Technology

It is impossible to understand societies without looking at their technological underpinnings. Technology constitutes the very fabric of societies' political economic cultural and everyday realities. Building on recent historiography this book offers the first overview of the global history of contemporary technology.

Gathering more than fifty specialists of the history of technology the collection of essays presents an overview of technological evolutions on a global scale. The book challenges both teleological approaches on progress and eurocentric perspectives. It explores the complex socio-economic implications of ‘techniques’ (and not simply technology) as well as the systems of representation and power structures that led to the emergence of today’s world.

The purpose of the collected essays is to offer a new history of technology. In this perspective a central question concerns the very category of the history of technology i.e. the term ‘technology’ itself. Refusing both the limitations of ‘technology’ and of ‘useful knowledge’ the book stresses the necessity to study technology as embodying human activity as a whole. In that sense history of technology envisioned as techniques rather than purely technologies is intrinsically linked to anthropology and ethnology.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section opens with a world tour of techniques restoring the complexity of regional historiographies and of the meanings given to technological activities in different societies. The second part focuses on sectors of activity processes and products with a strong emphasis on means of production and communication the exploitation of natural resources major technological systems infrastructures and networks. The final section provides access to major cross-related issues. It pays particular attention to the role played by technology/techniques in the process of globalization particularly through colonization imperialism and the development of large technological systems.

Since the early nineteenth century European pedagogical theory has stimulated a didactic turn towards the visual as an alternative to textual mediations of knowledge through books and lectures. Pedagogues and policymakers who strove for a more child-centred approach to teaching were soon joined by media producers and marketers in their aim to transform the classroom into a multimodal space for learning. From the turn of the twentieth century onwards teachers were increasingly pressured to incorporate high-profile media technologies such as stereoscopes lantern and film projectors into their lessons.

This collection of essays focuses on European educational light projection from its first appearance at the end of the nineteenth century through the 1990s when digital image projection started to gradually replace analogue film slide and overhead projectors. It explores the classroom use of these technologies. In doing so it challenges top-down approaches to the introduction of new visual technology and questions discourses that characterize the relation of visual media technology to teachers as one of consumption. The studies in this volume demonstrate how everyday demands and preferences transformed the 'ideal' instructional culture as put forward by policymakers producers and pedagogues into distinctive didactic practices that worked around or went beyond the pre-imposed ways of usage of visual media products. The volume moves beyond the view of instructional technology as a one-way route to modernization and teaching efficiency. By laying bare the power relations interests and ideologies at play the contributions also lend insight into the intertwinement between politics media material culture and classroom practices.

Cet ouvrage invite à retracer l’histoire des relations culturelles entre les communautés de Mésopotamie et du Caucase durant le Néolithique et le Chalcolithique par une étude des mécanismes d’innovation et de transmission des connaissances en architecture. Le premier objectif est de caractériser ces échanges techniques pour déterminer si les communautés du Caucase se sont installées de manière autonome ou si elles ont profité de l’expérience de celles de Mésopotamie. Le second objectif est de comprendre l’évolution de l’architecture "complexe" au Samarra et à l’Obeid et de mesurer l’impact social de l’expansion obeidienne. Ces recherches montrent que le milieu du sixième millénaire marque un tournant dans les échanges techniques et les relations culturelles entre ces deux régions. Auparavant ces échanges apparaissent diffus dans les régions situées au nord de la Mésopotamie centrale. Ensuite l’expansion obeidienne entraîne une homogénéisation progressive des techniques dans l’ensemble du bassin syro-mésopotamien à laquelle se sont greffés emprunts techniques et adaptations régionales.

