'It's rare for a book to make you see the world differently, but this ... does exactly that on almost every page' Guardian

Standard histories of technology give tired accounts of the usual inventions, inventors, and dates, framing technology as the inevitable march of progress. They split history into ages - electrification, motorisation, and computerisation - and rarely ask whether anyone bothered to use these inventions at the time. Shock of the Old is not one of those histories.

I Letters exist alongside emails and outlasted telegrams; we still make physical books and magazines despite the rise of the Internet - a belated rise considering that the technologies that made it possible was invented in 1965, and bookshops thrive despite Amazon. More horses were used in the Second World War than any other war in history and propeller planes continue to take off from the same runways as jets.

Shock of the Old forces us to reassess the significance of old inventions such as corrugated iron and sewing machines and rethink the relative importance we place on the invention of something new, its application, and its widespread adoption. It challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and, interweaving political, economic and cultural history, teaches us to think critically about technology.

More than a decade has passed since IBM's Deep Blue computer stunned the world by defeating Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at that time. "Beyond Deep Blue" tells the continuing story of the chess engine and its steady improvement. The book provides analysis of the games alongside a detailed examination of the remarkable technological progress made by the engines - asking which one is best, how good is it, and how much better can it get. Features: presents a total of 118 games, played by 17 different chess engines, collected together for the first time in a single reference; details the processor speeds, memory sizes, and the number of processors used by each chess engine; includes games from 10 World Computer Chess Championships, and three computer chess tournaments of the Internet Chess Club; covers the man-machine matches between Fritz and Kramnik, and Kasparov and Deep Junior; describes three historical matches between leading engines - Hydra vs. Shredder, Junior vs. Fritz, and Zappa vs. Rybka.

This late 18th Century Coffee House society provided a group of natural philosophers with the opportunity to discuss the topics that most interested them. Though the Minute books deal with some practical and procedural matters, they mostly record the discussions, which centred around chemistry, and in particular the phlogiston theory. Contemporary accounts of such meetings are extremely rare, and the survival of the manuscript copy, made by William Nicholson, a member and secretary of the society is remarkable. In this book, the original has been reproduced. The editors also include an account of the membership, 55 in number and of whom 33 were Fellows of the Royal Society of London, and background essays by Jan Golinski and Larry Stewart. Many of the members were medical, and some were lawyers and clergymen, but all shared a fascination for practical science and technology. Readers across a broad range of disciplines will find the book of great interest.

"Electronic Value Exchange" examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the VISA system from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; presents a historical narrative based on research gathered from personal documents and interviews with key actors; investigates, for the first time, both the technological and social infrastructures necessary for the VISA system to operate; supplies a detailed case study, highlighting the mutual shaping of technology and social relations, and the influence that earlier information processing practices have on the way firms adopt computers and telecommunications; examines how "gateways" in transactional networks can reinforce or undermine established social boundaries, and reviews the establishment of trust in new payment devices."

This work describes the historical evolution of a critical aspect of aerospace technology—avionics and navigation systems. This history is important to understanding current and future issues associated with aeronautics, space-flight development, and flight management, because avionics is crucial to commerical air traffic control and space flight. Samuel Fishbein provides a historical overview of aviation electronics and instrumentation, the evolution of automated systems and their integration, and the role of the pilot in this environment. In addition, he reviews the major elements comprising the flight management system and the evolution and operation of these instruments, discussing why the instrument panel is configured the way it is, and how ground and space-based components of the systems have influenced the design of airplane components.

A riveting introduction to the complex and evolving field of geospatial intelligence. Although geospatial intelligence is a term of recent origin, its underpinnings have a long and interesting history. Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution shows how the current age of geospatial knowledge evolved from its ancient origins to become ubiquitous in daily life across the globe. Within that framework, the book weaves a tapestry of stories about the people, events, ideas, and technologies that affected the trajectory of what has become known as GEOINT. Author Robert M. Clark explores the historical background and subsequent influence of fields such as geography, cartography, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geopolitics, geophysics, and geographic information systems on GEOINT. Although its modern use began in national security communities, Clark shows how GEOINT has rapidly extended its reach to other government agencies, NGOs, and corporations. This global explosion in the use of geospatial intelligence has far-reaching implications not only for the scientific, academic, and commercial communities but for a society increasingly reliant upon emerging technologies. Drones, the Internet of things, and cellular devices transform how we gather information and how others can collect that information, to our benefit or detriment.

