s, making it impossible to mitigate the difficult economic and regulatory assaults of the 1970s. Unfortunately, most managers did not recognize the severity of the technological problems they faced and chose to focus instead on issues that appeared more manageable. Partly as a result of this lack of attention to technological issues, the industry found itself challenged by the prospects of deregulation and restructuring in the 1980s. This book focuses on the role of technological stagnation in the decline of the industry and argues that a long and successful history of managing a conventional technology set the stage for the industry's deterioration.

Ananda Kiamsha Madelyn Leeke became a pioneer in the digital universe twenty-seven years ago, when she logged in to the LexisNexis research service as a first-year law student at Howard University School of Law. She was immediately smitten with what the World Wide Web could do. Later, while attending the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995, Leeke found herself in an Internet cafe, where she experienced an interaction that changed her life.

Over time, through interactions and conversations both online and in-person, Leeke developed the concept of "digital sisterhood." Embracing this revolutionary concept led to a complete career reinvention that finally allowed her to embrace her enormous creative spirit. She found in her digital sisters true "sheroes" and virtual mentors. Her blogging and social media adventures highlight the lessons she learned in the process, the reasons she launched the Digital Sisterhood Network, and the experiences that caused her to adopt what she terms the "fierce living" commitments.

In her memoir, Leeke details her journey, sharing experiences and insights helped her and her digital sisters use the Internet as a self-discovery tool and identifying leadership archetypes that shaped her role as a social media leader.

An eye-opening history of the technology that harnessed electricity and powered the greatest scientific and technological advances of our time.

What begin as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the battery. Science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our lives, from Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800 to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs. Schlesinger introduces the charlatans and geniuses, the paupers and magnates, who were attracted to the power of the battery.

On the eve of the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk, a new generation will learn about the other man who was once hailed worldwide as the conqueror of the air--Alberto Santos-Dumont. Because the Wright brothers worked in secrecy, word of their first flights had not reached Europe when Santos-Dumont took to the skies in 1906. The dashing, impeccably dressed inventor entertained Paris with his airborne antics--barhopping in a little dirigible that he tied to lampposts, circling above crowds around the Eiffel Tower, and crashing into rooftops. A man celebrated, even pursued by the press in Paris, London, and New York, Santos-Dumont dined regularly with the Cartiers, the Rothschilds, and the Roosevelts. But beneath his lively public exterior, Santos-Dumont was a frenzied genius tortured by the weight of his own creation.Wings of Madness chronicles the science and history of early aviation and offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary and tormented man, vividly depicting the sights and sounds of turn-of-the-century Paris. It is a book that will do for aviation what The Man Who Loved Only Numbers did for mathematics.

The annual collections in the History of Technology series look at the history of technological discovery and change, exploring the relationship of technology to other aspects of life and showing how technological development is affected by the society in which it occurred.

Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans over nature through increasingly powerful innovations, he compares the evolution of technology in different parts of the world, providing a much broader account than is found in other histories of technology. We also discover how small changes sometimes have dramatic results--how, for instance, the stirrup revolutionized war and gave the Mongols a deadly advantage over the Chinese. And how the nailed horseshoe was a pivotal breakthrough for western farmers. Enlivened with many illustrations, Technology offers a fascinating look at the spread of inventions around the world, both as boons for humanity and as weapons of destruction.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods, and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. Volumes contain technical articles ranging widely in subject, time and region, as well as general papers on the history of technology. In addition to dealing with the history of technical discovery and change, History of Technology also explores the relations of technology to other aspects of life -- social, cultural and economic -- and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

Spacecraft Technology: The early years charts the fascinating story of the early Space Age, encompassing the launch of the first satellites and the landing of men on the Moon. While concentrating on the most significant technology developments, it places them in the context of historical events, specific missions and the individuals that made it all happen. Following a chapter on the pre-history of space exploration and another on the development of rocketry, the book covers the early development of space science satellites, Earth observation satellites, communications satellites, lunar probes and manned space capsules. Three chapters are dedicated to the hardware designed for the Apollo programme and its role in transporting men to the Moon, landing them there and transporting them across the lunar surface. Spacecraft Technology: The early years is aimed at scientists and engineers with an interest in the history of space activity and the general reader who enjoys delving into the background of modern technology.

This book systematically summarizes China Internet development over the past 25 years, highlighting its strong impact on China's economy and society, and discussing the Chinese people's transition from beneficiaries and participants to builders, contributors and joint maintainers of cyberspace development. It describes the development achievements, status and development and trends in China Internet in 2019, systematically summarizes the main lessons learned during development, and analyzes China's strategic planning and policy actions. Further, it discusses topics such as development outcomes, future trends in information infrastructure, network information technology, digital economy, e-government, construction and management of network contents, cyberspace security, the legal construction of cyberspace, and international cyberspace governance. In addition, the book suggests improvements to the index system for China Internet development and offers an overall assessment of cyberspace security and informatization work throughout China in order to comprehensively and accurately demonstrate the level of China Internet development.

