-
Debate: Seeds as Deep Time Technologies Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Courtney Fullilove
abstract: This essay theorizes crop seeds as deep time technologies, surveying a range of materialist approaches to the study of agriculture, from historical materialism to agroecology and actor-network theory. Recent studies of plant domestication suggest that the long history of human-plant relations and agrarian knowledge defy the reduction of seeds to products of nature or objects of property.
-
Prison Papermaking: Colonial Ideals of Industrial Experimentation in India Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Amanda M. Lanzillo
abstract: This article questions the economic rationale of colonial experimentation and prison labor, arguing that for many administrators a prison-based experiment's success mattered less than its existence. It examines the position of convict labor and penal discipline within colonial industrial experiments in colonial India, where convicts performed experiments for what one administrator described
-
Who Invented the Possum? What Historians Can Learn from Disabled Innovation in Britain's Responaut Communities Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Coreen McGuire
abstract: This article provides a new exploration of disabled innovation that transforms our understanding of collective contributions to the history of science and technology. It does so by showing how a user network galvanized individual inventions into disabled expertise by tracking the development of two technologies—the Selectascan/Possum and the adapted Loudspeaking Telephone. Hamraie and Fritsch's
-
Creating a User-Inventor Community: How Disabled People Innovated and Marketed Disability in Early Nineteenth-Century America Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Laurel Daen
abstract: Early nineteenth-century America's robust trade in medical and health care products is richly documented, yet many scholars have overlooked just what role people with impairments played in that industry as inventors and retailers, forming relationships with clients based on their shared experiences of disability. A study of newspaper advertisements, patents, organizational records, medical
-
As Ceaseless as the Sea: How Modern Construction Machines Disrupted Canadian Senses and Sensibilities, 1870s–1940s Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Gilberto Fernandes
abstract: Since the late nineteenth century, Canada has required modern construction machines for industrial growth. Thanks to their novelty and visibility, these machines entered the Canadian psyche, symbolizing hopes and fears about the relentless transformations of modernity. Metaphors depicting these machines as zoomorphic and monstruous reflected the environmental-technological infrastructures
-
"One of the Grand Works of the World": Walt Whitman's Advocacy for the Brooklyn Waterworks, 1856–59 Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Stephanie M. Blalock, Kevin McMullen, Stefan Schöberlein, Jason Stacy
abstract: When the Brooklyn Waterworks opened in 1859, it was one of America's most advanced water and sewer systems. Yet after Brooklyn was annexed by New York City, the waterworks' history slipped into obscurity, despite having a now-famous champion: the "poet of America," Walt Whitman, whose brother worked on the project. This article shows the Brooklyn poet's fierce, multiyear lobbying effort for
-
European Technical Democracy? How Consumer Associations Did—or Did Not—Shape the 1980s Automotive Environmental Standards Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Alice Milor
abstract: Did the 1980s automotive standards reflect the European Economic Community's move toward a "technical democracy" or a broader democratic deficit? In the early 1980s, Europe's automotive sector faced multiple challenges: the European Commission's desire to harmonize technical standards and achieve greater European integration, intense competition between manufacturers, and environmental issues
-
How Prepaid Billing in Italy Helped Shape the Global Diffusion of Mobile Phones Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Jane Vincent, Leopoldina Fortunati
abstract: Why was Italy the first country to introduce prepaid mobile phone billing services in 1996? What was the key to its success that led seventy-five telecommunications operators to introduce prepaid billing by 1998 and accelerated the mass adoption of mobile phones around the world? This article examines why prepaid was successful in light of national policies and sociocultural shifts. Along
-
Public History: Introducing Barbenheimer Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Ruth Oldenziel
Public History:Introducing Barbenheimer Ruth Oldenziel The summer of 2023 marked the surprising blockbuster season of two films: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, and Greta Gerwig's Barbie, a fantasy comedy about the American doll who conquered the world. Released on the same day, July 21, the cultural
-
Nuclear Imaginaries and Power in Oppenheimer Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Aimee Slaughter
abstract: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is in awe of physics and the power it can bestow. Its central character is both mythic and human, and the film critiques and constructs the mythology surrounding him. The film presents science and technology as the individualized work of masculine genius, though it is ultimately more interested in nuclear weapons as political objects than as technological ones
-
