Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women and Technological Change in History / Edition 285

by Martha Moore Trescott

Overview

Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women and Technological Change in History, first published by Scarecrow Press in 1979, was one of the first books published on the history of women and technology and laid the groundwork for decades of impressive and increasing scholarship in this field. An edited collection of eleven essays based on scholarly research, it explores many of the ways women have affected technological change historically and how technology has impinged on them. Both European and American topics, from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, are included, although the United States in the last 100 years is the focus.

The book is divided into two main sections, each subdivided with introductions. The first covers "women as active participants in technological change" and contains essays on women industrial workers, inventors, and scientists. The second section views "effects of technological change on women in the domestic spheres", covering women as homemakers, bearers, and rearers of children.

Today, with the renewed interest in women's contributions in all fields, including science, engineering, and technology, women's history, and women's and gender studies programs, this paperback edition will certainly continue to be a very useful and now more affordable reference work for students and individual scholars, as well as university, school, and public libraries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810848917
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/1979
Pages:	285
Product dimensions:	4.82(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Martha Moore Trescott has been a research associate in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a professor of history and director of campus ministry at Marycrest University in Davenport, Iowa, and an adjunct professor in history and in social issues in technology at DeVry University, Dallas, Texas. She is the author of numerous papers, articles and essays in books and journals on the history of women and technology, and is currently doing research and writing in the history of women and technology in both Dallas and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
	Overview: From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims: Women and Technology in American Life	30
Part I.	Women as Active Participants in Technological Change	45
A.	Women Operatives in Industry
	Introduction	47
1.	The Programmed Brocade Loom and the "Decline of the Drawgirl"	49
2.	Ladies and Looms: The Social Impact of Machine Power in the American Carpet Industry	67
3.	Technological Change and Women's Work: Mechanization in the Berkshire Paper Industry, 1820-1855	77
B.	Women Inventors, Engineers, Scientists and Entrepreneurs
	Introduction	100
1.	Women inventors at the Centennial	102
2.	Women Scientists in America Before 1920	120
3.	Julia B. Hall and Aluminum	149
Part II.	Effects of Technological Change on Women in the Domestic Spheres	181
A.	Women as Housewives and Homemakers
	Introduction	183
1.	Technology and Women's Work: The Lives of Working Class Women in Pittsburgh, 1870-1900	185
2.	The "Industrial Revolution" in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century	205
B.	Females as Children and as Bearers and Rearers of Children
	Introduction	233
1.	Female Physiology, Technology and Women's Liberation	236
2.	Toys, Technology and Sex Roles in America, 1920-1940	252
	Name Index	269
	Subject Index	275