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Computers, iPods, cell phones, Blackberries….
Radio, movies, television, videos…cars, planes,
space shuttles… washing machines, dish washers,
robotic vacuum cleaners…laser surgery, heart transplants,
artificial limbs…A-Bombs and H-Bombs…Americans
today live surrounded by, and dependent on, technology.
Our world would amaze, delight, and perhaps trouble, the
inventors and scientists of the nineteenth century. But
their world would surely have had the same effect upon
their eighteenth-century ancestors. In this issue, HISTORY
NOW examines the technology that catapulted America into
modernity. From the cotton gin to the phonograph, American
inventiveness has been a hallmark of our nation. And,
as the essays in this issue demonstrate, science and technology
both arise from and reshape their social, economic and
political contexts. History and technology thus do not
exist in separate spheres; they are closely linked in
the narrative of our past.
In his overview essay, “Technology in the 1800s,”
Brent D. Glass shows us the historical context in which
American technology flourished. Westward expansion,
warfare, population growth and government encouragement
through such institutions as the patent office all contributed
to the remarkable number of useful inventions and their
practical application. Glass also explains how these
inventions transformed agricultural and industrial production,
created a national market, and altered Americans’
sense of time and space through improved transportation
and communication. In his examination of the earliest
phases of American industrialization, “Women and
the Early Industrial Revolution in the United States,”
Thomas Dublin reminds us of the impact of technology
on gender roles and gender ideology. The rise of textile
mills in the Northeast not only sparked an industrial
revolution in the United States; it also created and
legitimated a role for women in the American labor force.
In his essay, “Transcontinental Railroads: Compressing
Time and Space,” Richard White closely examines
the impact of the railroads on American economic, political
and social life. The railroads that linked the nation
after the civil war spurred the growth of a national
market, but, as White explains, they also changed American
ideas of nature and American use of natural resources.
The benefits of the rail system were not shared equally
by all citizens, however, and although rail locations
and rail rates created fortunes they also destroyed
dreams of success. In “Image and Artifact: Photography
in Nineteenth Century America,” Martha Sandweiss
demonstrates how photography, as much as the railroad
or the telegraph, also changed the concept of space
and time. She points out that historians and history
teachers can use photographs as more than illustrations;
they are important artifacts for those of us who seek
to reconstruct the past. In “Edison’s Laboratory,”
Paul Israel takes a close look at the contributions
of the man who brought the nation many of its most impressive
and useful technological innovations. Israel analyzes
the setting in which Edison’s genius flourished,
pointing out the importance of the Menlo Park laboratory
as a model for research in the following century. Finally,
in “Advances in Medical Technology,” Bert
Hansen explores the close relationship between scientific
innovations and popular readiness for the breakthroughs
that these innovations produce. Major changes in medical
technology made little impression on the American public
until popular fear of rabies –and the promise
of protection from the disease—riveted the attention
of Americans and the American press. Almost overnight,
the longstanding assumption that older doctors and older
medicines were superior to new ones vanished, replaced
by a belief that change and innovation born in the laboratory
were the hallmarks of medicine.
In this issue, HISTORY NOW has collaborated with the
National Museum of American History to bring readers
an interactive timeline of images of nineteenth century
inventions. Four of your colleagues in elementary and
secondary education share with you their lesson plans
designed around the technology theme, and as always,
our Archivist Mary-Jo Kline provides you with rich resources,
both online and in print, to assist you in designing
your own classroom lessons. We hope this issue demonstrates
the critical importance of science and technology in
reconstructing and explaining our national past.
This is our last issue for 2006. We will begin 2007
with an issue devoted to defining moments in six American
cities, including the rise of jazz in New Orleans and
the birth of a new nation in Philadelphia.
Carol Berkin
Editor, History Now
Carol Berkin is Professor of History at Baruch
College and The Graduate Center, City University of
New York. She is the author of several books including
Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Conservative,
First Generations: Women in Colonial America, A Brilliant
Solution: Inventing the American Constitution,
and Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle
for America's Independence.
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