In This Issue - Society for the History of Technology

SHOT Newsletter 26
July 2006
ANNOUNCEMENTS
The University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Science and
Technology Studies Program, in collaboration with
The Henry Ford, is pleased to announce the launching
of a new website and online archive, The
Automobile in American Life and Society, at
www.autolife.umd.umich.edu. Funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the
DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund, the site contains
overview essays and case studies on the history of the
automobile’s relationship to labor, gender, race,
design, and the environment, authored by Stephen
Meyer, Margaret Walsh, Virginia Scharff, Thomas
Sugrue, David Gartman, and Martin Melosi. Each
essay is copiously illustrated with archival materials,
most from the extensive collections of The Henry
Ford, and supplemented with a variety of materials
for teachers and students (annotated bibliography,
definitions, reading comprehension and discussion
questions, writing and research assignments). Also
included are more than a dozen oral histories of major
automobile designers taken during the 1980s by The
Henry Ford, digitized and made available online for
the first time.
Encyclopedia of
American Environmental History
Work has begun on The Encyclopedia of American
Environmental History, to be edited by Kathleen
Brosnan at the University of Houston Center for
Public History and published by Facts On File. This
four-volume encyclopedia will include some 800
entries and cover the history of the American
environment from pre-colonial times to the present.
The editors welcome scholars from all fields. Some
of the remaining entries, for example, include
airplanes, Atomic Energy Commission, antibiotics,
Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, and
telephones, among others. Entries vary in size from
500 to 3,500 words. Publication is scheduled for late
2007 or early 2008. Those interested in writing
encyclopedia entries may obtain a listing of available
topics and other information at eaeh@mail.uh.edu.
“COMMUNICATION ACROSS THE
ATLANTIC”
An historical perspective of technical innovation
September 15-16 th 2006
Sponsored by The Institution of
Engineering and Technology
(formerly The Institution of Electrical Engineers)
The Schenectady Museum and
Suits-Bueche Planetarium
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Friday September 15th
5:30 pm Reception in the Museum Atrium
5:55 pm Welcome: Mr. David Owen, Chairman IET
New England Branch
6:30 pm Lecture: “Early Anglo-American
connections”
Dr. Brian Bowers (formerly Senior Curator,
Science Museum, London, UK)
8:00 pm Dinner
Saturday September 16 th
9:00 am Lecture: “The interaction between business
and technology in early trans-Atlantic
cables” Dr. Donard de Cogan (Reader,
University of East Anglia, UK)
10:30 am Coffee and Exhibits
11:00 am Lecture: “Trans-Atlantic radiotelephone
communications – early days”
Mr. Edward Owen (formerly Consulting
Engineer, General Electric Company and
local Historian)
Lecture Abstracts
“Early Anglo-American connections” Dr. Brian
Bowers
Although the first wired connection between America
and the British Isles was in 1858, there were
important transatlantic contacts between 'electrical'
people before then. Joseph Henry and A D Bache
visited England in 1837, and conducted experiments
with Michael Faraday, Charles Wheatstone and
others. Their immediate object was to show that the
current from a thermopile could produce a spark. This
rather abstruse experiment was part of the research in