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1215The technological fix as social cure-all: origins and implicationsIEEE Technology and Society 37 (1): 47-54. 2018.On the historical origins of technological fixes and their wider social and political implications.
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1030Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fixHistory and Technology 33 (2): 196-219. 2017.This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the “technological fix”. Channeled by their long-term “chief”, Howard Scott, their claim was that technology always provides the most effective solution to modern social, cultural and political problems. The account focuses on the expression of this technological faith, and how it was proselytized, from the era of high industrialism between the World Wars through, and beyond, the nuclear age. I argue that …Read more
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965Why display? Representing holograms in museum collectionsIn Peter Morris & Klaus Staubermann (eds.), Illuminating Instruments, . pp. 97-116. 2009.The actual and potential uses of holograms in museum displays, and the philosophy of knowledge and progress that they represent. Magazine journalists, museum curators, and historians sometimes face similar challenges in making topics or technologies relevant to wider audiences. To varying degrees, they must justify the significance of their subjects of study by identifying a newsworthy slant, a pedagogical role, or an analytical purpose. This chasse au trésor may skew historical story telling it…Read more
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764Alvin Weinberg and the promotion of the technological fixTechnology and Culture 59 (3): 620-651. 2018.The term “technological fix”, coined by technologist/administrator Alvin Weinberg in 1965, vaunted engineering innovation as a generic tool for circumventing problems commonly conceived as social, political or cultural. A longtime Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, government consultant and essayist, Weinberg also popularized the term “Big Science” to describe national goals and the competitive funding environment after the Second World War. Big Science reoriented towards Technological F…Read more
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760A Notion or a Measure: The Quantification of Light to 1939Dissertation, University of Leeds. 1994.This study, presenting a history of the measurement of light intensity from its first hesitant emergence to its gradual definition as a scientific subject, explores two major themes. The first concerns the adoption by the evolving physics and engineering communities of quantitative measures of light intensity around the turn of the twentieth century. The mathematisation of light measurement was a contentious process that hinged on finding an acceptable relationship between the mutable response o…Read more
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734Vaunting the independent amateur: Scientific American and the representation of lay scientistsAnnals of Science 75 (2): 97-119. 2018.This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous sci…Read more
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659Holograms: The story of a word and its cultural usesLeonardo 50 (5): 493-499. 2017.Holograms reached popular consciousness during the 1960s and have since left audiences alternately fascinated, bemused or inspired. Their impact was conditioned by earlier cultural associations and successive reimaginings by wider publics. Attaining peak public visibility during the 1980s, holograms have been found more in our pockets (as identity documents) and in our minds (as video-gaming fantasies and “faux hologram” performers) than in front of our eyes. The most enduring, popular interpre…Read more
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589The parallax view: the military origins of holographyIn Stefan Rieger & Jens Schroter (eds.), Das Holografische Wissen, Diaphane. pp. 33-57. 2009.The title of this piece is meant to evoke at least three sources. The first – and perhaps the only obvious one – concerns the ability of holograms to display parallax, a shifting of visual viewpoint that allows a three-dimensional image to reveal background objects behind those in the foreground. This parallax view is a unique feature of holograms as visual media. A second allusion is to the American film The Parallax View (1974, director A. J. Pakula), a rather paranoid thriller focusing on con…Read more
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563An unconvincing transformation? Michelson's interferential spectroscopyNuncius 18 ( 2): 803-823. 2003.Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931), the American optical physicist best known for his precise determination of the velocity of light and for his experiments concerning aether drift, is less often acknowledged as the creator of new spectroscopic instrumentation and new spectroscopies. He devised a new method of light analysis relying upon his favourite instrument – a particular configuration of optical interferometer – and published investigations of spectral line separation, Doppler-broadening…Read more
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470Making light work: Practices and practitioners of photometryHistory of Science 34 (3): 273-302. 1996.
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451Security and the shaping of identity for nuclear specialistsHistory and Technology 27 (2): 123-153. 2011.Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed dis…Read more
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421Absorbing new subjects: holography as an analog of photographyPhysics in Perspective 8 164-188. 2006.I discuss the early history of holography and explore how perceptions, applications, and forecasts of the subject were shaped by prior experience. I focus on the work of Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) in England,Yury N. Denisyuk (1927-2005) in the Soviet Union, and Emmett N. Leith (1927–2005) and Juris Upatnieks (b. 1936) in the United States. I show that the evolution of holography was simultaneously promoted and constrained by its identification as an analog of photography, an association that influ…Read more
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403In search of space: Fourier spectroscopy, 1950-1970In B. Joerges & T. Shinn (eds.), Instrumentation: Between Science, State and Industry, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Springer. pp. 121-141. 2001.In the large grey area between science and technology, specialisms emerge with associated specialists. But some specialisms remain ‘peripheral sciences’, never attaining the status of disciplines ensconced in universities, and their specialists do not become recognised professionals. A major social component of such side-lined sciences – one important grouping of techno-scientific workers – is the research-technology community. An important question concerning research-technology is to explain h…Read more
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402The cultural landscape of three-dimensional imagingIn Martin Richardson (ed.), Techniques and Principles in Three-Dimensional Imaging: An Introductory Approach, . pp. 212-232. 2013.This article explores the cultural contexts in which three-dimensional imaging has been developed, disseminated and used. It surveys the diverse technologies and intellectual domains that have contributed to spatial imaging, and argues that it is an important example of an interdisciplinary subject. Over the past century-and-a-half, specialists from distinct fields have devised explanations and systems for the experience of 3-D imagery. Successive audiences have found these visual experiences co…Read more
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379Implanting a Discipline: The Academic Trajectory of Nuclear Engineering in the USA and UKMinerva 47 (1): 51-73. 2009.The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of th…Read more