Feminism and Capitalism under the Nuclear Cloud & Barbie Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Rachel Maines
abstract: The Warner Brothers/Mattel movie Barbie is meant to be about feminism and capitalism in complicated, comical, and nuanced ways. It mostly succeeds in its dual purpose of comedy and inspiration. The doll's origin in 1959 places her and her consort, Ken, squarely in the context of the Cold War, although neither the movie nor the doll's long and successful marketing history acknowledges anything
-
"Modernism with a Soul": Designing and Building Communities for Corporate and Civic Life Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Stuart W. Leslie
abstract: This essay explores how film, feature and documentary, can offer a new perspective on modernist architecture, industrial design, and urban planning. Through the lens of two young directors, Kogonada and Davide Maffei, it traces the histories of two twentieth-century company towns: Ivrea, Italy, headquarters of Italian business machine giant Olivetti, and Columbus, Indiana, U.S.A., home to
-
Technology, Novelty, and Luxury ed. by Artemis Yagou (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Peter McNeil
Reviewed by: Technology, Novelty, and Luxury ed. by Artemis Yagou Peter McNeil (bio) Technology, Novelty, and Luxury Edited by Artemis Yagou. Munich: Deutsches Museum Verlag, 2022. Pp. 118. This elegant and useful book takes luxury studies as its subject, and as its object a range of material culture goods that are not commonly associated with luxury per se. An introduction and four chapters are provided
-
Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France by Corry Cropper and Seth Whidden (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Claire Pelgrims
Reviewed by: Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France by Corry Cropper and Seth Whidden Claire Pelgrims (bio) Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France By Corry Cropper and Seth Whidden. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2022. Pp. 268. Unlike its successor the modern bicycle, the velocipede has not yet been the subject of an in-depth study of its cultural
-
When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries by Janet Greenlees (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Viswanathan Venkataraman
Reviewed by: When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries by Janet Greenlees Viswanathan Venkataraman (bio) When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries By Janet Greenlees. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Pp. 264. Janet Greenlees's book compares the patchy track record of late
-
Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali by Laura Ann Twagira (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Devon Golaszewski
Reviewed by: Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali by Laura Ann Twagira Devon Golaszewski (bio) Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali By Laura Ann Twagira. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021. Pp. 344. In her introduction to this journal's April 2020 special issue on "Africanizing the History of Technology
-
Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond by Christina Dunbar-Hester (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Michael Camp
Reviewed by: Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond by Christina Dunbar-Hester Michael Camp (bio) Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond By Christina Dunbar-Hester. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 252. In an introduction, four body chapters, and a conclusion, Christina Dunbar-Hester
-
Making Machines of Animals: The International Livestock Exposition by Neal A. Knapp (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Eva Rivas Sada
Reviewed by: Making Machines of Animals: The International Livestock Exposition by Neal A. Knapp Eva Rivas Sada (bio) Making Machines of Animals: The International Livestock Exposition By Neal A. Knapp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. Pp. 202. Making Machines of Animals by Neal A. Knapp is a key piece within the historical studies addressing the relationship between biotechnology and
-
Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification by Richard F. Hirsh (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Abby Spinak
Reviewed by: Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification by Richard F. Hirsh Abby Spinak (bio) Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification By Richard F. Hirsh. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. Pp. 400. It's hard to imagine being afraid of a refrigerator, but if your neighbor had died from the chemical leaks that plagued early
-
Apartheid's Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence by Faeeza Ballim (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Emanuel Lukio Mchome
Reviewed by: Apartheid's Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence by Faeeza Ballim Emanuel Lukio Mchome (bio) Apartheid's Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence By Faeeza Ballim. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2023. Pp. 176. Written by a historian of African science and technology, Apartheid's Leviathan coincides with the conference "Technology and
-
L'énergie des marées: Hier, aujourd'hui, demain ed. by Ewan Sonnic (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Anaël Marrec
