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Books > Professional & Technical > Technology: general issues > History of engineering & technology
Entre Meeanique et Arehiteeture: e'est-a-dire, entre les proeedes teehniques qui, depuis des temps immemoriaux eonforment l'art et la scienee de la eonstruetion au developpement de la scienee physique et mathematique la plus generale et, peut-etre, la plus abstraite, subalternata tanturn geometriae et philosophiae naturalis, eomme le disait Tartaglia, bien que liee aux faits les plus farniliers: la statique et la meeanique des mareriaux et des struetures. Le theme qui nous eoneeme est done la relation entre la technique et la scienee dans son exemple le plus important, je crois, du point de vue historiographique mais aussi epistemologique: a savoir, la relation entre le savoir faire, qui se eonforme a la norme, en respeetant une determination et une eongruenee parfaites avee son objectif, et la theorie, qui eonfirme la norme et temoigne la neeessite de la determiner eongrfiment avec les lois de la nature. Avee une extreme perspieaeite, quelque peu offusquee par une frivolite erudite, l' Abbe Franeeseo Maria Franeesehinis, mathematieien et adepte de la philosophie des lurnieres, se peneha sur la question dans un bref traite qu'il publia a Padoue en 1808 sous 1 le titre Des Mathematiques appliquees , soutenant la nouvelle tendanee didaetique introduite a l'Universite de Padoue par l'ephemere Regne d'Italie. Simulant un eonflit entre plusieurs auteurs, Franeesehinis exposait une premiere these dans un Discours inaugural qu'il reeita peut-etre reellement en 1807, lorsqu'il devint titulaire de la Chaire de Mathematiques appliquees.
This book gathers the latest advances in the field of history of science and technology, as presented by leading international researchers at the 7th International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms (HMM), held in Granada and Jaen, Spain on April 28-30, 2022. The Symposium, which was promoted by the permanent commission for the History of Machine and Mechanism Science (MMS) of IFToMM, provided an international forum to present and discuss historical developments in the field of MMS. The contents cover all aspects of the development of MMS from antiquity until the present era and its historiography: modern reviews of past works, engineers in history and their works, the development of theories, history of the design of machines and mechanisms, historical developments of mechanical design and automation, historical developments of teaching, the history of schools of engineering, the education of engineers. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations.
A fascinating account of how the United States established the first global satellite communications system to project geopolitical leadership during the Cold War. On July 20, 1969, the world watched, spellbound, as NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off the Apollo 11 lunar module to walk on the moon. NASA estimated that 20 percent of the planet's population-nearly 650 million people-watched the moon landing footage, which was made possible by the first global satellite communications system, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, or Intelsat. In Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race, Hugh R. Slotten analyzes the efforts of US officials, especially during the Kennedy administration, to establish this satellite communication system and open it to all countries of the world. Locked in competition with the Soviet Union for both military superiority and international prestige, President John F. Kennedy overturned the Eisenhower administration's policy of treating satellite communications as simply an extension of traditionally regulated telecommunications. Instead of allowing private communications companies to set up separate systems that would likely primarily serve major "developed" regions, the new administration decided to take the lead in establishing a single world system. Explaining how the East-West Cold War conflict became increasingly influenced by North-South tensions during this period, Slotten highlights the growing importance of non-aligned countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He also underscores the importance of a political economy of "total Cold War" in which many crucial aspects of US society became tied to imperatives of national security and geopolitical prestige. Drawing on detailed archival records to examine the full range of decisionmakers involved in the Intelsat system, Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race spotlights mid- and lower-level agency staff usually ignored by historians. One of the few works to analyze the establishment of a major global infrastructure project, this book provides an outstanding analytical overview of the history of global electronic communications from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
This book tells the story of Agent Orange, its usage and the policies that surround it. Agent Orange contains a contaminant known as TCDD. It was the most widely used defoliant from 1965 - 1970 and became one of three major tactical herbicides used in Vietnam. More than 45 major health studies were conducted with Vietnam veterans from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea seeking a relationship between veterans' health and TCDD. Allegations of birth defects in the families of Vietnam veterans and the Vietnamese represented a case study in propaganda and deliberate misinformation by the government of Vietnam. The Policies of the US Government implemented by Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) identified 17 recognized associated presumptive diseases that failed the tests of "cause and effect" and common sense. This book tells the story of Agent Orange, its usage, the health studies and those policies from a diverse range of perspectives, delving into science, statistics, history, policy and ethics. It is of interest to scholars engaged in history, political and social philosophy and ethics.
