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7 - Historiography of technology and innovation

from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Daniel R. Headrick
Edited by
David Christian
David Christian
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

In the mid-nineteenth century, along with the first stirrings of interest in the history of technology among the literate elite, a phenomenon appeared that was to have a far greater impact upon the general population. World's fairs and other technological exhibitions privileged the most recent innovations rather than historical ones. It may seem odd to list exhibitions, museums, and magazines in a chapter on the historiography of technology, but popular perceptions and enthusiasms for various technologies form a presence around which historians of technology carry out their scholarly pursuits, for popular ideas on technology and its history are imbued with a philosophy historians call Whiggism. There are two aspects to the Whiggish interpretation of history. The first is a belief in progress. The second side of the popular history of technology: patriotism. Paralleling the explosion of scholarship was a continued popular interest in technology. In recent years, SHOT and the technological history field have broadened their perspective in several directions.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 165 - 184
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Arthur, W. Brian, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, New York: Free Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830, London: Oxford University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Bulliet, Richard, The Camel and the Wheel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Chase, Kenneth, Firearms: A Global History to 1700, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cipolla, Carlo, Clocks and Culture, 1300–1700, London: Collins, 1967.Google Scholar
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technologies from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, New York: Basic Books, 1983.Google Scholar
Derry, T. K., and Williams, Trevor I., A Short History of Technology from Earliest Times to a.d. 1900, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Edgerton, David, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Eugene S., Bibliography of the History of Technology, Cambridge, MA: Society for the History of Technology, 1968.Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel, Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel, Technology: A World History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P., Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mokyr, Joel, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis, Technics and Civilization, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934.Google Scholar
Needham, Joseph (ed.), Science and Civilisation in China, 7 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954–2004.Google Scholar
Pacey, Arnold, Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Google Scholar
Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Singer, Charles, Hall, A. R., Holmyard, E. J., and Williams, Trevor I. (eds.), The History of Technology, 5 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Smith, Merritt Roe, Harper's Ferry Armory and the New Technology, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Usher, Abbott Payson, A History of Mechanical Inventions, New York: McGraw Hill, 1929.Google Scholar
White, Lynn Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change, London: Oxford University Press, 1962.Google Scholar

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