Reviewed by: L'énergie des marées: Hier, aujourd'hui, demain ed. by Ewan Sonnic Anaël Marrec (bio) L'énergie des marées: Hier, aujourd'hui, demain Edited by Ewan Sonnic. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2021. Pp. 570. This collective book is the result of an international symposium held at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture (ENSA) of Rennes in 2017. Dealing with the tidal-power
-
The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy by Davide Orsini (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Elisabetta Bini
Reviewed by: The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy by Davide Orsini Elisabetta Bini (bio) The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy By Davide Orsini. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 313. Between 1972 and 2008, the U.S. Navy operated a military base in the archipelago of La
-
Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry by Lucie Genay (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Hugh Gusterson
Reviewed by: Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry by Lucie Genay Hugh Gusterson (bio) Land of Nuclear Enchantment: A New Mexican History of the Nuclear Weapons Industry By Lucie Genay. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. Pp. 344. In this book Lucie Genay, who teaches U.S. civilization at the University of Limoges in France, undertakes an
-
Suburban Empire: Cold War Militarization in the US Pacific by Lauren Hirshberg (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 M. X. Mitchell
Reviewed by: Suburban Empire: Cold War Militarization in the US Pacific by Lauren Hirshberg M. X. Mitchell (bio) Suburban Empire: Cold War Militarization in the US Pacific By Lauren Hirshberg. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 365. Since time immemorial, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands has been the ancestral home of the ri-Kuwajleen. For nearly eight decades, it has also
-
The Politics and Policies of European Economic Integration, 1850–1914 by Yaman Kouli and Léonard Laborie (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Vincent Lagendijk
Reviewed by: The Politics and Policies of European Economic Integration, 1850–1914 by Yaman Kouli and Léonard Laborie Vincent Lagendijk (bio) The Politics and Policies of European Economic Integration, 1850–1914 By Yaman Kouli and Léonard Laborie. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. xiii + 169. When did European integration start? For a long time, the standard perspective was that this only took place
-
Engineering the Lower Danube: Technology and International Cooperation in an Imperial Borderland by Luminita Gatejel (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Stelu Şerban
Reviewed by: Engineering the Lower Danube: Technology and International Cooperation in an Imperial Borderland by Luminita Gatejel Stelu Şerban (bio) Engineering the Lower Danube: Technology and International Cooperation in an Imperial Borderland By Luminita Gatejel. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022. Pp. 341. The history of river infrastructure is a space of confluence of several research
-
Forming the Modern Turkish Village: Nation Building and Modernization in Rural Turkey during the Early Republic by Özge Sezer (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Heinrich Hartmann
Reviewed by: Forming the Modern Turkish Village: Nation Building and Modernization in Rural Turkey during the Early Republic by Özge Sezer Heinrich Hartmann (bio) Forming the Modern Turkish Village: Nation Building and Modernization in Rural Turkey during the Early Republic By Özge Sezer. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023. Pp. 212. Few elements of the history of the Turkish Republic have received as much
-
The Republic of Skill: Artisan Mobility, Innovation, and the Circulation of Knowledge in Premodern Europe ed. by David Garrioch (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Oliver Gunning
Reviewed by: The Republic of Skill: Artisan Mobility, Innovation, and the Circulation of Knowledge in Premodern Europe ed. by David Garrioch Oliver Gunning (bio) The Republic of Skill: Artisan Mobility, Innovation, and the Circulation of Knowledge in Premodern Europe Edited by David Garrioch. Boston: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiv + 346. Garrioch has skillfully compiled a well-organized and informative volume
-
Les débuts du système suisse des brevets d'invention (1873–1914) by Nicolas Chachereau (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Véronique Pouillard
Reviewed by: Les débuts du système suisse des brevets d'invention (1873–1914) by Nicolas Chachereau Véronique Pouillard (bio) Les débuts du système suisse des brevets d'invention (1873–1914) By Nicolas Chachereau. Neuchâtel: Alphil-Presses universitaires suisses, 2022. Pp. 560. This book provides an extensive study of the emergence of the Swiss patent system, from the mid-nineteenth century to the
-
American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D by Eric S. Hintz (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Alexander Donges
Reviewed by: American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D by Eric S. Hintz Alexander Donges (bio) American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D By Eric S. Hintz. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. Pp. 368. Since the late nineteenth century, corporate R&D labs have become an increasingly important source of innovation in the United States. Yet independent inventors still accounted
-
Seduced by Radium: How Industry Transformed Science in the American Marketplace by Maria Rentetzi (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Vivien Hamilton
