CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer is the first book to document the complete history of the Tandy Color Computer (CoCo), a popular 8-bit PC series from the 1980s that competed against the era's biggest names, including the Apple II, IBM PC, and Commodore 64. The book takes you inside the interesting stories and people behind this unique, underdog computer. Both noted computer science and technology advocates, authors Pitre and Loguidice reveal the story of a pivotal period in the home computing revolution from the perspective of Tandy's CoCo. As these computers were sold in Radio Shack stores throughout the United States and other countries, they provide a critical point of reference for key events in the unprecedented evolutionary period for the PC industry in the 1980s. The book also features first-hand accounts from the people who created and promoted the CoCo, from the original Tandy executives and engineers to today's active product creators and information keepers. The CoCo impacted many lives, and this book leaves no stone unturned in recounting this fascinating slice of the PC revolution that is still in play today. From early telecommunications experiments to engineering and budgetary challenges, it covers all the aspects that made the CoCo a truly personal, useful computing experience in as small and inexpensive a package as possible.

This volume is a collection of essays of a philosophical nature on the subject of technology, introducing authors from the Portuguese-speaking community, namely from Portugal itself, Africa and Brazil. Their contributions detail a unique perspective on technology, placing this important topic within the historical, ideological and social contexts of their countries, all of which share a common language. The shared history of these countries and the cultural and economic specificities of each one have stimulated singular insights into these thinkers' reflections. The essays are thematically diverse. Among the topics covered are technogenic knowledge, visions of technology, risks and uncertainties, mediatization, digitalization, and datafication, engineering practice and ethics, alternative technoscientific strategies, ontotechnologies of the body, virtual and archive. The contributions also explore other themes that are more closely related to the semi-peripheral world, such as technological dependence and the incorporation of Western technology into the social structure of ancestral communities. This book appeals to students and researchers and provides a voice to authors whose work are not usually available in English-language publications. It serves as an ideal guide for all those who seek rigorous and geographically widespread knowledge regarding thinking on technology in several Portuguese-speaking countries.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology gives readers a view into this increasingly vital and urgently needed domain of philosophical understanding, offering an in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. The thirty-two contributions in this volume cut across and connect diverse philosophical traditions and methodologies. They reveal the often-neglected importance of technology for virtually every subfield of philosophy, including ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and political theory. The Handbook also gives readers a new sense of what philosophy looks like when fully engaged with the disciplines and domains of knowledge that continue to transform the material and practical features and affordances of our world, including engineering, arts and design, computing, and the physical and social sciences. The chapters reveal enduring conceptual themes concerning technology's role in the shaping of human knowledge, identity, power, values, and freedom, while bringing a philosophical lens to the profound transformations of our existence brought by innovations ranging from biotechnology and nuclear engineering to artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics. This new collection challenges the reader with provocative and original insights on the history, concepts, problems, and questions to be brought to bear upon humanity's complex and evolving relationship to technology.

Perhaps better than any other city, Manchester illustrates the historical relationship between the growth of science and the growth of industry - a relationship which is topical now, as it has been for two centuries. This introduction provides a sketch map and some references for those who would like to explore this local and regional history.

The dramatic life story of one of the legendary USAAF fighter pilots of World War II who fought across the skies over the Mediterranean and southern Europe in the great aerial campaigns against the Luftwaffe a Herschel H. "Herky" Green. By the time Colonel Green was grounded by orders of higher headquarters, he was the leading ace of the 15th Air Force with eighteen aerial victories.

This comprehensive chronology of the automobile covers its engineering as well as the social, cultural, and political impact of the car from the invention of the wheel to the O.J. Simpson car chase. It examines the auto industry, the road and roadside, the car in popular culture, gasoline/fuel history, the spatial transformation of cities, air pollution, critics of car culture, traffic accidents, the globalization of car culture, and much more. This is a reference guide for students and scholars of transportation history as well as anyone who has ever asked When did Japan export the first car to the U.S.? or When and how was smog discovered? or What make of car did Chuck Berry drive?

