PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

History 398 - Fall 1996

Technologies and Their Societies: Historical Perspectives

Professor M.S. Mahoney

I. Structure of the Course

• Two lectures, one preceptorial weekly.
• Three papers on topics to be suggested; two of about 1000 words each, due on 7 October and 18 November, and an essay about 2000 words in lieu of a final examination, due 20 January.

II. Books to be Purchased

• Arnold Pacey, The Maze of Ingenuity (2nd ed., MIT Press)
• Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post (eds.), Yankee Enterprise (Smithsonian Institution Press)
• Stephen Meyer III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (SUNY)
• William Aspray (ed.), Computing Before Computers (Iowa State U.P.)
• Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (Avon)

All other assignments listed below are contained in a packet of selected readings available at Print-It.

III. Lectures and Assignments

Week I (16 September)

• Lecture 1. Introduction
• Lecture 2. The Technics of Simple and Compound Machines

Read: 	Pacey, Chaps. 1-3

Week II (23 September)

• Lecture 3. Mills and Manors
• Lecture 4. Cathedrals and Towns

Read: 	Robert Mark and William W. Clark, "Gothic Structural Experimentation", 
		Scientific American  251,5(Nov. 1984), pp. 176-185
	Richard Holt, The Mills of Medieval England, Chaps. 3, 6 
	Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, Chap. 1, "English Society
		Before and After the Coming of Industry"

Week III (30 September)

• Lecture 5. Power Machinery
• Lecture 6. The Steam Engine

Read:	Pacey, Chaps. 4, 6, 7
	Richard L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Chaps. 2, 10, 11 

Week IV (7 October)

• Lecture 7. The Factory
• Lecture 8. The Factory System

Read:	Richard Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Chap. 12
J.T. Ward, The Factory System, Vol.I, 16-36, 59-75, Part 3 
Anthony F.C. Wallace, Rockdale, Chapter IV 

Week V (14 October)

• Lecture 9. The New Industrial Worker
• Lecture 10. Industrial Ideologies

Read: 	Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.I, Chap.15 ("Machinery and Large-Scale 
Industry"), Sect. 1-5, 8
Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures,
	Chaps. 1, 8, 13, 19, 20
E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism", 
	Past and Present 38(1960), 56-97

Week VI (21 October)

• Lecture 11. The Machine in the Garden
• Lecture 12. John H. Hall and the Origins of the "American System"

Read:	John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900, Chap. 2
Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology, Chaps. 9, 11

Week VII (4 November)

• Lecture 13. Precision and Production: The 19th Century Machine Shop
• Lecture 14. Ford's Model T: A $500 Car

Read:	Mayr and Post, essays by Musson, Uselding, and Hounshell
	Nathan Rosenberg, "Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840-1910", 
		Journal of Economic  History 23(1963), 414-443 [repr. in Rosenberg,
		Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge U.P., 1976), Chap.1]

Week VIII (11 November)

• Lecture 15. Highland Park and the Assembly Line
• Lecture 16. Taylorism and Fordism: Contrasts and Connections

Read:	Henry Ford, "Mass Production", Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th ed. 
	Mayr and Post, essays by Chandler and Nelson
	Meyer, Chaps. 1-3

Week IX (18 November)

• Lecture 17. Ford and the $5 Day
• Lecture 18. Mass Distribution: The Consumer Society

Read: 	Meyer, Chaps. 4-7
	Mayr and Post, essay by Harris
        Robert S. and Helen Lynd, Middletown, Chaps. 4-8, 13-14, 17-19, 27-29

Week X (25 November)

• Lecture 19. From the Difference Engine to ENIAC
• Lecture 20. From Boole to EDVAC

Read: 	Pacey, Chap. 10
	William Aspray (ed.), Computing Before Computers, Chaps. 3, 4, 7 

Week XI (2 December)

• Lecture 21. The Development of the Computer Industry
• Lecture 22. The Software Paradox

Read: Kidder (entire)

Week XII (9 December)

• Lecture 23. Working Toward Choices
• Lecture 24. Where Are We Now?

Read:	Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Daedalus(Winter, 1980), 121-136
	Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Chaps. 5-7