Pamela O Long
Biographic Data
| ID | 1008133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pamela O Long |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pamela |
| FAMILY NAME | O Long |
| SIGNATURE | LONG P O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Film Independent |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7842-2209 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Ingenuity in the Making: Matter and Technique in Early Modern Europe
The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400–1800
The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400–1800. Christopher Celenza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xii + 328 pp. $39.99. - Volume 76 Issue 3
The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe by Maren Elisabeth Schwab and Anthony Grafton
Renaissance and early modern antiquarians, such as the baroque polymath Athenaeus Kircher, the figure with which this eloquent book opens, would today be deemed highly interdisciplinary in their approaches. They studied texts, including manuscripts, printed books, and inscriptions. They scrutinized images as well as all kinds of objects from carvings to altarpieces. They examined bones, skulls, and other human remains, and investigated ancient bu…
The Virtues of Economy: Governance, Power, and Piety in Late Medieval Rome
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Janello Torriani and the Spanish Empire: A Vitruvian Artisan at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution
Janello Torriani and the Spanish Empire: A Vitruvian Artisan at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution. Cristiano Zanetti. Nuncius Series: Studies and Sources in the Material and Visual History of Science 2. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xii + 450 pp. $121. - Volume 73 Issue 1
Introduction: The cultural and material worlds of mining in early modern Europe
This special issue is dedicated to the cultural values and impacts of the early modern mining industry and some of the enterprises and practices that surrounded them. The contributions enquire into how mining and metallurgy became a key sector in early modern European society, not only in terms of economic prosperity with its utilitarian connotations, but as a sociocultural phenomenon, whose materials and products affected, or even enabled, many …
Early Modern Color Worlds
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Trading Zones in Early Modern Europe
This essay adopts the concept of trading zones first developed for the history of science by Peter Galison and redefines it for the early modern period. The term "trading zones" is used to mean arenas in which substantive and reciprocal communication occurred between individuals who were artisanally trained and learned (university-trained) individuals. Such trading zones proliferated in the sixteenth century. They tended to arise in certain kinds…
A Crooked Path
This is a printed version of Pamela O. Long's talk at the 2014 Society for the History of Technology annual meeting, on the occasion of receiving the Leonardo da Vinci award. It provides a synoptic intellectual autobiography of the author, treating the development of her work on Vitruvianism, ideas concerning contextualism, some of the scholars that have most influenced her work, and her present project on engineering in sixteenth-century Rome
Sean Roberts. Printing a Mediterranean World: Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography
Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (review)
Reviewed by: Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered Pamela O. Long (bio) Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered. By Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii+357. $90. The Peutinger map is an amazing artifact that resides in Austria’s National Library in Vienna. It is a long (672 cm, ca. 22 foot), narrow (33 cm, ca. 1 foot), vividly colored, and highly detailed map of the ancient Roman world, divided …
La conoscenza del fare: Ingegneria, arte, scienza nel De la pirotechnia di Vannoccio Biringuccio
Andrea Bernardoni. La conoscenza del fare: ingegneria, arte, scienza nel De la pirotechnia di Vannoccio Biringuccio. Automata 5. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2011. xvii + 172 pp. €180. ISBN: 978–88–8265–636–2. - Volume 65 Issue 4
Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy
Alexander Marr. Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. xvii +360 pp. $45. ISBN: 978–0–226–50628–9. - Volume 65 Issue 1
Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (review)
Reviewed by: Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts Pamela O. Long (bio) Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts. By Joe Flatman. London: British Library, 2009. Pp. 160. $55. Books produced in non-standard sizes with lavish illustrations often are taken to be (and often are) what we call “coffee table” books, produced for a prospective audience of casual page turners who ignore a vapid text. It would be a shame if this beautifully illustra…
La via delle acque (1500-1700): Appropriazione delle arti e trasformazione delle matematiche
The Craft of Premodern European History of Technology: Past and Future Practice
This essay discusses the history of technology for premodern Europe in terms of historiography and contemporary practices. It treats the origins of the history of technology in the Annales School as developed by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. It focuses on the early years of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), including early participants such as Lynn White jr., Melvin Kranzberg, Lewis Mumford, and Abbot Payson Usher. It treats conte…