This book examines the development of nuclear propulsion in the Royal Navy from the first proposal in 1946 to the start-up of the last core improvement for the first submarine reactor power plant PWR 1 in December 1974. Drawing from unreleased records and archives, the book answers questions around three main themes. Political: what problems were encountered in transferring nuclear knowledge from the USA to the UK in the post-war period, and how much support was there for the development of nuclear propulsion? Military: why was there a requirement to develop nuclear propulsion, and in particular, why submarines? Technical: were the problems associated with nuclear energy fully appreciated, and did the UK have the technical and engineering capability to develop nuclear propulsion? Aside from the political considerations and military motives for developing nuclear propulsion in the Royal Navy, the author focuses on the technical problems that had to be overcome by all participants in the Royal Navy's development of nuclear propulsion, adding significantly to naval historiography. Providing a critical analysis of the political, technological, operational and industrial issues of introducing nuclear propulsion into the Royal Navy, the author situates his research in the context of the evolving Cold War, changing Anglo-American relations, the end of Empire and the relative decline of British power.

This book deals with the social, cultural and especially political significance of media by shifting from the usual focus on the public sphere and publics and paying attention to populations. It describes key moments where populations of different sorts have been subject to formative and diverse projects of governing, in which communication has been key. It brings together governmentality studies with the study of media practices and communication technologies. Chapters consider print culture and the new political technology of individuals; digital economies as places where populations are formed, known and managed as productive resources; workplaces, schools, clinics and homes as sites of governmental objectives; and how to appropriately link communication technologies and practices with politics. Through these chapters Philip Dearman, Cathy Greenfield and Peter Williams demonstrate the value of considering communication in terms of the government of populations.

This book traces and analyzes the transformation of the public discourse of science and technology in Mao-era China. Based on extensive primary sources such as science dissemination materials and technical handbooks, as well as mass media products of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution periods, this book delineates the emergence of a pragmatic approach to knowledge in society. To achieve the goal of fast modernization with limited financial, human, and material resources, the party-state accommodated Western and local, "modern" and "traditional" knowledges in the fields of agricultural mechanization, steel production and Chinese veterinary medicine. The case studies demonstrate that scientific knowledge production in the Mao-era included various social groups and was entangled with political and cultural issues. This reveals and explains the continuity of scientific thinking across the historical divides of 1949 and 1978, which has hitherto been underestimated.

Weaving together chapters on imperial Japan's wartime mobilization, Asia's first wave of postwar decolonization, and Cold War geopolitical conflict in the region, Engineering Asia seeks to demonstrate how Asia's present prosperity did not arise from a so-called 'economic miracle' but from the violent and dynamic events of the 20th century. The book argues that what continued to operate throughout these tumultuous eras were engineering networks of technology. Constructed at first for colonial development under Japan, these networks transformed into channels of overseas development aid that constituted the Cold War system in Asia. Through highlighting how these networks helped shape Asia's contemporary economic landscape, Engineering Asia challenges dominant narratives in Western scholarship of an 'economic miracle' in Japan and South Korea, and the 'Asian Tigers' of Southeast Asia. Students and scholars of East Asian studies, development studies, postcolonialism, Cold War studies and the history of technology and science will find this book immensely useful.

Automating Linguistics offers an in-depth study of the history of the mathematisation and automation of the sciences of language. In the wake of the first mathematisation of the 1930s, two waves followed: machine translation in the 1950s and the development of computational linguistics and natural language processing in the 1960s. These waves were pivotal given the work of large computerised corpora in the 1990s and the unprecedented technological development of computers and software.Early machine translation was devised as a war technology originating in the sciences of war, amidst the amalgamate of mathematics, physics, logics, neurosciences, acoustics, and emerging sciences such as cybernetics and information theory. Machine translation was intended to provide mass translations for strategic purposes during the Cold War. Linguistics, in turn, did not belong to the sciences of war, and played a minor role in the pioneering projects of machine translation.Comparing the two trends, the present book reveals how the sciences of language gradually integrated the technologies of computing and software, resulting in the second-wave mathematisation of the study of language, which may be called mathematisation-automation. The integration took on various shapes contingent upon cultural and linguistic traditions (USA, ex-USSR, Great Britain and France). By contrast, working with large corpora in the 1990s, though enabled by unprecedented development of computing and software, was primarily a continuation of traditional approaches in the sciences of language sciences, such as the study of spoken and written texts, lexicography, and statistical studies of vocabulary.