Nearly every aspect of daily life in the Mediterranean world and Europe during the florescence of the Greek and Roman cultures is relevant to the topics of engineering and technology. This volume highlights both the accomplishments of the ancient societies and the remaining research problems, and stimulates further progress in the history of ancient technology. The subject matter of the book is the technological framework of the Greek and Roman cultures from ca. 800 B.C. through ca. A.D. 500 in the circum-Mediterranean world and Northern Europe. Each chapter discusses a technology or family of technologies from an analytical rather than descriptive point of view, providing a critical summation of our present knowledge of the Greek and Roman accomplishments in the technology concerned and the evolution of their technical capabilities over the chronological period. Each presentation reviews the issues and recent contributions, and defines the capacities and accomplishments of the technology in the context of the society that used it, the available "technological shelf," and the resources consumed. These studies introduce and synthesize the results of excavation or specialized studies. The chapters are organized in sections progressing from sources (written and representational) to primary (e.g., mining, metallurgy, agriculture) and secondary (e.g., woodworking, glass production, food preparation, textile production and leather-working) production, to technologies of social organization and interaction (e.g., roads, bridges, ships, harbors, warfare and fortification), and finally to studies of general social issues (e.g., writing, timekeeping, measurement, scientific instruments, attitudestoward technology and innovation) and the relevance of ethnographic methods to the study of classical technology. The unrivalled breadth and depth of this volume make it the definitive reference work for students and academics across the spectrum of classical studies.
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.
This book focuses on the development of four key issues in the development of modern Spain; knowledge, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, and public works. If technology transfer from advanced nations to less developed systems always worked, then the whole world would now be rich. That this is not the case is so obvious, we might well expect that the history of the processes, successes and failures of technology transfer across nations would be a very well-established field of enquiry. In fact, the theme is still a developing one, and the present Special Issue centres on the case of Spain as exemplary in many respects. The collected essays focus upon the four major themes of knowledge, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications and public works. Essays range in time from the 18th century to the present time, from studies of espionage and early links between craftsmen and savants, to the institutions of technology (from training systems, to private enterprise activity, or patents), to case-studies of silk manufacture, shipbuilding, mining, paper-making, and pharmaceuticals. Each essay offers a broad variety of material to bring to bear on a major problem of world development, past, present, and future.
Video recording has recently become an important phenomenon.
Although the majority of American homes have at least one video
recording set, not much is known about video recording's past and
about its continual effect on affiliated industries. This text
documents the history of magnetic recording, stressing its
importance in consumer as well as commercial applications from the
advent of magnetism through the invention of such new technologies
as Digital Audio Tape (DAT), High Definition Television (HDTV), and
a multitude of sophisicated Digital Video Cassette Recorders.
Using such terms as science and technology, which have been relatively - cently adopted, to write about situations and events that occurred 2,500 years ago, may be a paradox. The Homeric Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, refer to the Mycenean Era, a civilisation that ?ourished from the 16th to 12th c- tury BCE. The seeming paradox ceases to be one when modern specialists, searching through the ancients texts, discover knowledge and applications so advanced, that can be termed as scienti?c or technological in the modern sense of the words. The present book is based on extensive research performed by the author and his associates at the University of Patras, along with the presentations of other researchers at two international symposia, which he organized in 1 Ancient Olympia. It consists of ?ve parts, of which Part I is introductory, including such chapters as Homer and Homeric Epics, Troy and the mythological causes of the War, Achilles and his wrath, the siege and fall of Troy, Odysseus' long way home, the Trojan war and the cultural tradition, scienti?c knowledge in the Homeric Epics and ?nally an account on science and technology. Part II includes three chapters on applications of principles of natural s- ence, including chariot racing and the laws of curvilinear motion, creep in wood and hydrodynamics of vortices and the gravitational sling.
This book offers a new way of looking at Chinese history through their technological advances. The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship 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.
An expert introduction to the fascinating world of robotics, artificial intelligence, and how machines learn. In Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Ten Short Lessons, leading expert Peter J. Bentley breaks down the fast-moving world of computers into ten pivotal lessons, presenting the reader with the essential information they need to get to understand our most powerful technology and its remarkable implications for our species. From the origins and motivation behind the birth of AI and robotics to using smart algorithms that allow us to build good robots, from the technologies that enable computers to understand a huge range of sensory information, including language and communication, to the challenges of emotional intelligence, unpredictable environments, and imagination in artificial intelligence, this is a cutting-edge, expert-led guide for curious minds. Packed full of easy-to-understand diagrams, pictures, and fact boxes, these ten lessons cover all the basics, as well as the latest understanding and developments, to enlighten the nonscientist. About the series: The Pocket Einstein series is a collection of essential pocket-sized guides for anyone looking to understand a little more about some of the most important and fascinating areas of science in the twenty-first century. Broken down into ten simple lessons and written by leading experts in their field, the books reveal the ten most important takeaways from those areas of science you've always wanted to know more about.
