The ingenuity of common workmen: and the invention of the computer

Since World War II, state support for scientific research has been assumed crucial to technological and economic progress. Governments accordingly spent tremendous sums to that end. Nothing epitomizes the alleged fruits of that involvement better than the electronic digital computer. The first such computer has been widely reputed to be the ENIAC, financed by the U.S. Army for the war but finished afterwards. Vastly improved computers followed, initially paid for in good share by the Federal Government of the United States, but with the private sector then dominating, both in development and use, and computers are of major significance.;Despite the supposed success of public-supported science, evidence is that computers would have evolved much the same without it but at less expense. Indeed, the foundations of modern computer theory and technology were articulated before World War II, both as a tool of applied mathematics and for information processing, and the computer was itself on the cusp of reality. Contrary to popular understanding, the ENIAC actually represented a movement backwards and a dead end.;Rather, modern computation derived more directly, for example, from the prewar work of John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, a physics professor and graduate student, respectively, at Iowa State College (now University) in Ames, Iowa. They built the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC), which, although special purpose and inexpensive, heralded the efficient and elegant design of modern computers. Moreover, while no one foresaw commercialization of computers based on the ungainly and costly ENIAC, the commercial possibilities of the ABC were immediately evident, although unrealized due to war. Evidence indicates, furthermore, that the private sector was willing and able to develop computers beyond the ABC and could have done so more effectively than government, to the most sophisticated machines.;A full and inclusive history of computers suggests that Adam Smith, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, had it right. He believed that minimal and aloof government best served society, and that the inherent genius of citizens was itself enough to ensure the general prosperity

Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences

This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel

Ecological linkages: Marine and estuarine ecosystems of Central and Northern California

Three of California’s four National Marine Sanctuaries, Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones, and Monterey Bay, are currently undergoing a comprehensive management plan review. As part of this review, NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP) has collaborated with NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) to conduct a biogeographic assessment of selected marine resources using geographic information system (GIS) technology. This report complements the analyses conducted for this effort by providing an overview of the physical and biological characteristics of the region. Key ecosystems and species occurring in estuarine and marine waters are highlighted and linkages between them discussed. In addition, this report describes biogeographic processes operating to affect species’ distributional patterns. The biogeographic analyses build upon this background to further understanding of the biogeography of this region. (PDF contaons 172 pages

Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences

This volume includes an unpublished manuscript and selected portions of five seminars by Harold Garfinkel – the founder of ethnomethodology – on the topic of practices in the natural sciences and mathematics. The volume provides a coherent and sustained account of his program for the study of ordinary and specialized social actions. Presenting broader theoretical and methodological initiatives, as well as discussions and summaries of exemplary studies of social phenomena within and beyond the sciences, this work dates to the period in the 1980s during which the field of Science and Technology Studies was taking shape, with ethnomethodological studies of scientific practice forming a major part of its development at the time. Aside from their historical importance, the manuscript and seminars present a distinctive perspective on the natural and social sciences that remains highly original and pertinent to research on science, social science, and everyday life today. Offering critical insights and proposals relating to developments in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this volume will appeal to scholars of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies with interests in the work of Garfinkel

Only a Girl : Christine Frederick, Efficiency, Consumerism, and Women\u27s Sphere.

Christine Frederick was a home efficiency expert who worked out of her home experiment station, Applecroft, in Greenlawn, New York, from 1910 to 1939. She advocated the application of scientific management, technology, and consumer awareness to homemaking. Frederick came of age during a time when feminism was opening a window of opportunity for middle-class, educated, white women. By the time she graduated from Northwestern University, the nineteenth-century doctrine of separate spheres was being challenged. Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u27s critique of the single-family home had been published, the woman suffrage campaign would gain new momentum within the next few years, and women were entering professions heretofore closed to them. Although she took full advantage of these developments, Frederick recognized that most middle-class Americans still held traditional beliefs about gender roles. Fashioning a career upon the premise that woman\u27s place was in the home, she was able to fulfill her need to succeed in the public sphere. She capitalized on trends such as technology, advertising and consumerism while accommodating the still-prevailing view that the preservation of the home depended upon woman\u27s remaining within it. Thus Frederick\u27s career paradoxically helped to contract feminism\u27s window. During the 1920s, when the first wave of feminism was receding in the face of conservative pressures, Frederick emphasized the importance of the housewife\u27s role in the marketplace, and advised advertisers and manufacturers on how to sell to Mrs. Consumer. . This dissertation examines Christine Frederick\u27s life and work in light of two twentieth-century developments. Her career as an expert on the home coincided with the rise and fall of the first wave of feminism. Although she benefited from the advances women enjoyed as a result of that movement, her work counteracted its rise and served its fall. Secondly, Frederick participated in the rise of modern technology and business through her work in the efficiency movement, the development of modern advertising, and the promotion of consumerism. Her gender created a conflict that motivated her to employ modernization to encourage women to remain in their traditional roles

Holland City News, Volume 94, Number 44: November 4, 1965

Newspaper published in Holland, Michigan, from 1872-1977, to serve the English-speaking people in Holland, Michigan. Purchased by local Dutch language newspaper, De Grondwet, owner in 1888.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/hcn_1965/1042/thumbnail.jp