Thirty-five short years, and presto the newborn art of telephony is fullgrown. Three million telephones are now scattered abroad in foreign countries, and seven millions are massed here, in the land of its birth. So entirely has the telephone outgrown the ridicule with which, as many people can well remember, it was first received, that it is now in most places taken for granted, as though it were a part of the natural phenomena of this planet. It has so marvellously extended the facilities of conversation - that "art in which a man has all mankind for competitors" - that it is now an indispensable help to whoever would live the convenient life. The disadvantage of being deaf and dumb to all absent persons, which was universal in pre-telephonic days, has now happily been overcome; and I hope that this story of how and by whom it was done will be a welcome addition to American libraries.

In 1922, the teenage son of a Jewish immigrant ventured from Manhattan to New Mexico for his health. It was the first of many trips to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a western retreat where J. Robert Oppenheimer would eventually hold pathbreaking discussions with world-renowned scientists about atomic physics. Oppenheimer came to feel at home in the American West, and while extensive studies have been made of the man, this is the first book to explicitly link him with the region. "J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West" explores how the West influenced Oppenheimer as a scientist and as a person--and the role he played in influencing it.

Jon Hunner's concise account of Oppenheimer's life and the emergence of an Atomic West distills a vast literature for students and general readers. In this brisk, engaging biography, the author recounts how Oppenheimer helped locate the atomic weapons research lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and helped establish leading physics departments at the University of California-Berkeley and Caltech. By taking part in moving atomic physics west of the Mississippi, Oppenheimer bolstered the establishment of research labs, uranium mines, nuclear reactors, and more, bringing talented people--and billions of dollars in federal contracts--to the region.

Interwoven into this atomic tale are insights into the physicist's troubled growing-up years, his marriage and family life, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer's eventual downfall. After the first atomic bomb burst over the New Mexican desert in 1945 and as the Cold War developed, the American myth of the Wild West expanded to encompass atomic sheriffs saving the world for democracy--even as powerful opponents began questioning Oppenheimer's place in that story. Against the backdrop of the physicist's life twining with the region's history, Hunner explores the promise and peril of the Atomic Age.

This accessible compendium examines a collection of significant technology firms that have helped to shape the field of computing and its impact on society. Each company is introduced with a brief account of its history, followed by a concise account of its key contributions. The selection covers a diverse range of historical and contemporary organizations from pioneers of e-commerce to influential social media companies. Features: presents information on early computer manufacturers; reviews important mainframe and minicomputer companies; examines the contributions to the field of semiconductors made by certain companies; describes companies that have been active in developing home and personal computers; surveys notable research centers; discusses the impact of telecommunications companies and those involved in the area of enterprise software and business computing; considers the achievements of e-commerce companies; provides a review of social media companies.

"That's a crazy book " Albert Einstein said in the early 1950s, when asked his impression of Alfred Korzybski's 1933 work "Science and Sanity." More than a decade later, Richard Feynman found Korzybski's notion of "time-binding" crucial for answering the question "What is science?."

Feynman didn't know that it was Alfred Korzybski who had coined the term "time-binding" in his first, 1921, book "Manhood of Humanity" to label what he considered the defining characteristic of humans: the potential of each generation to start where the former leaves off and thus to accumulate useful knowledge at an ever-accelerating rate. In the exact sciences and technology, time-binding seems to work reasonably well. In the rest of human life, not so much. Korzybski, a patriotic Polish nobleman and an engineer who had lived under Tsarist tyranny and had seen the horrors of World War I on the Eastern Front before coming to the United States, realized the results of the disparity between rapid but narrow scientific-technological advancement and broader but snail-paced ethical-social development: a seemingly endless cycle of crises, revolutions and wars. Seeking a way out, he studied a broad range of disciplines from physics to psychiatry-fields that others felt had little to do with each other-and discovered factors of sanity in physico-mathematical methods. Comparing the ways of thinking that scientists and mathematicians exemplify when working at their best and the ways of thinking that they and other people unsanely or insanely tend to use the rest of the time, Korzybski linked science and sanity in a new world outlook with an accompanying methodology (labeled 'general semantics')-simple enough to teach children.