This book represents an original study of long term patterns in technological development and innovation in large corporations. The author is primarily concerned with understanding open-ended transformation processes in the evolution of industrialised societies. US patent data from 1890 to 1990 is employed within an evolutionary framework. The book offers an overview of an intellectual agenda associated with a highly important and pervasive set of phenomena and challenges several dogmas currently alive within economic reasoning including: * technological paradigms governing trajectories of opportunity * the S-shaped image of the technological growth cycle and technological dynamics * long waves * industrial dynamics * the variety of firms' technological profiles and corporate trajectories * corporate technological leadership * socio-economic transformation processes and underpinning 'rules'. Technological Change and the Evolution of Corporate Innovation details historically how the innovative and competitive landscapes within industrialised societies have become increasingly complex. This book will appeal to industrial and business economists, technology historians, researchers, students, policymakers and business analysts.
The He 111 flew over every front from the first day of the Second World War to the last and was among the most produced aircraft of the Luftwaffe. Aerodynamically a very clean aircraft, it was a superior bomber during the first two years of the war. This volume is dedicated to this aircraft.
This book addresses the global history of technology, warfare and state formation from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Using a combination of top-down and bottom-up methodologies, it examines both interstate and intrastate conflicts with a focus on Eurasian technology and warfare. It shows how human agency and structural factors have intertwined, creating a complex web of technology and warfare. It also explores the interplay between technological and non-technological factors to chart the evolution of warfare from its origins to the present day, arguing that the interactions between civilian and military sectors have shaped the use of technology in warfare. Given its scope and depth, it is a valuable resource for researchers in fields such as world history, history of science and technology, history of warfare and imperialism and international relations.
The Story of Mini is a pocket-sized and beautifully illustrated celebration of the iconic car. For more than 60 years, the Mini has been one of the most beloved and instantly recognisable cars on the road. From its humble beginnings with the British Motor Corporation in 1959, to the modern BMW-backed models of today, The Story of Mini tells the story of the car and the unique culture that has built up around it. Exploring the evolution of Mini design from the original two-door model - the most popular British car of all time - through to the diverse range of Minis available today, this book is an exceptionally designed tribute to the marque, and the people who helped create it. Touching on the Mini's impact on pop culture, as well as the racing heritage cultivated by the legendary John Cooper, and filled with stunning imagery and insightful commentary, The Story of Mini charts the history of this beloved brand in a small but perfectly formed package.
This is the first biography of William Shockley, founding father of Silicon Valley - one of the most significant and reviled scientists of the 20th century. Drawing upon unique access to the private Shockley archives, veteran technology historian and journalist Joel Shurkin gives an unflinching account of how such promise ended in such ignominy.
Learn why NASA astronaut Mike Collins calls this extraordinary space race story "the best book on Apollo" this inspiring and intimate ode to ingenuity celebrates one of the most daring feats in human history. When the alarm went off forty thousand feet above the moon's surface, both astronauts looked down at the computer to see 1202 flashing on the readout. Neither of them knew what it meant, and time was running out . . . On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. One of the world's greatest technological achievements -- and a triumph of the American spirit -- the Apollo 11 mission was a mammoth undertaking involving more than 410,000 men and women dedicated to winning the space race against the Soviets. Set amid the tensions and upheaval of the sixties and the Cold War, Shoot for the Moon is a gripping account of the dangers, the challenges, and the sheer determination that defined not only Apollo 11, but also the Mercury and Gemini missions that came before it. From the shock of Sputnik and the heart-stopping final minutes of John Glenn's Mercury flight to the deadly whirligig of Gemini 8, the doomed Apollo 1 mission, and that perilous landing on the Sea of Tranquility -- when the entire world held its breath while Armstrong and Aldrin battled computer alarms, low fuel, and other problems -- James Donovan tells the whole story. Both sweeping and intimate, Shoot for the Moon is "a powerfully written and irresistible celebration" of one of humankind's most extraordinary accomplishments (Booklist, starred review).