Culture and Machines in Renaissance Europe
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/157338209X433507 Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 549-554 www.brill.nl/esm Culture and Machines in Renaissance Europe Pamela O. Long Washington, D.C. Jonathan Sawday, Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. xxii+402, $125.00, ISBN 10: 0 415 35061 (hardcover); $35.95, ISBN 13: 978 0 415 35062 4 (paperback). is well-written book…
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes . Vincent Ilardi
Michael of Rhodes: A Fifteenth-Century Mariner and His Book
This essay concerns the cover illustration of the issue of Technology and Culture (a drawing of a Venetian galley) and the manuscript in which it is found. The codex was written and illustrated by a fifteenth-century oarsman, Michael of Rhodes, who worked his way up to officer positions in a forty-year career on Venetian galleys. The essay describes the manuscript and the complex process of making a three-volume facsimile edition, edited by Pamel…
Wind and Water in the Middle Ages: Fluid Technologies from Antiquity to the Renaissance
Hydraulic Engineering and the Study of Antiquity: Rome, 1557–70
This article investigates the relationships between hydraulic engineering and antiquarian studies in Rome in the long decade between the devastating Tiber River flood of 1557 and the completion of the repair of an ancient aqueduct, the Acqua Vergine, in 1570. The essay focuses on the physician Andrea Bacci (1524–1600), the engineer Antonio Trevisi (d. 1566), the jurist and Roman magistrate Luca Peto (1512–81), and the antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (c…
Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time
Gerhild Scholz Williams. Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time. Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006. 251 pp. index. illus. bibl. $94.95. ISBN: 0-7546-5551-2. - Volume 60 Issue 1
Leonardo (review)
Reviewed by: Leonardo Pamela O. Long (bio) Leonardo. By Martin Kemp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xviii+286. £14.99. Leonardo da Vinci inspires perennial fascination in the general public. Truckloads of books and articles have been written about him, including best-selling novels filled with factual errors and unlikely scenarios. The myth of Leonardo—lone inventive genius, centuries ahead of his time—is one that seems unlikely to fa…
Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento (review)
Reviewed by: Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento Pamela O. Long (bio) Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento. Edited by Alessandra Fiocca, Daniela Lamberini, and Cesare Maffioli. Venice: Marsilio, 2003. Pp. xix+301. €25. This fine collection of fourteen studies, the product of an international conference held in Bologna in 2001, provides a rich foundation for understanding the art and science of water in northern and central Italy du…
The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (review)
Art historian David Freedberg writes: "In 1986, in a cupboard in Windsor Castle, I came across hundreds of the finest natural historical drawings I had ever seen" (p. 15). While one key detail of this discovery is left unexplained (how does one get to rummage through cupboards in Windsor Castle?), the magnificence of the drawings themselves cannot be disputed, and some of them are vividly reproduced in this opulent and fascinating study of the Ac…
Trading Zones in Early Modern Europe
This essay adopts the concept of trading zones first developed for the history of science by Peter Galison and redefines it for the early modern period. The term "trading zones" is used to mean arenas in which substantive and reciprocal communication occurred between individuals who were artisanally trained and learned (university-trained) individuals. Such trading zones proliferated in the sixteenth century. They tended to arise in certain kinds…
Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age
Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars" is a study of books on the mechanical arts that appeared in the fifteenth century from Italy and south Germany. At this time a significant proliferation of such books occurred, some profusely illustrated, others exclusively textual. They include Latin books on military apparatus and other kinds of machines, German-language codices on gunpowder artillery and machines, humanist treatises on painting, scu…
The Openness of Knowledge: An Ideal and Its Context in 16th-Century Writings on Mining and Metallurgy
The scientific societies of the 17th century emphasized the importance of openness for scientific methodology. A significant goal was to facilitate communication among appropriate persons interested in the new experimental philosophy.' My underlying presupposition in this article is that the explicit endorsement of openness in the natural sciences and its association with empiricism were significant events in intellectual history and in the devel…
Invention, Authorship, "Intellectual Property," and the Origin of Patents: Notes toward a Conceptual History
Pamela O. Long, Invention, Authorship, "Intellectual Property," and the Origin of Patents: Notes toward a Conceptual History, Technology and Culture, Vol. 32, No. 4, Special Issue: Patents and Invention (Oct., 1991), pp. 846-884
Introduction: The cultural and material worlds of mining in early modern Europe