Reviewed by: Seduced by Radium: How Industry Transformed Science in the American Marketplace by Maria Rentetzi Vivien Hamilton (bio) Seduced by Radium: How Industry Transformed Science in the American Marketplace By Maria Rentetzi. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022. Pp. 308. While some elements of the story of radium in the American marketplace will be familiar to readers, from Matthew
-
Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft & the Sciences of the Sea by Samantha Muka (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Jennifer Hubbard
Reviewed by: Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft & the Sciences of the Sea by Samantha Muka Jennifer Hubbard (bio) Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft & the Sciences of the Sea By Samantha Muka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. Pp. viii + 242. For the uninitiated, large public aquariums might seem like glorified goldfish bowls. Samantha Muka's richly textured Oceans Under Glass explodes this simplistic
-
History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in India ed. by Suvobrata Sarkar (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Aparajita Mukhopadhyay
Reviewed by: History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in India ed. by Suvobrata Sarkar Aparajita Mukhopadhyay (bio) History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in India Edited by Suvobrata Sarkar. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 350. This volume celebrates the immense intellectual contribution of Deepak Kumar to the development and growth of the history of science, technology
-
Homi J. Bhabha: A Life by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Souvik Kar
Reviewed by: Homi J. Bhabha: A Life by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy Souvik Kar (bio) Homi J. Bhabha: A Life By Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy. New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2023. Pp. 723. This biography of Indian nuclear physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha (1909–66), the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, places Bhabha at the center of an era straddling early twentieth-century Indo-European scientific
-
The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji by Jonathan E. Abel (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Jamie Coates
Reviewed by: The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji by Jonathan E. Abel Jamie Coates (bio) The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji By Jonathan E. Abel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022. Pp. 344. Jonathan Abel's The New Real is a complex and fun genealogy of Japanese media technology innovations in the long twentieth century. Through
-
The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal by Laine Nooney (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Zachary Loeb
Reviewed by: The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal by Laine Nooney Zachary Loeb (bio) The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal By Laine Nooney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. Pp. 352. In the version of its history that Silicon Valley likes to tell about itself, computing's rise is credited to a gaggle of iconoclastic former hippies who envisioned a world transformed
-
Van Gogh TV's "Piazza Virtuale": The Invention of Social Media at documenta IX in 1992 by Tilman Baumgärtel (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Katie Mackinnon
Reviewed by: Van Gogh TV's "Piazza Virtuale": The Invention of Social Media at documenta IX in 1992 by Tilman Baumgärtel Katie Mackinnon (bio) Van Gogh TV's "Piazza Virtuale": The Invention of Social Media at documenta IX in 1992 By Tilman Baumgärtel with Julien Weinert. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022. Pp. 234. Van Gogh TV's "Piazza Virtuale" provides a theoretical and historical framework for the development
-
Soundtracked Books from the Acoustic Era to the Digital Age: A Century of "Books That Sing" by Justin St. Clair (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Sara Tanderup Linkis
Reviewed by: Soundtracked Books from the Acoustic Era to the Digital Age: A Century of "Books That Sing" by Justin St. Clair Sara Tanderup Linkis (bio) Soundtracked Books from the Acoustic Era to the Digital Age: A Century of "Books That Sing" By Justin St. Clair. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 182. The aspect of sound has become increasingly relevant to consider in studies of books and literature
-
Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre by Philip Butterworth (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 W. B. Worthen
Reviewed by: Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre by Philip Butterworth W. B. Worthen (bio) Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre By Philip Butterworth and edited by Peter Harrop. London: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xiv + 346. Philip Butterworth's illuminating Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and
-
Une histoire de la cybernétique en France (1948–1975) by Ronan Le Roux (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Dominique Trudel
Reviewed by: Une histoire de la cybernétique en France (1948–1975) by Ronan Le Roux Dominique Trudel (bio) Une histoire de la cybernétique en France (1948–1975) By Ronan Le Roux. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018. Pp. 803. Based on extensive archival research and personal interviews, Ronan Le Roux's Une histoire de la cybernétique en France (1948–1975) is the most definitive account of the history of
