Volumes in the original series published by SHOT and the AHA can still be obtained at the Oxford University Press website
Please note that the series has now ended but that the following volumes are still available. New volumes will now appear in the series of the same name published by SHOT and Johns Hopkins University Press.
Technology and Commercial Air Travel
by Rudi Volti
This volume explores the economic, political, cultural, and social events that propelled the technological advances of the airline industry. From more advanced airplanes to better security and safety, Volti delves into how the contributions of air travel have shaped the world that we live in today.
Rudi Volti is emeritus professor of sociology at Pitzer College and a founding member of the Science, Technology, and Society program of the Claremont Colleges. His publications include Technology, Politics, and Society in China (1982); Society and Technological Change (7th edition, 2014); The Engineer in History, with John Rae (2nd edition, 2001); The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Science Technology, and Society (2000); Technology and East Asian Economic Transformation (2002); Cars and Culture (2nd edition, 2005); and an introduction to the Sociology of Work and Occupations (2nd edition, 2012).
ISBN 9780872292130 – 2015 – 124 pages
$10.50 SHOT/AHA members – $15 non-members
Technology and Society in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds
by Tracey E. Rihll
This monograph provides an overview of the rapidly developing field of ancient Greek and Roman technology. It focuses on key technological achievements of the ancients in culturally critical domains and outlines recent work on those achievements, considering not only what we know but how we think we know it. It also concentrates on technologies that were well developed and economically significant. It includes chapters on the mechanisms of ancient economic productivity; the production, preservation, and distribution of food; the collection and distribution of water; public and private building construction; textiles; and mining and metallurgy. It is fully illustrated with color illustrations and contains a bibliographic essay. It is suitable for undergraduates, but also scholars in other fields who desire a sophisticated overview of the topic.
Tracey E. Rihllis a Reader in Ancient History at Swansea University, Wales, UK. She has studied, taught and written about a broad spectrum of ancient science and technology, as well as ancient slavery. Her books include Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Greek Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Her analysis of the most advanced mechanical technology in widespread production and use in antiquity, The Catapult, was published by Westholme in 2007. Her chapter, “Mechanics and Pneumatics” appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Science and Medicine, edited by Paul Keyser and John Scarborough.
ISBN 978-0-87229-201-7 – 2013 – 92 pages
$10.50 SHOT/AHA members – $15 non-members
Technology and Communications in American History
by Gregory J. Downey
This 104-page monograph explores the history of communication technology in the United States from the colonial period to the present, including print culture, wired networks, broadcast communication, and the digital convergence of communication in cyberspace. Each new round of communication technology is situated within four overlapping historical themes: national integration, industrial urbanization, mass consumption, and global economic restructuring. Drawing upon both well-known and more recent scholarly work—from the historiography of technology, communication studies, information studies, and human geography—Greg Downey pays close attention not only to the state and the market as sources of technological innovation, but also to the audience and the laborer as key actors in technological adoption. Fully illustrated and with a comprehensive bibliography, this monograph is suitable for both students and faculty seeking an accessible but analytical introduction to the history of American communication technology.
Gregory J. Downey is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also the director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Downey received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, an M.A. in liberal studies from Northwestern University, and a joint Ph.D. in history of technology and human geography from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) and Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850-1950 (Routledge, 2002).
ISBN 978-0-87229-170-6 – 2011 – 104 pages.
$10.50 SHOT/AHA members – $15 non-members
Transportation Technology and Imperialism in the Ottoman Empire, 1800-1923
by Peter Mentzel
This monograph treats transportation technologies in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1800 and 1923. Focusing especially on steamships and railroads, it provides an introduction to the complex issues of imperialism and its relationship to technological development. It discusses the mixture of old and new technologies in the empire during the entire period. It treats the views and activities of three different groups–the Ottomans, European nations, and capitalist investors. Topics discussed include transportation technology and Ottoman security, as well as issues concerning industrialization and technology transfer. It contains an extensive bibliographic essay.
Peter Mentzel is a Senior Fellow at the Liberty Fund Inc., Carmel, Indiana. He has published extensively on the nineteenth and early twentieth century social and political history of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, and was guest editor of a special issue of Nationalities Papers on Muslim minorities in the Balkans (vol. 28, no. 1, March 2000). His most recent publications focus on the societal ramifications of the transfer of railroad technology into the Ottoman Empire. His grants have included a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Turkey (1998-99) and a grant from the American Research Institute in Turkey (1999).
ISBN 0-87229-146-4 – 2006 – 101 pages
$8.40 SHOT/AHA members – $12 non-members
Technology and Utopia
by Howard P. Segal
Segal examines the historical connection between technology and utopia, and shows how this connection is not just a contemporary western concept, but one that stretches back several centuries to Thomas More and also extends to several non-Western societies, including China and India. Segal illuminates how technology has been critical to the transformation of the conceptualization of utopia from “nowhere” to “somewhere” and, thanks to various high-tech developments, to the immediate future. This monograph also examines various expressions of utopia: prophecies, oratory, published works, political movements, world’s fairs, actual communities, and now cyberspace and “virtual” communities. Hardly an uncritical defender of utopia in any form, Segal nevertheless contends that utopia still serves positive purposes.