Now in Paperback! Carroll Shelby, legendary driving ace, race team owner, and designer of Shelby Cobra, Daytona, and Mustang GT350 classics is revered by automotive enthusiasts, yet little has been written about the last quarter century of Carroll Shelby's life. During that time Chris Theodore, VP at Chrysler and Ford, developed a close personal friendship with Carroll. The Last Shelby Cobra chronicles the development of the many vehicles they worked on together (Viper, Ford GT, Shelby Cobra Concept, Shelby GR1, Shelby GT500 and others). It is an insider's story about how Shelby came back to the Ford family, and the intrigue behind the five-year journey to get a Shelby badge on a Ford Production Vehicle. The author provides fresh insight and new stories into Shelby's larger-than-life personality, energy, interests and the many unpublished projects Carroll was involved with, up to his passing. Finally, the book describes their unfinished project, the Super Snake II Cobra, and the serendipitous circumstances that allowed to the author to acquire 'Daisy,' the last Shelby Cobra. To his many fans, Carroll Shelby was truly 'the most interesting man in the world.'

'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.

One of the preeminent natural philosophers of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Thompson started out as a farm boy with a practical turn of mind. His inventions and scientific explorations include the Rumford fireplace, insulated clothing, the thermos, convection ovens, double boilers, double-paned glass and an improved sloop. Successful in world affairs, he was knighted by King George III and became a Count of the Holy Roman Emperor. Thompson was popular with women - so much so that his personal life eclipsed his achievements. While British spy in the colonies, he had an affair with the wife of Boston printer Isaiah Thompson. In London, he had a fling with the wife of a doctor who would be in the first man to balloon across the English Channel. He fathered a child by the court mistress of the Prince Elector and had affairs with several other German noblewomen. He wrote that his first marriage, to a New England minister's daughter, made his career, and called his second wife, the widow of the French chemist Lavoisier, a ""female dragon."" Drawing on Thompson's correspondence and diaries, this book examines his friendships and romantic relationships.

"You can print from an iPhone(R). It's the dumbest thing." - Bo Fahs, writer and host of Tele-Friends From the moment we began to digitise our world, we created machines that worked tirelessly to pull all that information zooming around back to the physical world. Enter: the home printer. Perhaps as payback for forming a nonsensical dichotomy, these printers couldn't just work. Not without a fight, at least. No. They insisted on screeching at plane-like decibels, plopping out pages at an excruciatingly slow pace, streaking only the most important documents and running out of ink when you know you JUST refilled the cartridge. From the first consumer inkjet to more modern monstrosities, Sh*tty Printers breaks down the worst offenders of our home offices. Featuring popular and exasperating home staples such as: - The HP Thinkjet 2225A - The Lexmark Z22 - The long forgotten Canon BJC-85 - and many more Each printer is beautifully photographed and ruthlessly torn to shreds as their individual strengths, weaknesses and charisma are scored on sliding scales born from relatable frustration.

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.

In this detailed and meticulously researched account of the life and work of Charles Michell, the first surveyor-general and civil engineer of the South African Cape Colony, author Gordon Richings examines in depth, the many interests and achievements of the man, as well as the essence of the time in which he lived, by referring to unpublished personal diaries, sketchbooks and letters. Born in Exeter, Devon in 1793, Michell showed artistic talent at a young age, but due to family circumstances, joined the British Army and served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal. He came to the Cape in 1829 and for the next twenty years played a crucial role in opening up the Cape interior to economic development and expansion, by designing roads, bridges and mountain passes, including Sir Lowry's, the Houw Hoek, Montagu and Michell's Passes. He also suggested improvements to Table Bay Harbour and designed lighthouses at Mouille Point, Cape Agulhas and Cape Recife in an effort to protect shipping along the Cape's notorious coastline. This first biography of Charles Michell is lavishly illustrated with his sketches, watercolours and engravings of Cape scenery, plants, insects and rock paintings, as well as Cape personalities, maps of the colony and architectural plans - the majority of which are published for the first time. New light is shed on the socio-economic life at the Cape, particularly the Tsitsikamma region of the southern Cape, the Frontier War of 1834-35, as well as on the personalities of Michell's colleagues and contemporaries in England and at the Cape.