This major new book provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. Kittler begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organized. He also discusses the development of various mechanical devices, such as the camera obscura and the laterna magica, which were closely connected to the printing press and which played a pivotal role in the media war between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. After examining this history, Kittler then addresses the ways in which images were first stored and made to move, through the development of photography and film. He discusses the competitive relationship between photography and painting as well as between film and theater, as innovations like the Baroque proscenium or "picture-frame" stage evolved from elements that would later constitute cinema. The central question, however, is the impact of film on the ancient monopoly of writing, as it not only provoked new forms of competition for novelists but also fundamentally altered the status of books. In the final section, Kittler examines the development of electrical telecommunications and electronic image processing from television to computer simulations. In short, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of image production that is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the prevailing audiovisual conditions of contemporary culture.
ThisvolumehasitsoriginsinameetingheldatMicrosoftResearch,Cambridge,in April2009tocelebrateTonyHoare's75thBirthday(actually11Jan2009). Allthe technicalpapersexceptforthosewrittenbyAbramsky,Jackson,JonesandMeyer arebased-sometimesclosely,sometimesnot-onpresentationsgivenatthatme- ing. TheideaforthemeetingaroseinconversationsbetweenourselvesandAndrew HerbertofMicrosoft,whohostedatrulymemorableandhappyevent. ThemeetingwasorganisedbyourselvesandKenWood,withthe?nancials- portofMicrosoftResearchandFormalSystems(Europe)Ltd,andheldovertwo days. We wouldlike to recordparticularthanksto Angela Still of Microsoftfor makingallthelocalarrangementsatCambridgeandmuchmore:themeetingwould nothavehappenedwithouther. Whilethemajorityofthepapersinthisvolumearetechnical,weaskedauthorsto re?ectonthein?uenceofHoare'sworkontheirown?eldsandtomakeappropriate remarksonit. Allthetechnicalpaperswererefereed. DiscussionswithWayneWheelerofSpringerinspiredthetwoofustowritethe scienti?cbiographyofHoarethatisthe?rstpaperinthisvolume. Thoughwehave bothknownTonywellformanyyears,wewereamazedathowmanydiscoveries abouthimwemadeduringtheprocessofwritingthisarticle. WewouldlikethankWayneandhisassistantSimonReesfortheirhelpinprep- ingthisvolumeaswellastheirpatience. Muchoftheworkingatheringthepapers, ensuringconsistencyofLaTeXstyles,etc. ,wasdonebyLucyLiofOxfordUniv- sityComputingLaboratoryandwethankherwarmly. Tragically,KenWood'swifeLisadiedafteralongillnessinSeptember2009. Wededicatethisvolumetohermemory. January2010 CliffJones BillRoscoe ix Contents 1 Insight,InspirationandCollaboration...1 C. B. JonesandA. W. Roscoe 2 FromCSPtoGameSemantics...33 SamsonAbramsky 3 OnMereologiesinComputingScience...47 DinesBjorner 4 Roles,Stacks,Histories:ATripleforHoare...71 Johannes Borgstrom, .. Andrew D. Gordon, andRiccardoPucella 5 ForwardwithHoare...101 MikeGordonandHel 'ene ' Collavizza 6 ProbabilisticProgrammingwithCoordination...123 HeJifeng 7 TheOperationalPrincipleandProblemFrames...143 MichaelJackson 8 TheRoleofAuxiliaryVariablesintheFormal DevelopmentofConcurrentPrograms...167 C. B. Jones 9 AvoidaVoid:TheEradicationofNullDereferencing...189 BertrandMeyer,AlexanderKogtenkov,andEmmanuelStapf 10 UnfoldingCSP...213 MikkelBundgaardandRobinMilner xi xii Contents 11 Quicksort:CombiningConcurrency,Recursion, andMutableDataStructures...2 29 DavidKitchin,AdrianQuark,andJayadevMisra 12 TheThousand-and-OneCryptographers...255 A. K. McIverandC. C. Morgan 13 On Process-AlgebraicExtensions of Metric TemporalLogic...283 ChristophHaase,Joel .. Ouaknine,andJamesWorrell 14 FunwithTypeFunctions...301 OlegKiselyov,SimonPeytonJones,andChung-chiehShan 15 OnCSPandtheAlgebraicTheoryofEffects...333 RobvanGlabbeekandGordonPlotkin 16 CSPisExpressiveEnoughfor ...371 A. W. Roscoe 17 TheTokeneerExperiments...405 JimWoodcock,EmineGokc .. ,eAydal,andRodChapman Chapter1 Insight,InspirationandCollaboration C. B. JonesandA. W. Roscoe Abstract TonyHoare'smanycontributionstocomputingsciencearemarkedby insightthatwasgroundedinpracticalprogramming. Manyofhispapershavehada profoundimpactontheevolutionofour?eld;theyhavemoreoverprovidedasource ofinspirationtoseveralgenerationsofresearchers. Weexaminethedevelopmentof hisworkthroughareviewofthedevelopmentofsomeofhismostin?uentialpieces ofworksuchasHoarelogic,CSPandUnifyingTheories. 