Synopses & Reviews
With an emphasis on key individuals and key movements, this book is the first attempt to provide a collection of critical essays on the history of technical communication designed to help guide future research. This collection consists of the classic; essays in the field that have made a major contribution to the development of the field, and the new; essays that contribute to our historical understanding of a specific element or period of technical communication. This, combined with an up-to-date bibliography of research in the area, make Three Keys to the Past as valuable to the experienced researcher in the field as to those just entering it.
Table of Contents
How natural philosophers can cooperate : the literary technology of coordinated investigation in Joseph Priestley's History and present state of electricity / Charles Bazerman -- Francis Bacon and the historiography of scientific rhetoric / James P. Zappen -- Oliver Evans and his Antebellum wrestling with rhetorical arrangement / R. John Brockmann -- Sada A. Harbarger's contribution to technical communication in the 1920s / Teresa Kynell -- The emergence of women technical writers in the 17th century : changing voices within a changing milieu / Elizabeth Tebeaux -- The plain style in scientific and technical writing / Merrill D. Whitburn ... [et al.] -- Deconstructing depression : a historical study of the metaphorical aspects of an illness / Henrietta Nickels Shirk -- Renaissance surveying techniques and the 1590 Hariot-White-de Bry map of Virginia / Michael G. Moran -- The rise of technical writing instruction in America / Robert J. Connors -- Interfacing : multiple visions of computer use in technical communication / Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Stuart A. Selber, and Cynthia L. Selfe -- Refining a social consciousness : late 20th century influences, effects, and ongoing struggles in technical communication / Jo Allen -- Studies in the history of business and technical writing : a bibliographical essay / William Rivers.