-
Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by Jeffrey M. Binder (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Tomas Petricek
Reviewed by: Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by Jeffrey M. Binder Tomas Petricek (bio) Language and the Rise of the Algorithm By Jeffrey M. Binder. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. Pp. 320. Language and the Rise of the Algorithm is a timely book. In the last two decades, the notion of an algorithm has turned from an abstract mathematical concept into an opaque predictive machine learning
-
The Built Environment through the Prism of the Colonial Periodical Press ed. by Alice Santiago Faria, Anne Shelley, and Sandra Ataíde Lobo (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Mari Hvattum
Reviewed by: The Built Environment through the Prism of the Colonial Periodical Press ed. by Alice Santiago Faria, Anne Shelley, and Sandra Ataíde Lobo Mari Hvattum (bio) The Built Environment through the Prism of the Colonial Periodical Press Edited by Alice Santiago Faria, Anne Shelley, and Sandra Ataíde Lobo. New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 346. The recent surge of publication history has suffered
-
Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare by Paul Lockhart (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Kaushik Roy
Reviewed by: Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare by Paul Lockhart Kaushik Roy (bio) Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare By Paul Lockhart. New York: Basic Books, 2021. Pp. xii + 624. Gunpowder changed the course of warfare and, ipso facto, global history. The advocates of the Military Revolution thesis (starting from Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker's The Military Revolution, 1988) argue along
-
On the Cover: Speculations with Vaginal Specula Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Tamar Novick
abstract: Close analysis of an image coupled with documents and material culture draws attention to complex connections between political ideas and material realities. Zoltan Kluger's 1940 photograph of a woman manufacturing cow vaginal specula was framed by the campaign for Zionist settlement. The essay explains how relationships between people, animals, and technologies were formed and displayed
-
Introducing Bovine Regimes: When Animals Become Technologies Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Tamar Novick
abstract: Are animals technologies? This special issue centers on bovines to analyze the circumstances intertwining and merging the management and understanding of animals with technological systems. The geographically diverse historical and anthropological contributions employ temporality as a central lens to examine the changing proximity of animals to technology over time. Collectively, they demonstrate
-
The Camera and the Cattle: Bovine Photography and Technologies of "Improvement" in Colonial South India Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 David Arnold
abstract: Photography, also an innovative technology at the time, engaged with two interconnected bovine technologies in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India: cattle as the animal power behind other agrarian technologies and cattle breeding. The Ongole cattle of Nellore district in south India, ancestors of the internationally renowned zebu cattle, were famed for their beauty, their strength
-
Sex Panic and the Productive Infertility of the Freemartin Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Lucy Beech, Tamar Novick
abstract: Freemartinism is a biological phenomenon in genetically female cows born from a dizygotic twin pregnancy. Placental connections—blood and hormones between the freemartin and their male twin—generate an intersex cow unable to conceive. In this study, the freemartin emerges in a constant state of flux: between waste and use; becoming a technology and supplemented by other technologies; defined
-
Cows and Humans as Technology Users: Multispecies Agency and Gender in Automated Milking Systems in Finland Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Taija Kaarlenkaski
abstract: Automatization has changed the interaction between cows and humans in subtle ways. Automated milking systems (AMS) have been used commercially since the early 1990s, first in the Netherlands, then in Western Europe and North America, before reaching Finland. By 2021, nearly 27 percent of Finnish dairy farms have adopted them. Based on fieldwork at AMS farms and Finnish trade journal items
-
Skin and Sound: Caring for and Crafting Bovine Hide in South India Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Thamarai Selvan Kannan
abstract: This article explores the little-studied technological practice of instrument making in South India, where the introduction of bovine hide brought new musical possibilities to a community of musicians. It narrates the animal-human relationship embedded in the everyday technology of making and maintaining sound instruments between 1930 and 2010 and how various actors sought to reduce the sound
-
Maintaining Bovine Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Nicole Welk-Joerger
abstract: This essay concluding the special issue "Bovine Regimes" reflects on the consequences of applying technological terms and ideals to nonhuman animals. Dealing with more recent theoretical provocations of "maintenance" in the field, the essay outlines how U.S. scientists used "maintenance" to both measure and define cattle bodies in the early twentieth century. Metabolic maintenance numbers