Cet ouvrage présente les traductions des trois traités de navigation écrits en latin (et restés à ce jour inédits) par Giovanni Poleni professeur de mathématiques physique astronomie philosophie mécanique expérimentale navigation et construction navale à l'université de Padoue : La meilleure manière de mesurer sur mer le chemin d'un vaisseau indépendamment des observations astronomiques (1733) Dissertations latines sur les ancres portant sur la figure optimale selon laquelle les ancres peuvent être formées la technique la plus performante pour forger les ancres la manière d'éprouver la force des ancres soit leur résistance (1737) le troisième traité concerne l'amélioration de l'usage du cabestan : De Ergatae Navalis praestabiliore facilioreque Usu Dissertatio (1741). Ces trois traités furent primés par l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris (prix Rouillé de Meslay). Un corpus traduit de la correspondance latine de Poleni avec les savants européens la traduction des programmes latins de ses cours de navigation ainsi qu'une enquête in situ à Venise Vérone ou à Padoue furent nécessaires pour contextualiser les traités. La reconstitution grandeur nature de deux machines de navigation de Poleni : le cabestan et la machine pour mesurer la force du vent réalisée par des étudiants de BTS Développement Réalisation Bois et des élèves de CAP Serrurerie Métallerie furent testées en mer. Cet ouvrage propose une biographie de Giovanni Poleni les « appels à projets » de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris (1733-1741) les traductions commentées des trois traités de Poleni ainsi que la reconstitution de ses machines.

Ruralia X includes 27 papers dealing with agrarian technologies in the medieval landscape as seen in different European countries. The subject areas include cultivation livestock husbandry gardening viticulture and woodland management – interpreting the concept of agrarian production in a broad sense – studied mainly on the basis of archaeology but also using iconography documentary evidence and archaeo-environmental approaches.

Ruralia X marks an important step on the way towards interpreting innovation as well as understanding the varieties of agrarian activity from a Europe-wide perspective.

Authors from 14 countries provide a broad overview of the current issues complemented by extensive bibliographies. Ruralia X represents one of the current fields of European archaeological research and offers a solid foundation for further comparative studies.

The book discusses the concept of the food chain from a new perspective emphasising the historical dimension and conflicts. The inclusion of technology as a core element is an original approach to food studies. Thus technology is related to agricultural production packaging transport and storing wholesale and retailing catering and cooking. Also the so-called middle field such as political interference farmers' education and scientific concerns is addressed. This book pays attention to the history of agriculture including such varied themes as water supply fertilisers land use greenhouses and EU policy. It tackles the history of shopping cooking health concerns and fast food eating-places. Technology is not taken for granted but seen as a field of conflict (action reaction and negotiation perhaps best cast with the opposition fast food versus slow food). The concept of the food chain necessitates to consider all these elements as a whole and to present them in one integrated volume.

This volume illustrates the old and fruitful dialogue between historians of science and philosophers as well as new collaborations with artists. It includes two symposia. The first one is on the history of scientific models the seond is on science and music. It also contains papers on the philosophy of mathematics physics technology and politics but also on Aristotle Lucretius Bacon Le Bon Spengler Reichenbach and Kuhn.

This volume is devoted to scientific institutions from the 17th to the 20th century. It consists of three parts: the first deals with teaching and research institutions (universities technical schools foundations); the second is about scholarly societies (academies amateur societies industrial societies); the last deals with scientific popularisation initiatives notably those of newspapers. Several papers concern the role of women in scientific communities.

The theme of materials in the history of technology has never been as well researched as other more popular areas like energy production technology or transport and communication. The present collection of papers originating from the symposium on "Materials: Science Technology and Early Applications" in conjunction with the xx th International History of Science Congress in Liège 1997 make a contribution to remedying this unsatisfactory situation. They concentrate on the 19th and 20th centuries and range from research on the metallurgy of zinc in the late 18th and early 19th century to the prospects of ceramic materials to ameliorate contemporary environmental problems.

This volume consists of two parts. The first deals with alchemy and prelavoisian chemistry with papers on Democritus Christine of Pizan van Helmont de Clave Matte La Faveur Marie Meurdrac and Galvani. The second part includes papers on chemistry in the 20th century in its political academic and industrial context.