Arthur P Molella
Biographic Data
| ID | 83331 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arthur P Molella |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arthur P |
| FAMILY NAME | Molella |
| SIGNATURE | MOLELLA A P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Smithsonian Institution |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Atomville: Architects, Planners, and How to Survive the Bomb
In the post-Hiroshima era, atomic cities-designed to survive a nuclear attack-remain in the science fiction realm. Yet Hungarian émigré Paul Laszlo, a successful architect in Southern California suburbia, had a utopian vision for a futuristic, paradoxically luxurious atomic city he called "Atomville," never built but nonetheless seriously proposed. Laszlo was one of the very few architects known to venture into atomic survival on this scale. This…
The Eco-City as Urban Technology: Perspectives on Caofeidian International Eco-City (China)
Caofeidian International Eco-City, in North-East China, is among several large-scale new eco-city initiatives currently in development across Asia. Built from scratch across an area of 74 km2, with an expected population of 800,000 by 2020, the city's plan boasts an abundance of urban sustainability features, from integrated public transport services and advanced water and waste recycling systems, to public parks and an extensive wetland area. Th…
From The Guest Editors
From the Special Issue: Eco-Cities in Pan-Asia: International Discourses, Local Practices
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (review)
Reviewed by: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination Arthur P. Molella (bio) Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. By Neal Gabler. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Pp. xx+851. $35. In this monumental, meticulously researched biography fully based on archival documentation, Neal Gabler seeks a theme strong enough to pull together the diverse strands of Walt Disney's life. He finds one in Disney's drive not so much to e…
How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines (review)
Reviewed by: How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines Arthur P. Molella (bio) How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines. By John H. Lienhard . New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. ix+277. $30. Invention, once a star subject in the history of technology, no longer shines as bright on academic horizons. This fall from grace was due in no small part to discontent with popular account…
At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (review)
Reviewed by: At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. By Russell B. Olwell. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. Pp. x+165. $29. The history of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, like that of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington—the other atomic cities created under the Manhattan Project—continues to unfold ever so slowly…
Inventing for the Environment
Essays by historians and practioners on how invention can benefit the environment. This ambitious book describes the many ways in which invention affects the environment (here defined broadly to include all forms of interaction between humans and nature). The book starts with nature itself and then leads readers to examine the built environment and then specific technologies in areas such as public health and energy. Each part focuses on a single…
The Longue Duree of Abbott Payson Usher
A History of Mechanical Inventions by the economic historian Abbott Payson Usher, first published in 1929, pioneered the modern study of the history of technology. Its meticulous attention to the details of technological evolution give it the appearance of a narrow "nuts-and-bolts" history, now long out of fashion. But, it actually took on the human and moral dimensions of technology in the broadest way. The book's introductory chapters lay out a…
Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment (review)
Reviewed by: Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment Arthur Molella (bio) Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment. By Michael Brian Schiffer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+383. $34.95. In the 1770s, wealthy Londoners found comfort and occasionally a cure in the Temple of Health of physician James Graham, a fl…
The City as Communications Net: Norbert Wiener, the Atomic Bomb, and Urban Dispersal
Civilian defense, particularly the security of large cities, has lately been a prominent focus of government and popular attention. This article deals with a manuscript by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician Norbert Wiener that dates from an earlier period in which such concerns spurred vigorous debates over the value, moral direction, and appropriate social role of technology. In the months following August 1949, when the Sov…
Exhibiting atomic culture: The view from Oak Ridge
In the aftermath of World War II, residents of “nuclear cities” like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, where America's atomic weapons were produced struggled to interpret the nation's atomic history as well as their own stories, for themselves, for tourists and for other visitors. Once literally hidden cities, they remain steeped in Cold War culture and ideology, yet they face uncertain futures as weapons production needs change, …
Technomanifestos: Visions from the Information Revolutionaries (review)
Technomanifestos celebrates a dimension of the information revolution that has been largely obscured by the explosive and helter-skelter growth of computer technologies in the post-World War II era. A freelance science writer, Adam Brate is an unabashed admirer of the people who made that revolution. Geniuses such as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, J. C. R. Licklider, Seymore Papert, and Alan Kay invented the theories and machines …
Exhibiting Science in Historical Context: "The Case of "Science in American Life
Science Moderne: Sigfried Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture and Mechanization Takes Command
Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) was a Swiss art historian who pioneered the history of technology while helping bring forth modernity, born of the convergence of revolutionary transformations in science, technology, and the arts, and identified with such names as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford, and the Wrights (both Frank Lloyd and the brothers Wilbur and Orville). Together, Space, Time a…
Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age
Having gone to school at Hollywood High and fallen under the spell of movie culture, William Bradford Shockley fancied himself, according to fellow physicist Frederick Seitz, "a cross between Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Bulldog Drummond, with perhaps a dash of Ronald Colman." An early scene in Crystal Fire captures Seitz and Shockley in September 1932 as they head cross-country in Shockley's DeSoto to attend eastern graduate schools in their quest…
Eloge: Stanley Goldberg, 4 August 1934-16 October 1996
Edward Clinton Ezell (1939-1993)
Memorial EDWARD CLINTON EZELL (1939-1993) ARTHUR P. MOLELLA It is difficult to go anywhere in the National Museum of American History without seeing some imprint of Edward Ezell, who served for twelve years as supervisory curator of the Division of Armed Forces History. From the back rooms that housed his massive collec tions in military history to the exhibit halls that reflected his fresh new look at the lives of ordinary soldiers, the Smithso…
Tilting at Windmills
The Cover Design TILTING AT WINDMILLS ARTHUR P. MOLELLA At the beginning of the 1980s, the Smithsonian Institution’s Na tional Museum of History and Technology abruptly shed its original name, a designation that revealed its fundamental kinship with the Deutsches Museum and other national technical museums, to become the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The aim of the change was to repair an uncomfortable split in the museum’s identit…
The Museum That Might Have Been: The Smithsonian's National Museum of Engineering and Industry
In the spring of 1922, two engineers met in Washington, D.C., in a spirit of hopeful conspiracy. Their goal was to establish a National Museum of Engineering and Industry under the aegis of the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, the nation's preeminent museum of natural history and anthropology. Holbrook Fitz-John Porter was a mechanical engineer, a Lehigh graduate who first became a national figure as chief of Machinery Hall at the 189…
G. T. Fechner and Psychology . Josef Brožek , Horst Grundlach Index Psychophysicus: Bio- und bibliographischer Index zu Fechners Elementen der Psychophysik und den Parerga . Horst Grundlach
The Lewis Mumford Reader
This volume brings together representative selections of Lewis Mumford's major writings on central concerns of his life. Praised by Malcolm Cowley as the last of great humanists, Mumford (1895-1990) produced a body of cultural criticism and commentary that for its range and richness is unmatched in modern American letters. Author of countless articles and more than thirty books - including landmark works The Culture of Cities and The City in Hist…
Inventing the History of Invention: Three Big Thinkers Who Placed Technology at the Heart of History
Histoire de la technologie : une discipline nee aux Etats-Unis en 1958. Mais des livres sur les histoires des inventions apparaissent des le 15e siecle. Les travaux de Usher, Mumford, Giedion en histoire de la technologie (19e et 20e siecle)
History of Electricity at the Smithsonian
The Division of Electricity at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History is the national repository for objects significant to the history of electrical science and technology. Although the Division has operated as a separate unit for less than three decades, activities at the Institution have contributed to the study of electrical history since the middle of the 19th century. This paper describes how collecting and exhibition policies …
Dictionary of the History of Science
The Science and Education of Joseph Henry
The Museum That Might Have Been: The Smithsonian's National Museum of Engineering and Industry
In the spring of 1922, two engineers met in Washington, D.C., in a spirit of hopeful conspiracy. Their goal was to establish a National Museum of Engineering and Industry under the aegis of the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, the nation's preeminent museum of natural history and anthropology. Holbrook Fitz-John Porter was a mechanical engineer, a Lehigh graduate who first became a national figure as chief of Machinery Hall at the 189…
The Longue Duree of Abbott Payson Usher
A History of Mechanical Inventions by the economic historian Abbott Payson Usher, first published in 1929, pioneered the modern study of the history of technology. Its meticulous attention to the details of technological evolution give it the appearance of a narrow "nuts-and-bolts" history, now long out of fashion. But, it actually took on the human and moral dimensions of technology in the broadest way. The book's introductory chapters lay out a…
The City as Communications Net: Norbert Wiener, the Atomic Bomb, and Urban Dispersal
Civilian defense, particularly the security of large cities, has lately been a prominent focus of government and popular attention. This article deals with a manuscript by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician Norbert Wiener that dates from an earlier period in which such concerns spurred vigorous debates over the value, moral direction, and appropriate social role of technology. In the months following August 1949, when the Sov…
Herder and the Philosophy and History of Science . H. B. Nisbet
Dietrich Georg Kieser, Sein Leben und Werk . Walter Brednow
The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 1: December 1797-October 1832: The Albany Years
The Papers of Joseph Henry
Journal Article The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 1: December 1797–October 1832: The Albany Years. Ed. by Nathan Reingold, Stuart Pierson, Arthur P. Molella, James M. Hobbins, and John R. Kerwood. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972. xxxix + 496 pp. Map, illustrations, tables, appendix, notes, and index. $15.00.) Get access Donald Fleming Donald Fleming Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Googl…
Ernst Mach, His Work, Life, and Influence . John T. Blackmore