Traces of Korzybski's pioneering work can be found today in a variety of fields such as cognitive science, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, communication, media ecology, medicine, organizational development, philosophical counseling and philosophy, etc. In spite of this, Korzybski's radically interdisciplinary work remains relatively unassimilated into standard academic fields and hard to accurately fit into familiar popular categories. Thus, Korzybski, who originated the saying "The map is not the territory," remains a relatively neglected and misunderstood figure, shrouded in controversy: some people have considered him a genius while others have called him a crank. Drawing on an array of sources including Korzybski's personal correspondence, notes, scrapbooks, and both published and unpublished writings, as well as personal discussions and interviews with some of Korzybski's closest co-workers, Bruce I. Kodish situates Korzybski's contributions in the context of his times and provides surprising insights into his work as a whole. Kodish's clear prose provides a compellingly readable narrative of Korzybski's very busy, sometimes too busy, exciting and exhausting life while making accessible some of the most complex areas of Korzybski's thought. For years to come, this outstanding biography will remain the standard work on Alfred Korzybski's extraordinarily adventurous and significant life and work.

Archimedes is held in high esteem by mathematicians, physicists and engineers as one of the most brilliant scientists of all time. These proceedings contain original, unpublished papers with the primary emphasis on the scientific work of Archimedes and his influence on the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering. There are also papers dealing with archaeological aspects and the myths and legends about Archimedes and about the Archimedes Palimpsest. Papers on the following subjects form part of the book: Hydrostatics (buoyancy, fluid pressure and density, stability of floating bodies); Mechanics (levers, pulleys, centers of gravity, laws of equilibrium); Pycnometry (measurement of volume and density); Integral Calculus (Archimedes as the father of the integral calculus, method of exhaustion, approximation of pi, determination of areas and volumes); Mathematical Physics (Archimedes as the father of mathematical physics, Law of the Lever, Law of Buoyancy, Axiomatization of Physics); History of Mathematics and Mechanics (Archimedes' influence in antiquity, the middle ages, the Renaissance, and modern times; his influence on Leonado da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, and other giants of science and mathematics); Ancient Machines and Mechanisms (catapults, water screws, iron hands, compound pulleys, planetaria, water clocks, celestial globes, the Antikythera Mechanism); Archimedean Solids (their rediscovery in the Rennaisance and their applications in materials science and chemistry); Archimedean Legends (how stories of golden crowns, eureka moments, naked runs, burning mirrors, steam cannons, etc., have influenced us through the ages, whether true or not); The Cattle Problem (how its 18th century rediscovery inspired the study of equations with integer solutions); Teaching the Ideas of Archimedes (how his life and works have influenced the teaching of science, mathematics, and engineering).

This book introduces recent global advances and innovations in industry integrated engineering and computing education to academics, program managers, department heads, and deans, and shares with readers a critical perspective on future potentials in industry integrated engineering education. It covers topics and issues such as integrated engineering and computing education, part-time engineering masters programs, secure BIM learning, ethics, and IT workforce development. The book concludes with detail information on summarizing and extracting different frameworks, cases, and models into a practitioner toolkit, along with pragmatic recommendations for engineering education academics to quickly utilize, adopt, and adapt the toolkits for their own curricular development activities.

In this open access book, Mikael Hard tells a story of how people around the world challenged the production techniques and products brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom, creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives, globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines, and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hard discusses instances that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain in-and expand-their own mud-brick houses rather than move into prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly, nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to them by missionaries-and chose to chop down trees with their arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations, continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of technology and material culture through the lens of diversity. Based on research funded by the European Research Council and conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.

Little work has been done to explicate the motivational factors of agency, particularly in cases where an artifact initially deemed ineffective or superfluous becomes an everyday necessity, such as the automobile at the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers saw it as a "devil wagon" but later adopted it for use as an all-around device and power source. What makes a social group change its position about a particular artifact? How did the devil wagon overcome its notoriety to become a prosaic mainstream device? These questions direct the research in this book. While they may have been asked before, author Imes Chiu (PhD, Cornell University) brings a different and refreshing approach to the problem of newness. Preexisting practices and work routines used as explanatory devices have something interesting to say about diffusion strategies and localization measures. This innovative study examines the conversion of users. To understand the motivating factors in mass adoption, the study focuses on perceptions and practices associated with horses and motorcars in three different settings during three different periods. All three cases begin with the motorcar in the periphery: all three end with it achieving ubiquity. This multiple-case design is used for the purpose of theoretical replication. Results in all three cases show that a contrived likeness to its competitor-the horse-contributed to the motorcar's success. The motorcar absorbed the technical, material, structural, and conceptual resources of the technology it displaced. This book, which includes several rare photographs, will be an important resource for those who wish to study the history of transportation and technology adaptation.