Robert Friedel
Biographic Data
| ID | 3785147 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Friedel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Friedel |
| SIGNATURE | FRIEDEL R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Maryland, College Park |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Best billiard ball in the 19th century: Composite materials made of celluloid and bone as substitutes for ivory
The demystification of how 19th-century novelly designed materials became significant elements of modern technological, economic, and cultural life requires a complete understanding of the material dimensions of historical artifacts. The objects frequently described as the earliest manufactured plastic products-the billiard balls made by John Wesley Hyatt and his associates from the late 1860s-are examined closely for the first time and are found…
Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America
Journal Article Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America Get access Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America. By Reed Gochberg. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 266 pp. $74.00.) Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 1…
Beyond Bakelite: Leo Baekeland and the Business of Science and Invention by Joris Mercelis
Reviewed by: Beyond Bakelite: Leo Baekeland and the Business of Science and Invention by Joris Mercelis Robert Friedel (bio) Beyond Bakelite: Leo Baekeland and the Business of Science and Invention By Joris Mercelis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020. Pp. 366. About forty-five years ago, when I was completing my doctoral dissertation on the history of the first plastics, the supervisor of my Smithsonian fellowship, the curator of chemistry, dropped …
Applied Minds: How Engineers Think by Guru Madhavan
Reviewed by: Applied Minds: How Engineers Think by Guru Madhavan Robert Friedel (bio) Applied Minds: How Engineers Think. By Guru Madhavan. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. Pp. 288. $26.95. “How engineers think” has been a subject of interest to historians of technology from the beginnings of the field, and the literature this subject has spawned is not small. Most typically the question has been tackled through case studies of engineers at work, ma…
Places of Invention
What is the relationship between creativity and location? That modern history is checkered with stories of creative places is almost a truism. From Florence, Italy, around 1500 to Silicon Valley around 2000, the geography of artistic and technical invention has featured places that have become synonymous with creativity. Historians of science and technology have not ignored this (nor have historians of art, architecture, or literature). In the hi…
American Bottles: The Road to No Return
Beverage containers, particularly bottles, are central to both the image and the practice of consumer recycling. Prior to today's recycling practices, however, beverage bottles were generally reused, often dozens of times. This practice was arguably far more sustainable and environmentally responsible than modern recycling. How did the system of bottle deposit, return, and reuse give way to the current one-use bottle? This article finds the answe…
The Color Revolution
In the late 1920s and early 1930s several businessand advertising magazines touted the coming of what one of them called “the color revolution.” That label gave Regina Lee Blaszczyk the title of her beautifully produced and well-researched history of changing approaches to color in American marketing, fashion, and industrial design in the twentieth century. Color management—the work of “colorists”—became a profession and a staple tool of marketin…
Obsolescence: Origins and Outrages
The movie directed by Cosima Dannoritzer, The Light Bulb Conspiracy , attempts to trace the history of planned obsolescence in the twentieth century and some of its implications. The movie succeeds in conveying the message that planned obsolescence (and associated techniques such as model changes and advertising) is a powerful force for profit and the source of significant environmental problems, from dangerous waste dumps (particularly in underd…
Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America , by Kaori O'Connor
(2012). Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America, by Kaori O'Connor. Design and Culture: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 118-120
When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America
There is no more valuable or prolific student of the American experience with technology than David E. Nye. In When the Lights Went Out, Nye uses a particular kind of technological experience—actually, a negation of technology—to explore a host of themes, ranging from the web of dependencies that form modern society to the power of exceptional events to shed light on the essential character of social, political, and economic relations. Electric l…
The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation (review)
Reviewed by: The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation Robert Friedel (bio) The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation. Edited by Lissa RobertsSimon SchafferPeter Dear. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie vanWetenschappen, 2007. Pp. xxvii+503. €89. Pity the reviewer of collected proceedings essays. Rather than attempting to convey and crit…
Food for Thought
I have reached a stage in life where I am more likely to think of salad than spaghetti when I want to fix a quick meal. But it is still spaghetti sauce I turn to in talking to students and colleagues about technological creativity. I well remember the first time I reached for the metaphor, for it was in desperation. Trying to get a group of undergraduates to realize that invention was not magic but rather a very human act that all of us can ident…
Osiris. Vol. 10, Constructing Knowledge in the History of Science
American Iron, 1607-1900