-
Do Microscopes Have Politics? Gendering the Electron Microscope in Laboratory Biological Research Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Nicola Williams
abstract: Objects like microscopes are gendered depending on their context. The introduction of the electron microscope at Leeds University in early 1940s Britain was under the control of high-status physicists, most of whom were men, who regulated its access over and against biologists. Moreover, the microscope required physical strength more associated with men than women, combined with a sound knowledge
-
Shaping Communications: The Development of the National Telegraph Network in Ireland, 1850–70 Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Adrian Kirwan
abstract: Despite Ireland's centrality to transatlantic telegraphic communication and as an integral part of the United Kingdom, telegraphy on the island is often merely a footnote in the scholarship. Yet telegraphy had a significant impact in Ireland, accelerating internal and external communication times. This article provides the first comprehensive study of telegraphy's expansion, from its arrival
-
Animating History: Digitally Mapping the United States Telegraph System Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Edmund Russell, Lauren Winkler
abstract: Digital humanities is a booming field. This article introduces a new digital map that shows the development of the telegraph system in the United States from its inception in 1844 to 1862. This interactive map locates offices and lines, and it displays data that put the telegraph system in its political, social, and environmental contexts. As far as the authors know, this is the first born-digital
-
Introducing the Act of Looking at Technology-in-Operation Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Rachel Hill
abstract: The essays in this issue of Technology and Culture's Public History section ask, what does it mean when publics look at technology-in-operation? Building on the increasing turn toward visual analysis in the history of technology, the section explores what forms of looking emerge when encountering technology in the public realm. Is this looking modulated by how people understand that technology
-
Eye Appeal Is Buy Appeal Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Ai Hisano
abstract: This essay explores the development of visual appeal, particularly color, as a key driver of demand in the American food sector between the 1920s and the 1940s. It analyzes, through case studies of oranges and fresh meat, how food producers and retailers sought to create a standardized food color that many consumers would recognize and eventually take for granted as "natural." The creation
-
Why Don't We Look at Television? Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Emily Rees Koerner
abstract: The television set was for many decades a ubiquitous household technology. Though omnipresent and designed to be watched, it has faded into the background of domesticity. The era of streaming and portable viewing devices questions the continuing need for a television set—an opportune moment to reconsider the materiality of this object technology in domestic life. Taking television's entry
-
Imaging Landscapes, Roads, Race, and Power Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Thomas Zeller
abstract: Drawing on two contrasting images of the "highway to nowhere" in Baltimore and a stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, this essay throws a spotlight on the politics of planning and designing roads in mid-twentieth century America. It examines the intertwined roles of race, class, and profession, focusing on the relationship between race and infrastructures as a systemic issue underlying
-
Using and Conquering the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity by Georgia L. Irby (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Rabun Taylor
Reviewed by: Using and Conquering the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity by Georgia L. Irby Rabun Taylor (bio) Using and Conquering the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity By Georgia L. Irby. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Pp. 294. This book constitutes the second part of a two-volume project by the author. The first monograph, Conceptions of the Watery World in Greco-Roman Antiquity (2021)
-
Technical Knowledge in Europe, 1200–1500 AD ed. by Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave and Javier López Rider (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Elspeth Whitney
Reviewed by: Technical Knowledge in Europe, 1200–1500 AD ed. by Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave and Javier López Rider Elspeth Whitney (bio) Technical Knowledge in Europe, 1200–1500 AD Edited by Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave and Javier López Rider. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022. Pp. 235. This volume originated in a 2015 conference on medieval technological and technical knowledge
-
The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths by Angela Vanhaelen (review) Technol. Cult. (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Joseph Wachelder
Reviewed by: The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths by Angela Vanhaelen Joseph Wachelder (bio) The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths By Angela Vanhaelen. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022. Pp. 236. This interdisciplinary book by art historian Angela Vanhaelen has much to