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370The construction of colorimetry by committeeScience in Context 9 (4): 387-420. 1996.This paper explores the confrontation of physical and contextual factors involved in the emergence of the subject of color measurement, which stabilized in essentially its present form during the interwar period. The contentions surrounding the specialty had both a national and a disciplinary dimension. German dominance was curtailed by American and British contributions after World War I. Particularly in America, communities of physicists and psychologists had different commitments to divergent…Read more
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360Attributing scientific and technological progress: The case of holographyHistory and Technology 21 367-392. 2005.Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cas…Read more
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359Professional identity and organisation in a technical occupation: The emergence of chemical engineering in Britain, c . 1915–30Contemporary British History 13 56-81. 1999.On the origins of British chemical engineering,
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358Creating a Canadian profession: the nuclear engineer, c. 1940-1968Canadian Journal of History 44 (3): 435-466. 2009.Canada, as one of the three Allied nations collaborating on atomic energy development during the Second World War, had an early start in applying its new knowledge and defining a new profession. Owing to postwar secrecy and distinct national aims for the field, nuclear engineering was shaped uniquely by the Canadian context. Alone among the postwar powers, Canadian exploration of atomic energy eschewed military applications; the occupation emerged within a governmental monopoly; the intellectual…Read more
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345Shifting perspectives: holography and the emergence of technical communitiesTechnology and Culture 46 (1): 77-103. 2005.Holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging, has repeatedly been reconceptualised by new communities. Conceived in 1947 as a means of improving electron microscopy, holography was revitalized in the early 1960s by engineer-scientists at classified laboratories. The invention promoted the transformation of a would-be discipline (optical engineering) and spawned limited artist-scientist collaborations. However, a separate artisanal community promoted a distinct countercultural form of …Read more
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335Making the invisible engineer visible: DuPont and the recognition of nuclear expertiseTechnology and Culture 52 (3): 548-573. 2011.Between 1942 and the late 1950s, atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were industrialized, initially to generate plutonium for the first atomic weapons and later to serve as copious sources of neutrons, radioisotopes and electrical power. These facilities entrained a new breed of engineering specialist adept at designing, operating and maintaining them. From the beginning, large companies supplied the engineering labor for this new technology, and played an important role in defining the nature…Read more
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327Telling tales: George Stroke and the historiography of holographyHistory and Technology 20 29-51. 2004.The history of holography, the technology of three-dimensional imaging that grew rapidly during the 1960s, has been written primarily by its historical actors and, like many new inventions, its concepts and activities became surrounded by myths and myth-making. The first historical account was disseminated by the central character of this paper, George W. Stroke, while a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His claims embroiled several workers active in the field of…Read more
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322Scaling Up: the evolution of intellectual apparatus associated with the manufacture of heavy chemicals in Britain, 1900-1939In A. S. Travis, H. G. Schroter & Ernst Homburg (eds.), Determinants in the Evolution of the European Chemical Industry, 1900-1939: New Technologies, Political Frameworks, Markets and Companies. pp. 199-214. 1998.On intellectual foundations that distinguished chemical engineering from other disciplines.
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314Professional identity and organisation in a technical occupation: The emergence of chemical engineering in Britain, c . 1915–30Contemporary British History 13 56-81. 1999.The emergence in Britain of chemical engineering, by mid‐century the fourth largest engineering specialism, was a hesitant and drawn out process. This article analyses the organisational politics behind the recognition of the technical occupation and profession from the First World War through to the end of the 1920s. The collective sense of professional identity among nascent ‘chemical engineers’ developed rapidly during this time owing to associations which promoted their cause among potential…Read more
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309The production of scientific instruments in America was neither a postwar phenomenon nor dramatically different from that of several other developed countries. It did, however, undergo a step-change in direction, size and style during and after the war. The American scientific instrument industry after 1945 was intimately dependent on, and shaped by, prior American and European experience. This was true of the specific genres of instrument produced commercially; to links between industry and sci…Read more
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305From white elephant to Nobel Prize: Dennis Gabor's wavefront reconstructionHistorical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 36 35-70. 2005.Dennis Gabor devised a new concept for optical imaging in 1947 that went by a variety of names over the following decade: holoscopy, wavefront reconstruction, interference microscopy, diffraction microscopy and Gaboroscopy. A well-connected and creative research engineer, Gabor worked actively to publicize and exploit his concept, but the scheme failed to capture the interest of many researchers. Gabor’s theory was repeatedly deemed unintuitive and baffling; the technique was appraised by his co…Read more
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271The Future for FixingIn Techno-Fixers: Origins and Implications of Technological Faith, Mcgill-queen's University Press. 2020.This concluding chapter of _Techno-Fixers: Origins and Implications of Technological Faith_ examines the widespread overconfidence in present-day and proposed 'technological fixes', and provides guidelines - social, ethical and technical - for soberly assessing candidate technological solutions for societal problems.
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255Communities of nuclear workers have evolved in distinctive contexts. During the Manhattan Project the UK, USA and Canada collectively developed the first reactors, isotope separation plants and atomic bombs and, in the process, nurtured distinct cadres of specialist workers. Their later workplaces were often inherited from wartime facilities, or built anew at isolated locations. For a decade, nuclear specialists were segregated and cossetted to gestate practical expertise. At Oak Ridge Tennessee…Read more
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244A historian's view of holographyIn H. J. Caulfield & L. Vikram (eds.), New Directions in Holography and Speckle, . pp. 3-15. 2008.On problems and assumptions in the historiography of holography for distinctive social groups engaged in the practice.
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226Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (review)Journal of Modern History 88 295-297. 2016.
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