Journal Article American Iron, 1607–1900. By Robert B. Gordon. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. xiv, 341 pp. $49-95, ISBN 0-80185181-5.) Get access Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 84, Issue 1, June 1997, Pages 205–206, https://doi.org/10.2307/2952762 Published: 01 June 1997
American Technological Sublime
Journal Article American Technological Sublime. By David E. Nye. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994. xxii, 362 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-262-14056-X.) Get access Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 2, September 1995, Pages 675–676, https://doi.org/10.2307/2082205 Published: 01 September 1995
Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty
Alexanderson: Pioneer in American Electrical Engineering
Journal Article Alexanderson: Pioneer in American Electrical Engineering. By James E. Brittain. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. xviii, 381 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-4228-X.) Get access Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 3, December 1993, Pages 1124–1125, https://doi.org/10…
Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 143 a history of the technologies used in pencil making. We learn that success in engineering requires that every component in the product has to be made to function together, that the necessary materials have to be located and means established to assure their availability and quality, and that methods and equipment for processing and assem bling the components have to be designed so as to ensure quality of t…
Envisioning Information
A Material World
Journal Article “A Material World” National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Fourteenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20560 Get access Harvey Green Harvey Green Northeastern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 78, Issue 1, June 1991, Pages 249–253, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078097 Published: 01 June 1991
The Material of Invention: Materials and Design by Ezio Manzini
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 133 reversed” (p. ix). Because of the growing complexity of material culture in the 19th century stimulated by the enormous growth of separate innovations or discoveries, Pounds chose to cut off his discussion at the middle of the century. Students of archaeology, geography, technology, architecture, and many other fields will, I suspect, be impressed with Pounds’s ability to integrate data from their disciplin…
The Material of Invention: Materials and Design
Technology and Culture: The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology . Robert C. Post History of Technology . A. Rupert Hall , Norman A. F. Smith History and Technology: An…
The Psychology of Everyday Things
The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
554 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Monmonier combines the typical tools of the historian with some unusual ones. A content analysis of midsized newspapers in central New York State revealed how maps were used over a 100-year period, showing, for example, the importance of wars in heightening interest in maps. Interviews with journalists, graphic designers, and cartogra phers, along with observations of how they worked with maps, enrich the …
When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America
There is no more valuable or prolific student of the American experience with technology than David E. Nye. In When the Lights Went Out, Nye uses a particular kind of technological experience—actually, a negation of technology—to explore a host of themes, ranging from the web of dependencies that form modern society to the power of exceptional events to shed light on the essential character of social, political, and economic relations. Electric l…
Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention
Best billiard ball in the 19th century: Composite materials made of celluloid and bone as substitutes for ivory
The demystification of how 19th-century novelly designed materials became significant elements of modern technological, economic, and cultural life requires a complete understanding of the material dimensions of historical artifacts. The objects frequently described as the earliest manufactured plastic products-the billiard balls made by John Wesley Hyatt and his associates from the late 1860s-are examined closely for the first time and are found…
American Bottles: The Road to No Return
Beverage containers, particularly bottles, are central to both the image and the practice of consumer recycling. Prior to today's recycling practices, however, beverage bottles were generally reused, often dozens of times. This practice was arguably far more sustainable and environmentally responsible than modern recycling. How did the system of bottle deposit, return, and reuse give way to the current one-use bottle? This article finds the answe…
Alexanderson: Pioneer in American Electrical Engineering
Journal Article Alexanderson: Pioneer in American Electrical Engineering. By James E. Brittain. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. xviii, 381 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-4228-X.) Get access Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 3, December 1993, Pages 1124–1125, https://doi.org/10…
Perspectives on Technology. Nathan Rosenberg
Biographical Dictionary of American Science: The Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Centuries
Guide to the Smithsonian Archives
The Toronto Meeting, October 16-19, 1980
An Age of Innovation: The World of Electronics, 1930-2000
The Great Television Race: A History of the American Television Industry 1925-1941 . Joseph H. Udelson
History among the Engineers
The IEEE's Center for the History of Electrical Engineering is the latest manifestation of a sensitivity about and interest in history that the electrical engineers have shown for much of the last century. Particularly since the late 1940's, the IEEE's predecessors, the Institute of Radio Engineers and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, have recognized a professional responsibility toward their heritage. Finding the best means for ca…
Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid
The Cambridge Meeting, November 1-4, 1984
Organizational Notes THE CAMBRIDGE MEETING, NOVEMBER 1-4, 1984 More than 250 people attended the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,. Cambridge, November 1-4, 1984. Jeffrey Sturchio (Center for History of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania) chaired the Program Committee, which included Susan Douglas (Hampshire College) and Stuart W. Leslie ( Johns Hopkins Univ…
"American Enterprise" at the Cooper-Hewitt: The Patent Models Again
When the United States replaced the somewhat unsatisfactory Patent Act of 1793 with new legislation in 1836, a feature of the new law was its requirement that each patent application be accompanied by a model, not more than twelve inches square ... neatly made, the name of the inventor should be printed or engraved upon, or affixed to it, in a durable manner. For almost forty-five years thereafter, models of every type of invention imaginable to …
Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention
Journal Article Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention. By Robert Friedel and Paul Israel with Bernard S. Finn. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986. xvi + 263 pp. $35.00.) Get access Jeffery L. Meikle Jeffery L. Meikle University of Texas, Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 3, December 1986, Pages 770–771, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903…
Engineering in the 20th Century
The relationship between and the history of technology is an ambiguous one. Unlike the historian of science or medicine or business, the historian of technology is much less likely to characterize his or her subject in terms of a discrete class of practitioners, such as scientists, physicians, or businessmen. Technology is simply not, most students of the field conclude, largely the province of engineers, and engineering is certainly not coextens…
Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective Technology Assessment
This book applies the approach of technology assessment to the telephone. The author's analysis forecasts the effect of the telephone on society and compares it with the reality. This book not only examines the social consequences of the telephone, but provides a model for future efficient assessments of new technologies. It documents a largely unknown piece of the history of American technology and anlayzes the requirements for success in techno…
Origins of Materials and Processes. John Delmonte
Polymer Pioneers: A Popular History of the Science and Technology of Large Molecules . Peter J. T. Morris
Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention
From Monopoly to Competition: The Transformations of Alcoa, 1888-1986
Journal Article From Monopoly to Competition: The Transformations of Alcoa, 1888–1986. By George David Smith. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. xxxiv + 554 pp. $29.95.) Get access Robert Friedel Robert Friedel University of Maryland, College Park Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, December 1989, Page 951, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936501 Published: 01…
Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922
The History of Invention: From Stone Axes to Silicon Chips
From axe-heads to silicon chips, this history begins with the most primitive tools and ends with the latest technological advancements. Many inventions are chronicled, explained, and placed in their historical, cultural, and scientific context, with their inventors listed in an index
Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922 by Susan J. Douglas
484 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE legraphers felt uncomfortable with unions, which they associated with manual laborers; accordingly, they never fully closed ranks with their supposed ally, the Knights of Labor, depriving themselves of a po tentially valuable resource during the strike. Also, segmentation within the craft (by location, status, function, and age) weakened solidarity. Contributing this volume to a series on class and culture…
The History of Invention: From Stone Axes to Silicon Chips by Trevor I. Williams
Book Reviews The History of Invention: From Stone Axes to Silicon Chips. By Trevor I. Williams. New York: Facts on File, 1987. Pp. 352; illustrations, biographical dictionary, bibliography, index. $35.00. Did you ever wish you had a book at hand that told you everything about anything? When I was seven or eight years old I wanted to have one, but was persuaded that it was a foolish wish. Then, some decades later, when I began teaching courses in …
Technology and Culture: The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology . Robert C. Post History of Technology . A. Rupert Hall , Norman A. F. Smith History and Technology: An…
The Psychology of Everyday Things
The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
554 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Monmonier combines the typical tools of the historian with some unusual ones. A content analysis of midsized newspapers in central New York State revealed how maps were used over a 100-year period, showing, for example, the importance of wars in heightening interest in maps. Interviews with journalists, graphic designers, and cartogra phers, along with observations of how they worked with maps, enrich the …
A Material World
Journal Article “A Material World” National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Fourteenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20560 Get access Harvey Green Harvey Green Northeastern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 78, Issue 1, June 1991, Pages 249–253, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078097 Published: 01 June 1991
History (22 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Art history (16 works) · Art (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Engineering (14 works) · History (13 works) · Library science (13 works) · Political science (10 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (7 works)