History of Technology

Inventing Pollution
Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800
By Peter Thorsheim
· Preface by Peter Thorsheim

Inventing Pollution examines new understandings of pollution, centered not on organic decay but on coal combustion, that emerged in the late 19th century in Britain. This change, Thorsheim argues, gave birth to the smoke-abatement movement and to new ways of thinking about the relationships among humanity, technology, and the environment.

The Gun in Central Africa
A History of Technology and Politics
By Giacomo Macola

Examining the history of warfare and political development through a technological lens, Macola relates the study of military technology to the history of gender. A lively analysis of the social forms and political systems of central Africa, this work focuses on the question of why some societies embraced the gun while others didn’t, and how the technology shaped them in the precolonial years.

The Wright Company
From Invention to Industry
By Edward J. Roach

A fascinating window into Wilbur and Orville Wright‘s legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.

The History of Blood Transfusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
By William H. Schneider

This first extensive study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa traces the history of one of the most important therapies in modern medicine from the period of colonial rule to independence and the AIDS epidemic. The introduction of transfusion held great promise for improving health, but like most new medical practices, transfusion needed to be adapted to the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, for which there was no analogous treatment in traditional African medicine.This

Healing the Herds
Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine
Edited by Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle

During the early 1990s, the ability of dangerous diseases to pass between animals and humans was brought once more to the public consciousness. These concerns continue to raise questions about how livestock diseases have been managed over time and in different social, economic, and political circumstances.

Inventing Pollution
Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800
By Peter Thorsheim

Britain’s supremacy in the nineteenth century depended in large part on its vast deposits of coal. This coal not only powered steam engines in factories, ships, and railway locomotives but also warmed homes and cooked food. As coal consumption skyrocketed, the air in Britain’s cities and towns became filled with ever-greater and denser clouds of smoke.In