This special issue is dedicated to the cultural values and impacts of the early modern mining industry and some of the enterprises and practices that surrounded them. The contributions enquire into how mining and metallurgy became a key sector in early modern European society, not only in terms of economic prosperity with its utilitarian connotations, but as a sociocultural phenomenon, whose materials and products affected, or even enabled, many …
Science and Technology in Medieval Society
Of Mining, Smelting, and Printing: Agricola's De re metallica
Georg Agricola (1494-1555), physician and humanist scholar, wrote that he wanted to understand and communicate metallurgy as a whole. Just as the ancient author Columella had treated agriculture as a unified entity, and just as one studies the entire human body by studying its parts, Agricola aimed to understand the metallurgical arts as an integral subject. He admitted that he almost despaired of mastering the subject before he died, much less i…
Hydraulic Engineering and the Study of Antiquity: Rome, 1557–70
This article investigates the relationships between hydraulic engineering and antiquarian studies in Rome in the long decade between the devastating Tiber River flood of 1557 and the completion of the repair of an ancient aqueduct, the Acqua Vergine, in 1570. The essay focuses on the physician Andrea Bacci (1524–1600), the engineer Antonio Trevisi (d. 1566), the jurist and Roman magistrate Luca Peto (1512–81), and the antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (c…
Science and Technology in Medieval Society
The Openness of Knowledge: An Ideal and Its Context in 16th-Century Writings on Mining and Metallurgy
The scientific societies of the 17th century emphasized the importance of openness for scientific methodology. A significant goal was to facilitate communication among appropriate persons interested in the new experimental philosophy.' My underlying presupposition in this article is that the explicit endorsement of openness in the natural sciences and its association with empiricism were significant events in intellectual history and in the devel…
Invention, Authorship, "Intellectual Property," and the Origin of Patents: Notes toward a Conceptual History
Pamela O. Long, Invention, Authorship, "Intellectual Property," and the Origin of Patents: Notes toward a Conceptual History, Technology and Culture, Vol. 32, No. 4, Special Issue: Patents and Invention (Oct., 1991), pp. 846-884
Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500-1750 . Bruce T. Moran
Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist and History of Manuscripts and Drawings in Autographs and Copies from ca. 1470 to 1687 and Renewed Copies (1764-1839)
This work presents Di Giorgio's codex of machine and fort drawings for the Duke of Urbino, his sketchbook of machines, and archeological sketches in the Uffizi. Illustrated
Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist and History of Manuscripts and Drawings in Autographs and Copies from ca. 1470 to 1687 and Renewed Copies (1764-1839) by Gustina Scaglia
674 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE In contradiction to contemporary views (of, among others, Lewis Mumford and Alistair C. Crombie, who quote Lynn Thorndike), it becomes evident that it was not possible to use precise time measure ment in scientific experiments before the end of the 16th century. Although astronomy did in theory distinguish minutes and seconds, the faces of mechanical clocks were not yet equipped with a hand to indicate the…
Griechische Mechanik und antike Gesellschaft: Studien zur staatlichen Förderung einer technischen Wissenschaft by Astrid Schürmann
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 935 shrift to the resiliency of ties to the ancien régime. Finally, McClellan’s comment that the Enlightenment simply did not occur in Saint Domingue requires further elaboration if we are to come to terms with the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment on science and with the perplexing question raised by McClellan’s work: is a commitment to social utility incompatible with human freedom? Lindsay Wilson Dr. Wil…
Griechische Mechanik und antike Gesellschaft: Studien zur staatlichen Forderung einer technischen Wissenschaft
Military secrecy in antiquity and early medieval Europe: A critical reassessment
This paper examines the issue of military secrecy in the ancient and early medieval eras. It questions the common assumption that such secrecy, with regard to military technology and general principles of strategy and tactics, was practiced in all times and places. It examines methods of warfare and military technologies in four historic periods: the ancient Near East, classical Greece and the Hellenistic world in the Roman Republic and Empire, a…
Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe ed. by J. V. Field, Frank A. J. L. James
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 723 changes in one such function of a technology almost always produce unintentional changes in the other two (and in other technologies as well). Schiffer wants to unify the behavioral sciences, studying arti facts in society and vice versa. Most T&C readers will find the general thrust of Schiffer’s theory congenial, if unsurprising, and reminiscent of much recent work in the social and cultural history of t…
Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe
Frontispiece Preface List of illustrations Notes on contributors Abbreviations Introduction J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James 1. Greek science in the sixteenth-century Renaissance Vivian Nutton 2. 'With the rules of life and an enema': Leonardo Fioravanti's medical primitivism William Eamon 3. The cutting edge of a revolution? Medicine and natural history near the shores of the North Sea Harold J. Cook 4. Science and technology during the Scie…
