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13Vaunting 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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81Revisiting the history of relativity Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9466-4 Authors Lewis Pyenson, Department of History, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5242, USA Sean F. Johnston, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Glasgow, Rutherford-McCowan Building, Dumfries, Glasgow, Scotland G2 0RB, UK Alberto A. Martínez, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station B7000, Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA Richard Staley, Departm…Read more
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14THOMAS P. HUGHES, Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. xii+223. ISBN 0-226-35933-6. £16.00, $22.50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 39 (3): 441-442. 2006.
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36Implanting 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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275Communities 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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228Militarizing radiometryInstitute of Physics Press. 2001.The measurement of light and colour has always been a peripheral science. Light became a 'disciplined' quantity over the period of a century, but the specialist communities that measured it did not. The quantification of visible light (photometry), colour (colorimetry), and radiant intensity (radiometry) involved distinct communities of physicists, psychologists, technicians and engineers. This chapter of _Science in the Shadows_ examines how the measurement of non-visible light became the doma…Read more
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18Beginner's Guide to the History of ScienceSimon & Schuster / OneWorld. 2009.Weaving together intellectual history, philosophy, and social studies, Sean Johnston offers a unique appraisal of the history of science and the nature of this evolving discipline. Science is all-encompassing and new developments are usually mired in controversy; nevertheless, it is a driving force of the modern world. Based on its past, where might it lead us in the twenty-first century?
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280The 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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230Science, History and Culture: Evolving PerspectivesIn Beginner's Guide to the History of Science, Simon & Schuster/oneworld (oxford). pp. 182-201. 2009.This chapter explores how science and technology studies (STS) have evolved over the past generation. It surveys the contrasting perspectives of philosophers, sociologists, scholars of the humanities, wider publics, and scientists themselves. It describes contrasting views about the practice and purpose for studying the history of science. ISBN 978-1-85168-681-0
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73Techno-Fixers: Origins and Implications of Technological FaithMcGill-Queen's University Press. 2020.This is the story of a seductive idea and its sobering consequences. The twentieth century brought a new cultural confidence in the social powers of invention – but also saw the advance of consumerism, world wars, globalisation and human-generated climate change. Techno-Fixers traces how passive optimism and active manipulations were linked to our growing trust in technological innovation. It pursues the evolving idea through engineering hubris, radical utopian movements, science fiction fanzine…Read more
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175Studying marginalised physical sciences‘Writing the History’ of the Physical Sciences After 1945: State of the Art, Questions, and Perspectives, Strasbourg, 8-9 June 2007. 2007.The second half of the twentieth century offers distinct perspectives for the historian of science. The role of the State, the expansion of certain industries and the cultural engagement with science were all transformed. The foregrounding of certain strands of physical science in the public and administrative consciousness – nuclear physics and planetary science, for example – had a complement: the ‘backgrounding’ or institutional neglect of a number of other fields. My work in the history of t…Read more
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318The 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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482Making light work: Practices and practitioners of photometryHistory of Science 34 (3): 273-302. 1996.
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139Charles C. Townes, How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist (review)Ambix 50 328-329. 2003.
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155Michael M. Woolfson, Materials, Matter and Particles: A Brief History (review)Ambix 58 182-183. 2011.
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144Richard Moore, Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality: Britain, the United States and Nuclear Weapons, 1958-64 (review)Technology and Culture 53 28-30. 2016.
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241Sonja 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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149Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (review)Technology and Culture 56 276-277. 2015.
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216Anne Marcovich and Terry Shinn, Toward a New Dimension: Exploring the Nanoscale (review)Minerva 53 (4): 431-434. 2015.
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145David Knight, Travelling in Strange Seas: The Great Revolution in Science (review)Ambix 62 293-294. 2015.
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171C. C. M. Mody, Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology (review)Technology and Culture 54 221-223. 2013.
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162William Bynum, A Little History of Science (review)British Society for the History of Science Viewpoint 101 10. 2013.
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128Richard Stalley, Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution (review)Metascience 20 53-73. 2011.
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168Bruce J. Hunt, Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein (review)Technology and Culture 52 403-404. 2011.
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134P. Weingart and N. Stehr, Practising Interisciplinarity (review)Science and Public Policy 29 151-152. 2002.
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147R. Cunningham (ed.), Interdisciplinarity and the Organisation of Knowledge in Europe (review)Science and Public Policy 27 303-304. 2000.
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138Jon Agar, Science and Spectacle: The Work of Jodrell Bank in Post War British Culture (review)Science and Public Policy 26 215-216. 1999.
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206Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (review)Science and Public Policy 26 75-76. 1999.
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165Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy: The Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (review)Science and Public Policy 27 45-46. 2000.
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