A Social History of American Technology

1. The Land, the Natives, and the Settlers
   • The land and the native inhabitants
   • The European settlers
   • The colonial economy
   • Colonial economic policy and technological change
   • Conclusion: quickening the pace for technological change
2. Husbandry and Huswifery in the Colonies
   • Types of farms in the colonial period
   • The technological system of colonial agriculture
   • Conclusion: the myth of self-sufficiency
3. Colonial Artisans
   • The apprenticeship system and labor scarcity
   • Printshops and printers
   • Mills, millwrights, and millers
   • Iron foundries and iron workers
   • Conclusion: reasons for the slow pace of technological change
4. The Early Decades of Industrialization
   • Oliver Evans, steam engines, and machine shops
   • Eli Whitney and the cotton gin
   • The armament industry and the American System of Manufacture
   • Samuel Slater and the Factory System
   • Conclusion: the unique character of American industrialization
5. Transportation Revolutions
   • Transportattion difficulties
   • Toll roads and entrepreneurs
   • Canal building and state financing
   • Steamboats: steam power and state power
   • Railroads: completing a national transportation system
6. Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Engineers
   • THe patent system: the public history of invention
   • Inventors: changes between 1820 and 1920
   • Entrepreneurs: innovation and diffusion
   • Engineers: changes between 1820 and 1920
7. Industrial Society and Technological Systems
   • Industrialization, dependency, and technological systems
   • The telegraph system
   • The railroad system
   • The petroleum system
   • The telephone system
   • The electric system
   • The character of industrialized society
   • Conclusion: industrialization and technological systems
8. Daily Life and Mundane Work
   • Farmers and unexpected outcomes
   • Skilled and deskilled workers
   • Unskilled workers
   • Housewives and house servants
   • Conclusion: was industrialization good or bad for workers?
9. American Ideas about Technology
   • Technology and associated ideas
   • Precursors to industrialization
   • Technology and Romanticism
   • Acceptance of Romanticism by advocates of industrialization
   • Technology and art
   • Conclusion: the cultural meanings of technology
10. Automobiles and Automobility
    • Who invented the automobile?
    • Henry Ford and the mass-produced automobile
    • Alfred P. Sloan and the mass-marketed American automobile
    • Automobility and the road system before 1945
    • Automobility and the road system after 1945
    • The unexpected consequences of automobility
    • Conclusion: the paradox of automobility
11. Taxpayers, Generals, and Aviation
    • The early days of aircraft and the aircraft industry
    • World War II: a turning point
    • THe Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
    • Civilian spin-off and the Race into Space
    • Conclusion: costs and benefits of military sponsorship
12. Communications Technologies and Social Control
    • Wireless telegraphy
    • Wireless telephony
    • Government regulation of wireless communication
    • Wireless broadcasting: radio
    • Television
    • Electronic components: the vacuum tube and the transistor
    • Computers
    • Conclusion: the ultimate failkure of efforts to control electronic communication
13. Biotechnology
    • Science, technology, and technoscience
    • Hybrid corn
    • Penicillin
    • The birth control pill