William S Pretzer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1466617 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William S Pretzer |
| GIVEN NAMES | William S |
| FAMILY NAME | Pretzer |
| SIGNATURE | PRETZER W S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Smithsonian Institution |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age
Reviewed by: Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States, 1790–1865 William S. Pretzer (bio) Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States, 1790–1865. By Ross Thomson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv+432. $68. How did a ragtag band of rural colonies hugging a continental coastline an ocean away from the heart of the Industrial Revolu…
Recasting a Craft
Reviewed by: Recasting a Craft: St. Louis Typefounders Respond to Industrialization William S. Pretzer (bio) Recasting a Craft: St. Louis Typefounders Respond to Industrialization. By Robert A. Mullen. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Pp. 197. $45. In just 119 pages of text, Robert A. Mullen, collections manager at the Missouri Historical Society, has provided a general introduction to the type-founding craft and a history of…
Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation
Reviewed by: Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson William Pretzer (bio) Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. By Rayvon Fouché. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. xii+225. $34.95. Rayvon Fouché has set out to humanize African Americans who identified themselves as inventors around the turn of twen…
A Consumers' Republic
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption. By Lizabeth Cohen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Pp. 567. $32.50
Edison's Last Breath
Edison’s Last Breath William Pretzer (bio) The fortunate visitor to the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence will encounter, among its many treasures and curiosities, the somewhat macabre spectacle of the outstretched middle finger of a man's right hand, preserved in a glass vessel. On its alabaster base is this inscription: Do not look down upon the relic of a finger, by means of which a right hand measured paths in the heavens and revealed…
Ideas, Machines and Values
Ideas, Machines and Values: An Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Studies. By Stephen Cutcliffe. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Pp. xii+179. $22.95
Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines
Lisa Gitelman, who teaches English and media studies at the Catholic University of America, has written another of those books that attempt to "locate" technology amid a dynamic welter of cultural relationships and meanings. In this instance, the technologies in question all deal with the spoken or written word. Gitelman wants to show that late Victorians' conceptions of the written word influenced their technological innovations and that, in tur…
The Languages of Edison's Electric Light (review)
Charles Bazerman has set two agendas for his examination of the development of Thomas Edison's electric lighting system between 1878 and 1882. The first is to see what current theories of rhetoric might contribute as analytic tools to the historian's craft; the second is to see what the historical record can offer those same theories of rhetoric. Bazerman is interested in how "communicative acts" both represent and influence the social world into…
Museums in Central Europe
With members of the Society for the History of Technology headed to Munich for their annual meeting this August and to Prague for the meeting of the International Committee for the History of Technology that same month, it seemed appropriate to introduce readers to museums of interest in the region. As with a similar set of essays on British museums published in the January 1996 issue of Technology and Culture, these were commissioned with two go…
"Reviewing Public History in Light of the "Enola Gay
Technology and Creativity
1: Prolegomenon. 2: Artifacts: Material and Abstract. 3: The birth of Technological Problems. 4: The Technologist as a Cognitive Agent. 5: The Connection Between Invention and Design. 6: Technology and Hypotheses. 7: The Process of Ideation. 8: Creativity and the Evolution of Artifactual Forms. 9: The Nature of Technological Knowledge. 10: A Portrait of the Technologist as a Creative Being
Technology and Creativity by Subrata Dasgupta
966 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trusted by the general public. In explaining their approach the edi tors expend considerable energy attacking the works of Thomas Kuhn and Leo Marx who, for reasons not clear to me (since the editors point out that Kuhn and Marx have had few imitators), they regard as having had a disastrous effect on the practice ofAmerican history in recent years. It is difficult to see how the editors’ grand scheme can …
The Mechanics of Baltimore
366 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Mechanics ofBaltimore: Workers and Politics in the Age ofRevolution, 1763—1812. By Charles G. Steffen. Champaign: University of Illi nois Press, 1984. Pp. xv + 296; tables, notes, index. $24.95. The Practice ofSolidarity: American Hat Finishers in the Nineteenth Century. By David Bensman. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Pp. xxi + 240; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.50. Th…
The Mechanics of Baltimore
The Dearborn, Michigan, Meeting, October 17-20, 1985
577-593
The British, Duff Green, the Rats and the Devil”
The Art of the Old South
Journal Article The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and the Products of Craftsmen, 1560–1860. By Jessie Poesch. (New York: Knopf, 1983. xii + 384 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, select bibliography, and index. $50.00.) Get access William S. Pretzer William S. Pretzer Smithsonian Institution Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 3, December 198…
Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution
Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution
The Art of the Old South
Journal Article The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and the Products of Craftsmen, 1560–1860. By Jessie Poesch. (New York: Knopf, 1983. xii + 384 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, select bibliography, and index. $50.00.) Get access William S. Pretzer William S. Pretzer Smithsonian Institution Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 3, December 198…
The British, Duff Green, the Rats and the Devil”
The Dearborn, Michigan, Meeting, October 17-20, 1985
577-593
The Mechanics of Baltimore
366 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Mechanics ofBaltimore: Workers and Politics in the Age ofRevolution, 1763—1812. By Charles G. Steffen. Champaign: University of Illi nois Press, 1984. Pp. xv + 296; tables, notes, index. $24.95. The Practice ofSolidarity: American Hat Finishers in the Nineteenth Century. By David Bensman. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Pp. xxi + 240; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.50. Th…
The Mechanics of Baltimore
Technology and Creativity
1: Prolegomenon. 2: Artifacts: Material and Abstract. 3: The birth of Technological Problems. 4: The Technologist as a Cognitive Agent. 5: The Connection Between Invention and Design. 6: Technology and Hypotheses. 7: The Process of Ideation. 8: Creativity and the Evolution of Artifactual Forms. 9: The Nature of Technological Knowledge. 10: A Portrait of the Technologist as a Creative Being
Technology and Creativity by Subrata Dasgupta
966 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trusted by the general public. In explaining their approach the edi tors expend considerable energy attacking the works of Thomas Kuhn and Leo Marx who, for reasons not clear to me (since the editors point out that Kuhn and Marx have had few imitators), they regard as having had a disastrous effect on the practice ofAmerican history in recent years. It is difficult to see how the editors’ grand scheme can …
"Reviewing Public History in Light of the "Enola Gay
Museums in Central Europe
With members of the Society for the History of Technology headed to Munich for their annual meeting this August and to Prague for the meeting of the International Committee for the History of Technology that same month, it seemed appropriate to introduce readers to museums of interest in the region. As with a similar set of essays on British museums published in the January 1996 issue of Technology and Culture, these were commissioned with two go…
The Languages of Edison's Electric Light (review)
Charles Bazerman has set two agendas for his examination of the development of Thomas Edison's electric lighting system between 1878 and 1882. The first is to see what current theories of rhetoric might contribute as analytic tools to the historian's craft; the second is to see what the historical record can offer those same theories of rhetoric. Bazerman is interested in how "communicative acts" both represent and influence the social world into…
Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines
Lisa Gitelman, who teaches English and media studies at the Catholic University of America, has written another of those books that attempt to "locate" technology amid a dynamic welter of cultural relationships and meanings. In this instance, the technologies in question all deal with the spoken or written word. Gitelman wants to show that late Victorians' conceptions of the written word influenced their technological innovations and that, in tur…
Ideas, Machines and Values
Ideas, Machines and Values: An Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Studies. By Stephen Cutcliffe. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Pp. xii+179. $22.95
Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation
Reviewed by: Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson William Pretzer (bio) Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. By Rayvon Fouché. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. xii+225. $34.95. Rayvon Fouché has set out to humanize African Americans who identified themselves as inventors around the turn of twen…
A Consumers' Republic
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption. By Lizabeth Cohen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Pp. 567. $32.50
Edison's Last Breath
Edison’s Last Breath William Pretzer (bio) The fortunate visitor to the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence will encounter, among its many treasures and curiosities, the somewhat macabre spectacle of the outstretched middle finger of a man's right hand, preserved in a glass vessel. On its alabaster base is this inscription: Do not look down upon the relic of a finger, by means of which a right hand measured paths in the heavens and revealed…
Recasting a Craft
Reviewed by: Recasting a Craft: St. Louis Typefounders Respond to Industrialization William S. Pretzer (bio) Recasting a Craft: St. Louis Typefounders Respond to Industrialization. By Robert A. Mullen. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Pp. 197. $45. In just 119 pages of text, Robert A. Mullen, collections manager at the Missouri Historical Society, has provided a general introduction to the type-founding craft and a history of…
Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age
Reviewed by: Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States, 1790–1865 William S. Pretzer (bio) Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States, 1790–1865. By Ross Thomson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv+432. $68. How did a ragtag band of rural colonies hugging a continental coastline an ocean away from the heart of the Industrial Revolu…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · History (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Art (7 works) · Politics (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (3 works)