We like to think of sports as elemental: strong bodies trained to overcome height, weight, distance; the thrill of earned victory or the agony of defeat in a contest decided on a level playing field. But in Game Changer, Rayvon Fouche argues that sports have been radically shaped by an explosion of scientific and technological advances in materials, training, nutrition, and medicine dedicated to making athletes stronger and faster. Technoscience, as Fouche dubs it, increasingly gives the edge (however slight) to the athlete with the latest gear, the most advanced training equipment, or the performance-enhancing drugs that are hardest to detect. In this revealing book, Fouche examines a variety of sports paraphernalia and enhancements, from fast suits, athletic shoes, and racing bicycles to basketballs and prosthetic limbs. He also takes a hard look at gender verification testing, direct drug testing, and the athlete biological passport in an attempt to understand the evolving place of technoscience across sport. In this book, Fouche: * Examines the relationship among sport, science, and technology* Considers what is at stake in defining sporting culture by its scientific knowledge and technology* Provides readers and students with an informative and engagingly written study Focusing on well-known athletes, including Michael Phelps, Oscar Pistorius, Caster Semenya, Usain Bolt, and Lance Armstrong, Fouche argues that technoscience calls into question the integrity of games, records, and our bodies themselves. He also touches on attempts by sporting communities to regulate the use of technology, from elite soccer's initial reluctance to utilize goal-line technology to automobile racing's endless tweaking of regulatory formulas in an attempt to blur engineering potency and reclaim driver skill and ability. Game Changer will change the way you look at sports-and the outsized impact technoscience has on them.

This is the first book to tell the incredible true story of the first use of chlorine to disinfect a city water supply, in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1908. This important book also corrects misinformation long-held in the historical record about who was responsible for this momentous event, giving overdue recognition to the true hero of the story-an unflagging champion of public health, Dr. John L. Leal.

This book contains the proceedings of HMM2012, the 4th International Symposium on Historical Developments in the field of Mechanism and Machine Science (MMS). These proceedings cover recent research concerning all aspects of the development of MMS from antiquity until the present and its historiography: machines, mechanisms, kinematics, dynamics, concepts and theories, design methods, collections of methods, collections of models, institutions and biographies.

Since the end of World War II, European airlines have revealed their own operational style. By analyzing seven European flag carriers, Dienel and Lyth provide a comparative study of the airline business, covering government policy, aircraft procurement, network growth, commercial performance and collaboration with other airlines and transport modes. This study also seeks to explain why national flag carriers have survived in an age of globalization and strategic alliances. A concluding chapter views the contrasting American air transport industry.

This is an annual collection of essays which explore how technology is related to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and show how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred. Contributions range widely in subject, period and region, and cover both technical matters and general papers on the history of technology.

First Published in 1966. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Moving Targets charts the gradual take-up of Information Technology in Britain, as seen through the eyes of one innovative company Elliott-Automation and remembered by those who worked for that company. The story touches on the strategic, technical and economic history of the 1950s and 1960s, through such themes as: secret computers built for the Admiralty and for GCHQ at Elliott 's Borehamwood Laboratories; the changing balance between analogue and digital techniques; the challenges of commercial data processing and the marketing arrangement between Elliott and NCR; the introduction of low-cost, reliable computers and their application to industrial control and to avionics; the growing importance of software and the Elliott Algol compiler; and the market rivalry between the Elliotts and other British computer manufacturers such as English Electric and Ferranti Ltd.

Simon Lavington, M.Sc., Ph.D., FIEE, FBCS, is emeritus professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex and the author of many publications. He retired in 2002 and is a committee member of the BCS Computer Conservation Society.

