Books : Visions Of Technology : Excerpts

Contents

Preface to the Sloane Technology Series/Introduction/Richard Rhodes

I. THE NEW TECHNOLOGY: 1900-1933

America in 1900/Mark Sullivan
Messages Without Wires/Guglielmo Marconi
A Very Loud Electromagnetic Voice/P. T. McGrath
Wilbur Wright's Affliction/Wilbur Wright
A Horseless Carriage Was a Common Idea/Henry Ford
Praying to the Dynamo/Henry Adams
The American Will Not Live Near His Work/Charles M. Skinner
The Profession of Engineering/Herbert Hoover
A Reservoir of Suffering Humanity/Richard Rhodes
The Charge of the Four Hundred/Anonymous
The Discipline of the Machine/Thorstein Veblen
A Good Reason for Everything That He Tries/Richard C. Maclaurin
Forty Doses of Chemicals and Colors/Mark Sullivan
The Wonderful Culebra Cut/David McCullough
Dignity Versus Intoxication/Roger Burlingame
Predictions: The Flying-Machine of the Future/Waldemar Kaempffert
A Rapid Succession of Improvements/George Eastman
Every Woman an Engineer/Ellen Swallow Richards
A High-Priced Man/Frederick Winslow Taylor
Producing Wealth But Grinding Man/Samuel Gompers
A Babe Still in the Cradle/Arthur D. Little
A City Built by Experts/Frederic C. Howe
Predictions: Atomic Bombs/H. G. Wells
Paving Propaganda/Morris Llewellyn Cooke
Making History/Henry Ford
The Line-Gang/Robert Frost
Gasoline Dripping from the Trees/Max W. Ball
Billy Mitchell Takes to the Air/Brigadier General William Mitchell
The Mechanization of War: I/William L. Sibert
The Mechanization of War: II/Orville Wright
Breaking Crust/Thomas P. Hughes
Birth Control/Margaret Sanger
The Radio Age: I/Clayton R. Koppes
The Insidious Dangers of Radio Advertising/Printer's Ink
In the Hands of the Technicians/Thorstein Veblen
Rossum's Universal Robots/Karel Capek
On the Line/Henry Ford
You Must Grind Your Bearings/Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
The Railroads Have Reached Capacity/Charles Pierce Burton
A Bridge Too Low/Robert Caro
Large Cities Have Come to Stay/Robert Ridgway
Unstable Ages/Alfred North Whitehead
The Meaning of Power/Henry Ford
Immense Decrease in the Death Rate/Mark Sullivan
Comfort/Aldous Huxley
Applied Science/Herbert Hoover
The Automobile Boom/Thomas C. Cochran
The Decentralizing Power of the Automobile/Robert and Helen Lynd
Flying Feels Too Godlike/Charles Lindbergh
A Diminutive Moving Picture/The New York Times
The Inevitability of the Machine/Charles A. Beard
Engineer, Professional/Encyclopedia Britannica
10,000 Automobile Frames a Day/Sidney G. Koon
Leisure Worth Having?/Floyd H. Allport
Predictions: Townless Highways/Benton Mackaye and Lewis Mumford
Operators/Carter Glass
O Brave New World!/Aldous Huxley
A Scientific Snake Dance/Loring M. Black

II. DEPRESSION AND WAR: 1932-1945

In Defense of Machines/George Boas
Energy from Air-Conditioning/Willis R. Gregg
The First Human Hope Industrialism Has Offered/Archibald MacLeish
Streamlining/Roger Burlingame
The Machine Our Servant/Lewis Mumford
Consistent Optimism/Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
Lighter Than Air/R. H. Harrison
The Causes of the Causes/S. C. Gilfillan
Predictions: Rockets Through Space/Richard van Riet Wooley
Overalls/James Agee
Invention Is a Great Disturber/National Resources Science Committee
The Burning of the Hindenburg/Herb Morrison
Predictions: Fifty Years From Now in 1988/Arthur Train, Jr.
One Ounce of European Gold/Paul B. Sears
The World of Tomorrow/E. B. White
Technology is Relatively Neutral/Temporary National Economic Committee
Air Power Will Replace Sea Power/John Philips Cranwell
How They Comb Their Hair/Orrin Dunlap
A Radioactive Superbomb/Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls
Machinery Has Destroyed the Peace/Roy Helton
Beneficial Inventions and Diabolical Purposes/Orville Wright
Science at War: I/V. B. Wigglesworth
Science at War: II/J. Robert Oppenheimer
Plastics Go to War/Joseph L. Nicholson and George R. Leighton
Rations/Harland Manchester
The Business of the Future/Edwin H. Land
Progress and the Servant Problem/Allan G. B. Fisher
The Radio Age: II/Bernard B. Smith
Timber!/Roy A. H. Thompson
Predictions: Geosynchrony/Arthur C. Clarke
Manhattan Project Success/Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves
A Common Problem/J. Robert Oppenheimer
Predictions: ICBMs/Vannevar Bush