1. 1 Introduction To many who know Tony Hoare only through his publications, they must often looklikepolishedgemsthatcomefromamindthatrarelymakesfalsesteps,nor evenperhapshastoworkattheircreation. Assooften,thisimpressionisafurther complimenttosomeonewhoactuallyaddstoveryhardworkandmanydiscarded attempts the ?nal polish thatmakes complexideas relatively easy for the reader tocomprehend. Asindicatedonpagexiof[HJ89],hisideastypicallygothrough manyrevisions. ThetwoauthorsofthecurrentpapereachhadthehonourofTonyHoaresuperv- ingtheirdoctoralstudiesinOxford. Theyknowat?rsthandhiskindandgenerous styleandwillcountitasanachievementifthispapercanconveysomethingofthe workingmethodsofsomeonebigenoughtoeschewcompetitionandpointscoring. Indeedit willbe apparentfromthe followingsectionshowoften,havingstarted somenewwayofthinkingorexcitingideas,hehappilyleavestheirexplorationand developmenttoothers. Wehavebothbene?tedpersonallyfromthis. C. B. Jones( ) SchoolofComputingScience,NewcastleUniversity,UK e-mail:cliff. jones@ncl. ac. uk A. W. Roscoe OxfordUniversityComputingLaboratory,UK e-mail:Bill. Roscoe@comlab. ox. ac. uk C. B. Jonesetal. (eds. ),Re?ectionsontheWorkofC. A. R.
It is November 6, 1920, in Chilean Patagonia when Oriana Josseau is born into a lively family with two grandparents, two parents, and sixteen young aunts and uncles, most within easy reach of her robust cries. And so begins the life of an independent-minded girl from the bottom of the world who somehow manages to overcome the restrictions and biases of a conservative patriarchal society and eventually becomes a scientist. As her family relocates to the idyllic countryside of central Chile and then to the hectic complex society of Santiago, Oriana vividly recalls her reactions to such diverse events as the birth of her brothers; the abrupt transition from wealth to near poverty; her first earthquake; the turmoil of student politics; the challenges of mountain adventures; the exploration of friendship, love and sex; and her first encounter with raw anti-female bias in a male-dominated research world. As she details her life from early childhood on, it soon becomes evident that Oriana must prevail over frequent conflicts with prejudice in order to become a strong, free woman long before the advent of the feminist movement. Oriana describes beautifully, with humor and empathy, the idiosyncrasies, strengths, and foibles of one woman, and those around her, as she embarks on a unique coming-of-age journey in a different society and different time.
"Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. His greatness appeared in every phase of the problem. No one equaled him in power to draw new recruits to the cause; no one equaled him in fullness and dearness of understanding of the principles of flight; no one did so much to convince the world of the advantages of curved wing surfaces; and no one did so much to transfer the problem of human flight to the open air where it belonged." These words were spoken by Wilbur Wright, who successfully accomplished the first powered flight together with his brother Orville in 1903 on the sand dunes of the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. Wilbur was talking about the most important of their predecessors, Otto Lilienthal. Lilienthal attracted worldwide attention due to the spectacular photographs showing him in flight, made possible by technology that had only just been developed by him. This fortuitous union between a pioneer of aviation and the pioneers of so-called "instantaneous photography" is responsible for the immense contemporary popularity of Lilienthal's flights around the globe, the first ever free flights performed by man. This book traces the life of the German aviation pioneer, focusing on the designs of his many aircraft and the photographic documentation that has survived. The presentation ends with a remarkable research project conducted by one of the authors, right up to and including his own training exercises with Lilienthal's "normal soaring apparatus" and "large biplane". This project offered new insight into Lilienthal's work, and also led to a spectacular aerial meeting of Lilienthal's 1895 biplane and the Wright brothers' 1902 biplane at a historic location on the Outer Banks. The book provides access to video material, largely stemming from this project. |
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