Nikola Tesla was one of the 20th century's great pioneers; his role in advancing electrical energy through the use of alternating current, and his stupendous engineering finesse, make this biography by journalist John J. O'Neill a fine read. Born in a Serbian village to a religious family, Nikola demonstrated an early interest in physics. The nascent science behind electricity - in the 1870s a mysterious, unharnessed force - became his passion. Though the young man's engineering aspirations were almost derailed when he contracted cholera, and later by Austro-Hungarian conscription, Tesla managed to enrol to study in Graz, Austria. A top-class student, tutors admiration for Tesla's gifts and boundless curiosity was tempered by concerns over his tendency to overwork. These attributes marked Tesla's professional life; an obsessively driven man, Tesla's gifts for invention were amply demonstrated and rewarded in the United States. As his ambitions grew in size and scope, Tesla was hailed as a visionary.

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.

While political and social historians have made great progress in trying to understand the making of modern Greece by studying * politics and power struggles, little attention has been given to the co-evolution of the Greek state and the technologies that were developed during this period. This volume helps fills this gap, exploring the formation of the Greek state and the construction of 'modern' Greece through the lens of the history of technology and industry. The contributors look at the role of engineering institutions, the press and of infrastructure technological networks in promoting specific technocratic ideals and legitimizing social roles for the engineers of the period. The volume as a whole offers new insights into the way that engineering culture, institutional reforms and infrastructures contributed to the making of 'modern' Greece. Special Issue: History of Technology in Greece, from the Early 19th to 21st Century Edited by Stathis Arapostathis and Aristotelis Tympas

These proceedings derive from an international conference on the history of computing and education. This conference is the second of hopefully a series of conferences that will take place within the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and hence, we describe it as the "Second IFIP Conference on the History of Computing and Education" or simply "History of Computing and Education 2" (HCE2). This volume consists of a collection of articles presented at the HCE2 conference held in association with the IFIP 2006 World Computer Congress in Santiago, Chile. Articles range from a wide variety of educational and computing perspectives and represent activities from five continents. The HCE2 conference represents a joint effort of the IFIP Working Group 9. 7 on the History of Computing and the IFIP Technical Committee 3 on Education. The HCE2 conference brings to light a broad spectrum of issues. It illustrates topics in computing as they occurred in the "early days" of computing whose ramifications or overtones remain with us today. Indeed, many of the early challenges remain part of our educational tapestry; most likely, many will evolve into future challenges. Therefore, these proceedings provide additional value to the reader as it will reflect in part the future development of computing and education to stimulate new ideas and models in educational development. These proceedings provide a spectrum of interesting articles spanning many topics of historical interest.

A pathbreaking history of the regulatory foundations of America's twentieth-century aerial preeminence. Today, the federal government possesses unparalleled authority over the atmosphere of the United States. Yet when the Wright Brothers inaugurated the air age on December 17, 1903, the sky was an unregulated frontier. As increasing numbers of aircraft threatened public safety in subsequent decades and World War I accentuated national security concerns about aviation, the need for government intervention became increasingly apparent. But where did authority over the airplane reside within America's federalist system? And what should US policy look like for a device that could readily travel over physical barriers and political borders? In Sovereign Skies, Sean Seyer provides a radically new understanding of the origins of American aviation policy in the first decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on the concept of mental models from cognitive science, regime theory from political science, and extensive archival sources, Seyer situates the development, spread, and institutionalization of a distinct American regulatory idea within its proper international context. He illustrates how a relatively small group of bureaucrats, military officers, industry leaders, and engineers drew upon previous regulatory schemes and international principles in their struggle to define government's relationship to the airplane. In so doing, he challenges the current domestic-centered narrative within the literature and delineates the central role of the airplane in the reinterpretation of federal power under the commerce clause. By placing the origins of aviation policy within a broader transnational context, Sovereign Skies highlights the influence of global regimes on US policy and demonstrates the need for continued engagement in world affairs. Filling a major gap in the historiography of aviation, it will be of interest to readers of aviation, diplomatic, and legal history, as well as regulatory policy and American political development.