Inventing the 20th Century

Inventing the 20th Century
Author: Stephen Van Dulken
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2000
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780712308663

Imagine your average day without television, vacuum cleaners, photocopiers and personal stereos. This title offers window onto the technology of the 20th century. By combining a brief history of each patent (the zip fastener, the post-it note) with a copy of the patent illustration, it reveals the ways in which many of the most basic aspects of our material existence have been revolutionized through specific objects.

Invented Edens

Invented Edens
Author: Robert H. Kargon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2008-07-11
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262293935

Tracing the design of “techno-cities” that blend the technological and the pastoral. Industrialization created cities of Dickensian squalor that were crowded, smoky, dirty, and disease-ridden. By the beginning of the twentieth century, urban visionaries were looking for ways to improve both living and working conditions in industrial cities. In Invented Edens, Robert Kargon and Arthur Molella trace the arc of one form of urban design, which they term the techno-city: a planned city developed in conjunction with large industrial or technological enterprises, blending the technological and the pastoral, the mill town and the garden city. Techno-cities of the twentieth century range from factory towns in Mussolini's Italy to the Disney creation of Celebration, Florida. Kargon and Molella show that the techno-city represents an experiment in integrating modern technology into the world of ideal life. Techno-cities mirror society's understanding of current technologies, and at the same time seek to regain the lost virtues of the edenic pre-industrial village. The idea of the techno-city transcended ideologies, crossed national borders, and spanned the entire twentieth century. Kargon and Molella map the concept through a series of exemplars. These include Norris, Tennessee, home to the Tennessee Valley Authority; Torviscosa, Italy, built by Italy's Fascist government to accommodate synthetic textile manufacturing (and featured in an early short by Michelangelo Antonioni); Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, planned by a team from MIT and Harvard; and, finally, Disney's Celebration—perhaps the ultimate techno-city, a fantasy city reflecting an era in which virtual experiences are rapidly replacing actual ones.

Inventing the 20th Century

Inventing the 20th Century
Author: Stephen van Dulken
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2002-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814788127

It's the perfect gift book for every inventor and tinker in your life!"Remarkable . . . get the book for yourself. It'll hold you for many hours." (Wall Street Journal)"A fascinating compendium for trivia seekers." (Publishers Weekly)>"Highly entertaining . . . " (Boston Globe)

Inventing the Electronic Century

Inventing the Electronic Century
Author: Alfred Dupont CHANDLER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674029399

Consumer electronics and computers redefined life and work in the twentieth century. In Inventing the Electronic Century, Pulitzer Prize-winning business historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., traces their origins and worldwide development. This masterful analysis is essential reading for every manager and student of technology.

Inventing the Middle Ages

Inventing the Middle Ages
Author: Norman Cantor
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2023-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0718897285

The Middle Ages, in our cultural imagination, are besieged with ideas of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights, lords and ladies. In his era-defining work, Inventing the Middle Ages, Norman Cantor shows that these presuppositions are in fact constructs of the twentieth century. Through close study of the lives and works of twenty of the twentieth century's most prominent medievalists, Cantor examines how the genesis of this fantasy arose in the scholars' spiritual and emotional outlooks, which influenced their portrayals of the Middle Ages. In the course of this vigorous scrutiny of their scholarship, he navigates the strong personalities and creative minds involved with deft skill. Written with both students and the general public in mind, Inventing the Middle Ages provided an alternative framework for the teaching of the humanities. Revealing the interconnection between medieval civilisation, the culture of the twentieth century and our own assumptions, Cantor provides a unique standpoint both forwards and backwards. As lively and engaging today as when it was first published in 1991, his analysis offers readers the core essentials of the subject in an entertaining and humorous fashion.

Inventing a Voice

Inventing a Voice
Author: Molly Meijer Wertheimer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780742529717

Inventing a Voice is a comprehensive work on the lives and communication of twentieth-century first ladies. Using a rhetorical framework, the contributors look at the speaking, writing, media coverage and interaction, and visual rhetoric of American first ladies from Ida Saxton McKinley to Laura Bush. The women's rhetorical devices varied--some practiced a rhetoric without words, while others issued press releases, gave speeches, and met with various constituencies. All used interpersonal or social rhetoric to support their husbands' relationships with world leaders, party officials, boosters, and the public. Featuring an extensive introduction and chapter on the 'First Lady as a Site of 'American Womanhood, '' Wertheimer has gathered a collection that includes the post-White House musings of many first ladies, capturing their reflections on public expectations and perceived restrictions on their communication.

Inventing the 19th Century

Inventing the 19th Century
Author: Stephen van Dulken
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814788103

The vivid picture of the Victorian Age unfolds as inventions from the ground-breaking - such as aspirin, dynamite, and the telephone - to the everyday - like blue jeans and tiddlywinks - are revealed decade by decade. Together they provide a vivid picture of Victorian life."--BOOK JACKET.