Synopses & Reviews
Technical standards have received increasing attention in recent years from historians of science and technology, management theorists and economists. Often, inquiry focuses on the emergence of stability, technical closure and culturally uniform modernity. Yet current literature also emphasizes the durability of localism, heterogeneity and user choice. This collection investigates the apparent tension between these trends using case studies from across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The History of Technology addresses tensions between material standards and process standards, explores the distinction between specifying standards and achieving convergence towards them, and examines some of the discontents generated by the reach of standards into ‘everyday life'. Includes the Special Issue "By whose standards? Standardization, stability and uniformity in the history of information and electrical technologies"
Synopsis
This special edition focuses on morality, locality and 'standardization' in the work of British consulting electrical engineers, 1880-1914.
Synopsis
Seven case studies in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of information and electrical technologies, addressing tensions between standardizing and localist tendencies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Synopsis
This overview of the Pentateuch reviews the various historical-critical attempts to read it that arise from notions about the social evolution of Israel's religion and culture. Is the Pentateuch an accumulation of folk traditions, a work of ancient historiography, a document legitimizing religious reform? The present book, in dialogue with competing views, advocates a compositional model that recognizes the social and historical diversity of the literary strata. It argues that a proto-Pentateuchal author created a comprehensive history from Genesis to Numbers that was written as a prologue to the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) in the exilic period and later expanded by a Priestly writer to make it the foundational document of the Jerusalem temple community.
Synopsis
Technical standards have received increasing attention in recent years from historians of science and technology, management theorists and economists. Often, inquiry focuses on the emergence of stability, technical closure and culturally uniform modernity. Yet current literature also emphasizes the durability of localism, heterogeneity and user choice. This collection investigates the apparent tension between these trends using case studies from across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The History of Technology addresses tensions between material standards and process standards, explores the distinction between specifying standards and achieving convergence towards them, and examines some of the discontents generated by the reach of standards into ‘everyday life'.
Includes the Special Issue "By whose standards? Standardization, stability and uniformity in the history of information and electrical technologies"
Table of Contents
Introduction: does standardization make things standard?James Sumner and Graeme GoodayMorality, locality and 'standardization' in the work of British consulting electrical engineers, 1880-1914Efstathios ArapostathisTechnology, vision and practice: rethinking closure in the history of artificial illuminationChris OtterStandardization across the boundaries of the Bell System, 1920-1938Andrew L. RussellBattery birds, 'stimulighting' and 'twilighting': the ecology of standardized poultry technologyKaren SayerBasicode: co-producing a microcomputer EsperantoFrank VeraartStandards and compatibility: the rise of the PC platformJames SumnerIPv6: a history of the next-generation InternetLaura DeNardis