III. POSTWAR BOOM: 1945-1970

A Vision of Hypertext/Vannevar Bush
Weighing Up DDT/V. B. Wigglesworth
Atomic Morality/Vannevar Bush
Flying Blind/George A. Lundberg
Appropriations/George B. Dyson
Solving the Problems of War/Board of Consultants to the Secretary of State's Committee on Atomic Energy
Naming of Parts/Henry Reed
T-R-A-N-S-I-S-T-O-R/Ralph Bown
Bottled Sunshine/Suzanne White
Murphy's Law, 1949/Robert A. J. Matthews
A Dime a Dozen/Vannevar Bush
The Real Power/George Orwell
Varieties/David Riesman
Three Laws of Robotics/Isaac Asimov
Detroit Versus the Hot-Rod/Gene Balsley
Predictions: Century in the Balance/James Bryant Conant
Taking Thought/B. V. Bowden
Too Cheap to Meter/Lewis L. Strauss
The Pill: I/Bernard Asbell
Happy and Unhappy Endings/B. F. Skinner
Global Effects/John von Neumann
Fellow Traveler/Pravda
Space Vegetables/James G. Fulton
Natural Luddites/C. P. Snow
Reinventing Invention/John Jewkes, David Sawers and Richard Stillerman
Fist Fights and Females/Ernst Alexanderson
Blind Date: I/J. C. R. Licklider
Blind Date: II/Norbert Wiener
The First Laser/Theodore H. Maiman
Glitches/John H. Glenn, Jr.
America Is Process/John A. Kouwenhoven
The Most Important Passion/David Riesman
A Scientific-Technological Elite/Dwight D. Eisenhower
A Vast Wasteland/Newton N. Minow
Weightlessness/John H. Glenn, Jr.
Silent Spring/Rachel Carson
How Like Sailors They Were/John Steinbeck
Doomsday in the War Room/Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern
Science and Technology/Jacques Ellul
Downloading (Prehistory of)/Norbert Wiener
King Lud/Mario Savio
A Story to Tell/Loudon Wainwright
Moore's Law/Gordon E. Moore
Culture to the Nth Power/Herbert A. Simon
A New Duty/Barry Commoner
Pax Atomica/William G. Carleton
Conservatives/F. H. Clauser
Regicide/Melvin Maddocks
For a Coming Extinction/W. S. Merwin
Booby-Trap Technology/Paul Goodman
More Injury to More People/Harold P. Green
Predictions: Zero Population Growth/Donald J. Bogue
Blue Jeans and Coca-Cola/Alva Myrdal
The Whole Earth/John Allen
Continuity/Bruce Mazlish
Tyrannies/Emmanuel G. Mesthene
Contra Industrial Tourism/Edward Abbey
"Plastics"/Jeffrey L. Meikle
Square Rooting/Gene Shalit
The Richness of Technology/T. J. Gordon and A. L. Shef
The Internet Primeval/J. C. R. Licklider
So It Goes/Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Curve of Technological Competence/T. J. Gordon and A. L. Shef
Predicting the Unpredictable/Robert A. Nisbet
Benefit Versus Risk/Chauncey Starr
Emergent Japan/Nigel Calder
Primary Instincts/Vannevar Bush
Setting Standards: Two Lists/Nigel Calder
True Devotion/Vannevar Bush
Mugs and Zealots/Nigel Calder
The Technological Imperative/Lewis Mumford

IV. YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW: 1970-

At the Dam/Joan Didion
Following Orders/Daniel C. Drucker
Daily Deliberate Protection/Gil Elliot
Revolutionary Toolmaking/Gerard Piel
How to Solve America/L. Rust Hills
Predictions: Super-Super SSTs/Spiro Agnew
White Bread and Technological Appendages: I/Theodore Roszak
White Bread and Technological Appendages: II/Gerard Piel
Small Is Beautiful/E. F. Schumacher
Solving Social Problems/Amitai Etzioni
The Pill: II/Loretta Lynn
Five-Dimensional Technology/Daniel Bell
Practical Virtue/Isaiah Berlin
Solving Unsuspected Problems/Elting E. Morison
Closing the Distance/Joseph Weizenbaum
Power/Langdon Winner
Murphy's Law: Corollaries/Arthur Bloch
Going Solar/Jerome Martin Weingart
Sharing the Blame/Harvey Brooks
Catch-22/David Collingridge
The Growth of Anything Whatever/Cyril Stanley Smith
Girls Just Want to Have Computers/Nancy Kreinberg and Elizabeth K. Stage
Taking a Meeting/Michael H. Jordan
Objectified Human Compassion/Elaine Scarry
Smoke and Mirrors/Edwin T. Layton, Jr.
Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold/Roger M. Boisjoly
Bad Charts/Edward Tufte
Simple and Complex Technologies/John Manley
Facts and Plain-Speaking/Samuel C. Florman
Four Generalizations/Eugene B. Skolnikoff
Surroundsound/Graham Nash
A Modern Baby/Nancy Smithers
Biospherics/Joel E. Cohen and David Tilman
Multiples/Howard Reingold
Getting the Lead Out/Norman Balabanian
Digging Deep/David E. Nye
Downloading/Gregg Easterbrook
Influence/Hans Bethe
137 Million Lives/Kevin M. White and Samuel H. Preston
Deep Blues/Frank Rich
Beyond Social Construction/Fredrico Capasso
Autism on the Net/Harvey Blume
Beauty and Truth/Louis Brown
Omega Point/Jaron Lanier
The End of the Beginning/Freeman Dyson
R.U.R. Revisited/Marvin Minsky
Stuff/Ivan Amato
Society Evolving/Bran Ferren
Predictions: Robotic Sex/Joel Snell
The Future as a Story/David Remnick
Surefire Predictions/Julian L. Simon
Envoy: Quo Vadis?/Edward O. Wilson