Sir Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S., 1802-1875 . Brian Bowers
The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 2: November 1832-December 1835: The Princeton Years
The Social Impact of the Telephone
A Scientist in American Life: Essays and Lectures of Joseph Henry
Equal Justice Under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835-1875
Journal Article Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875. By Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek. (New York: Harper and Row, 1982. xvii + 571 pp. Maps, illustrations, chart, table, appendix, notes, bibliographical essay, and index. $20.95.) Get access Don E. Fehrenbacher Don E. Fehrenbacher Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 69, I…
The Papers of Joseph Henry: Vol 2
Journal Article The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 2: November 1832–December 1835: The Princeton Years. Ed. by Nathan Reingold, The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol. 3: January 1836–December 1837: The Princeton Years. Ed. by Nathan Reingold, The Papers of Joseph Henry. Vol 4: January 1838–December 1840: The Princeton Years. Ed. by Nathan Reingold Get access Donald Fleming Donald Fleming Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
The Papers of Joseph Henry: The Princeton Years, January 1838-December 1840, Vol. 4
Dictionary of the History of Science
The Science and Education of Joseph Henry
History of Electricity at the Smithsonian
The Division of Electricity at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History is the national repository for objects significant to the history of electrical science and technology. Although the Division has operated as a separate unit for less than three decades, activities at the Institution have contributed to the study of electrical history since the middle of the 19th century. This paper describes how collecting and exhibition policies …
Inventing the History of Invention: Three Big Thinkers Who Placed Technology at the Heart of History
Histoire de la technologie : une discipline nee aux Etats-Unis en 1958. Mais des livres sur les histoires des inventions apparaissent des le 15e siecle. Les travaux de Usher, Mumford, Giedion en histoire de la technologie (19e et 20e siecle)
The Lewis Mumford Reader
This volume brings together representative selections of Lewis Mumford's major writings on central concerns of his life. Praised by Malcolm Cowley as the last of great humanists, Mumford (1895-1990) produced a body of cultural criticism and commentary that for its range and richness is unmatched in modern American letters. Author of countless articles and more than thirty books - including landmark works The Culture of Cities and The City in Hist…
G. T. Fechner and Psychology . Josef Brožek , Horst Grundlach Index Psychophysicus: Bio- und bibliographischer Index zu Fechners Elementen der Psychophysik und den Parerga . Horst Grundlach
The Museum That Might Have Been: The Smithsonian's National Museum of Engineering and Industry
In the spring of 1922, two engineers met in Washington, D.C., in a spirit of hopeful conspiracy. Their goal was to establish a National Museum of Engineering and Industry under the aegis of the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, the nation's preeminent museum of natural history and anthropology. Holbrook Fitz-John Porter was a mechanical engineer, a Lehigh graduate who first became a national figure as chief of Machinery Hall at the 189…
Edward Clinton Ezell (1939-1993)
Memorial EDWARD CLINTON EZELL (1939-1993) ARTHUR P. MOLELLA It is difficult to go anywhere in the National Museum of American History without seeing some imprint of Edward Ezell, who served for twelve years as supervisory curator of the Division of Armed Forces History. From the back rooms that housed his massive collec tions in military history to the exhibit halls that reflected his fresh new look at the lives of ordinary soldiers, the Smithso…
Tilting at Windmills
The Cover Design TILTING AT WINDMILLS ARTHUR P. MOLELLA At the beginning of the 1980s, the Smithsonian Institution’s Na tional Museum of History and Technology abruptly shed its original name, a designation that revealed its fundamental kinship with the Deutsches Museum and other national technical museums, to become the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The aim of the change was to repair an uncomfortable split in the museum’s identit…
Eloge: Stanley Goldberg, 4 August 1934-16 October 1996
Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age
Having gone to school at Hollywood High and fallen under the spell of movie culture, William Bradford Shockley fancied himself, according to fellow physicist Frederick Seitz, "a cross between Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Bulldog Drummond, with perhaps a dash of Ronald Colman." An early scene in Crystal Fire captures Seitz and Shockley in September 1932 as they head cross-country in Shockley's DeSoto to attend eastern graduate schools in their quest…
Science Moderne: Sigfried Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture and Mechanization Takes Command
Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) was a Swiss art historian who pioneered the history of technology while helping bring forth modernity, born of the convergence of revolutionary transformations in science, technology, and the arts, and identified with such names as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Sigmund Freud, Henry Ford, and the Wrights (both Frank Lloyd and the brothers Wilbur and Orville). Together, Space, Time a…
Exhibiting atomic culture: The view from Oak Ridge
In the aftermath of World War II, residents of “nuclear cities” like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, where America's atomic weapons were produced struggled to interpret the nation's atomic history as well as their own stories, for themselves, for tourists and for other visitors. Once literally hidden cities, they remain steeped in Cold War culture and ideology, yet they face uncertain futures as weapons production needs change, …
History (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Art (14 works) · Art history (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Engineering (8 works) · History of Science and Natural History (7 works)