The Architectural Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle, Vol. 1: Fortifications, Machines, and Festival Architecture
The Architectural Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and His Circle, vol. 1: Fortifications, Machines, and Festival Architecture ed. by Christoph L. Frommel and Nicholas Adams
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 397 that the ill-fated and ill-advised attack on Syracuse originated in the need for supplies makes it more understandable, though no less luna tic. In any case, Egypt was capable of supplying corn for the dispos sessed of Rome and Constantinople until the very end. The fact that Roman remains are to be found today in semidesert areas of North Africa does not prove that the desertification was the Romans’ fau…
Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration (review)
Reviewed by: Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration Pamela O. Long Brian J. Ford. Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. viii + 208 pp. Ill. $45.00. Scientific illustration, at one time considered ancillary to textual explication, is coming into its own as a focus of study. The multivolume Albums of Science edited by I. Bernard Cohen (1978–1989), ranging from antiquity to…
The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry
Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture by William Eamon
170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE individual buildings, and the quarries from which the material came. Here Protzen discusses the form and probable uses of the various buildings and examines reasons for their specific configuration. The second part contains the main focus of the study: how the various types of masonry were quarried, transported, dressed, fitted, placed, mortared, and finished. Protzen and his team tried out some of the tech…
Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry by H. Floris Cohen
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 619 will applaud Rosenberg’s challenges to economic orthodoxies in sev eral areas. They may also feel that Rosenberg still has things to learn from their literature. JoAnne Yates Dr. Yates is associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. She studies the use of communication and informa tion systems and technologies in American business. The Scientific Revolutio…
Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Monument Horse: The Art and the Engineering ed. by Diane Cole Ahl
1020 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE had not originally foreseen or intended. Importantly, Bugos exam ines these practices and procedures within the context of the larger social, political, and economic forces shaping the various constituen cies into the engineering teams that, in turn, shaped the parts of the F-4. Historians of business, technology, and the military will find Engi neering the F-4 richly rewarding, as will sociologists and…
Leonardo da Vinci's Sforza Monument Horse: The Art and the Engineering
This volume collects the proceedings of a conference on Leonardo's Sforza Monument horse, a colossal project that he never completed. The collection reexamines the original project from a variety of perspectives -- historical, ideological, aesthetic, and technological -- presenting significant insights and new research, lllustrated
Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age
Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars" is a study of books on the mechanical arts that appeared in the fifteenth century from Italy and south Germany. At this time a significant proliferation of such books occurred, some profusely illustrated, others exclusively textual. They include Latin books on military apparatus and other kinds of machines, German-language codices on gunpowder artillery and machines, humanist treatises on painting, scu…
Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500-1620
Henry Heller. Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500-1620. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 6 pls. + 1 map + xii + 258 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0-521-55031-9. - Volume 51 Issue 1
Bayerisches Messing: Franz Matthias Ellmayrs "Mossing-Werkh AO. 1780": Studien zur Geschichte, Technologie, und zum sozialen Umfeld der Messingerzeugung im vorindustriellen Bayern . Claus Priesner
Le forme della comunicazione scientifica (review)
This collection of twenty articles on the forms of scientific communication comprises the Atti resulting from three days of meetings in Milan in 1997, sponsored by the Centro di Studi del Pensiero Filosofica in Milan and the Departments of Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Milan. The collection is divided into three parts: a chronological section ranging from antiquity to the fourteenth century; a second section on the physical/math…
Invention, secrecy, and theft: Meaning and context in the study of late medieval technical transmission
This paper suggests that terms such as “invention,” “secrecy,” and “theft,” bear meanings that differ from one historical context to another. Rather than viewing them as unchanging entities, they are better understood by examining them in terms of actor's categories. The particular milieu in which they are found is relevant to their meaning. Diverse contexts such as the artisan workshop, the technical treatise, and the patent system create divers…
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