Howard P. Segal is Professor of History at the University of Maine, where he has taught since 1986. From 1996 to 2005 he was Bird Term Professor of History. He has been director of the Technology and Society Project since 1988. Segal received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. His books include Technological Utopianism in American Culture (1985; 2nd ed. 2005); Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America (1994); Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries (2005); and, with Alan Marcus, Technology in America: A Brief History (1989; 2nd ed. 1999). His articles and essays have appeared both in academic journals and in more general publications like the New York Times, the New Republic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Scholar, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is a regular reviewer of books about technology for Nature.
ISBN 0-87229-147-2 – 2006 – 128 pages
$8.40 SHOT/AHA members – $12 non-members
Technology, Transport, and Travel in American History
by Robert C. Post
This monograph provides a concise history of transport and travel from the 15th century to the 21st, showing how change and innovation have been contingent on ambient social and cultural currents, and quite often on the outcome of contests over political power. It also illuminates a paradox: how frequently technological novelty is decoupled from any sound calculus of financial gain or public necessity. Canals and railways were constructed with only vague hopes that they could ever be profitable; autos and airplanes were invented with no clear sense of how people would construct their social reality. The analysis concludes with a suggestion that the absence of any inevitable link with rational motivation is what makes the history of technology such an instructive discipline. This 107-page monograph includes 30 illustrations, annotated endnotes, and a 12-page bibliography.
Robert C. Post is former curator of transportation at the Smithsonian Institution. He was editor of Technology and Culture from 1981 through 1995 and president of the Society for the History of Technology in 1997-98. He was also the founding co-editor and consulting editor for this series. He is the editor of Every Four Years: The American Presidency (rev. ed. 1984) as well as author or editor of several books on the relationship of technology and culture, including Physics, Patents, and Politics (1976), The Tancook Whalers (1986), In Context: History and the History of Technology (with Stephen H. Cutcliffe, 1989), Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles (1990), Yankee Enterprise (with Otto Mayr, rev. ed. 1995), and High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing (rev. ed. 2001).
ISBN 0-87229-131-6 – 2003 – 107 pages
$8.40 SHOT/AHA members – $12 non-members
Technology Transfer and East Asian Economic Transformation
by Rudi Volti
This monograph addresses the extraordinarily high level of economic dynamism in four countries of Southeast Asia. Japan was the first nation outside Europe and North America to industrialize, and many of its achievements have been duplicated by South Korea, Taiwan, and China. In their pursuit of economic modernity, these countries actively sought, modified, and applied technologies that were obtained from abroad. Here is a narrative and analysis of technology transfer to East Asia, taking note of key institutional actors, both private and public, as well as the distinctive historical circumstances that shaped the acquisition and assimilation of foreign technologies. It concludes with a discussion of the complex nature of the “East Asian Model” of foreign technology acquisition and use, as well as an annotated bibliography to aid readers interested in doing further research.
Rudi Volti is professor of sociology at Pitzer College and a founding member of the Science, Technology, and Society program of the Claremont Colleges. He also serves on the editorial board of Technology and Culture. His major publications include Technology, Politics, and Society in China (1982), Society and Technological Change (first published in 1995 and now in its fourth revised edition), The Engineer in History (1993), and The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society (1999).
ISBN 0-87229-127-8 – 2002 – 66 pages
$8.40 SHOT/AHA members – $12 non-members
The Military-Industrial Complex
by Alex Roland
This monograph analyzes a set of relationships central to American history in the latter 20th century, which entered popular discourse in a phrase used by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address of 1961–the military-industrial complex. The phrase attracted little attention at the time, but achieved great political salience during the Vietnam war. Here, the analysis begins with an overview of U.S. industry and the military between World War I and the 1990s and then focuses on five transformations: civil-military relations, relations between industry and the state, among government agencies, between scientific-technical communities and the state, and between technology and society. A concluding bibliographic essay addresses the salient literature and identifies areas of controversy among historians.
Alex Roland is emeritus professor of history at Duke University, where he taught military history and the history of technology. He is a past secretary and past president of the Society for the History of Technology. His books include Underwater Warfare in the Age of Sail (1978), Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1985), Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence (with Philip Shiman, 2002), and, with Richard Preston and Sidney Wise, Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with Western Society (5th ed., 1991).
ISBN 0-87229-124-3- 2001 – 64 pages
$10.50 SHOT/AHA members – $15 non-members
Technology, Society, and Culture in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 1300-1600
by Pamela O. Long
This monograph treats both traditional and innovative technologies, the topics including agriculture and food production, the wool textile industry, painting and sculpture, architecture and building construction, mining, metallurgy, timekeeping, and printing. One key theme involves the relationship of labor, gender, and the status of craft work, another addresses issues of invention and the value of novelty. This 77-page monograph, which includes 17 illustrations and a nine-page bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, provides an excellent introduction to the material and technological bases of Renaissance culture.
Pamela O. Long is an independent historian of late medieval and early modern Europe and of the history of science and technology. Her books include Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (2001); Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences (2011); and Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome (2018). She is a Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Fellow.
ISBN 0-87229-120-0 – 2000 – 76 pages
$8.40 SHOT/AHA members – $12 non-members
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