Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things from the Colonial Era to 1850 / Edition 1

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More About This Textbook

Overview

This collection of original essays documents technology's centrality to the history of early America. Unlike much previous scholarship, this volume emphasizes the quotidian rather than the exceptional: the farm household seeking to preserve food or acquire tools, the surveyor balancing economic and technical considerations while laying out a turnpike, the woman of child-bearing age employing herbal contraceptives, and the neighbors of a polluted urban stream debating issues of property, odor, and health.

These cases and others drawn from brewing, mining, farming, and woodworking enable the authors to address recent historiographic concerns, including the environmental aspects of technological change and the gendered nature of technical knowledge. Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 essay on early American technology is also reprinted, and his view of the field is reassessed. A bibliographical essay and summary of Hindle's bibliographic findings conclude the volume.

The contributors are Judith A. McGaw, Robert C. Post, Susan E. Klepp, Michal McMahon, Patrick W. O'Bannon, Sarah F. McMahon, Donald C. Jackson, Robert B. Gordon, Carolyn C. Cooper, and Nina E. Lerman.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher
[An] excellent collection of essays in early American technological history.

Choice

A well-done and provocative book.

Technology and Culture

An excellent book . . . anyone interested in early American technology and society will find it enjoyable and instructive.

Winterthur Portfolio

This is a badly needed book. . . . Historians of technology will especially welcome these essays.

Joyce E. Chaplin, Vanderbilt University

A fitting tribute to Brooke Hindle's scholarship and influence on the field of the history of technology.

Merritt Roe Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Booknews
A collection of original essays that documents technology's centrality to the history of early America. Emphasizing the quotidian rather than the exceptional--brewing, mining, farming, and woodworking--the essays enable the authors to address recent historiographical concerns, including the environmental aspects of technological change and the gendered nature of technological knowledge. Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 essay on early American technology is also reprinted, and his view of the field is reassessed. A bibliographic essay and summary of Hindle's bibliographic findings conclude the volume. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Product Details

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: The Experience of Early American Technology 1
Technology in Early America: A View from the 1990s 16
The Exhilaration of Early American Technology: An Essay 40
Lost, Hidden, Obstructed, and Repressed: Contraceptive and Abortive Technology in the Early Delaware Valley 68
"Publick Service" versus "Mans Properties": Dock Creek and the Origins of Urban Technology in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia 114
Inconsiderable Progress: Commercial Brewing in Philadelphia before 1840 148
Laying Foods By: Gender, Dietary Decisions, and the Technology of Food Preservation in New England Households, 1750-1850 164
Roads Most Traveled: Turnpikes in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the Early Republic 197
Custom and Consequence: Early Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Environmental and Social Costs of Mining Anthracite 240
A Patent Transformation: Woodworking Mechanization in Philadelphia, 1830-1856 278
"So Much Depends upon a Red Wheelbarrow": Agricultural Tool Ownership in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic 328
Books on Early American Technology, 1966-1991 358
Appendix: Brooke Hindle's pre-1966 Bibliography 431
Index 461
Notes on the Contributors 481
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