Review: \u27The Rise of the American Electrochemicals Industry, 1880-1910: Studies in the American Technological Environment\u27

Historians of science and technology have recently recognized that the spectacular advances made during the 1920s in the manufacture of synthetic chemicals can best be understood within the context of industrial and educational developments prior to World War I. In The Rise of the American Electrochemicals Industry, 1880-1910, Martha Moore Trescott contends that the electrochemical industry provided the essential bridge between mechanical and metallurgical knowledge of the nineteenth century and chemical technology of the twentieth century

Lindbergh makes the First Nonstop Solo Flight across the Atlantic Ocean

In his high-wing monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh became the first aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, making the trip from New York to Paris in 33.5 hours

Ford Thunderbird

Ford, with its introduction of the Thunderbird, became the first car manufacturer to create the market segment for personal luxury cars. The car became the trend-setting automobile of the 1950s and defined personal status during the decade of consumer excess

Justus von Liebig

Liebig was one of the most important chemists of the nineteenth century. In addition to pioneering experimental research that transformed the basis of modern organic chemistry, his studies on agriculture led to the development of agricultural chemistry, and his systematic processes for training students became institutionalized within the German research university

Auto Racing

As a consequence of new sponsors, personalities, race tracks, and television exposure, automobile racing — and in particular NASCAR — reached unprecedented popularity during the 1990s. Indeed, NASCAR became a way of life for many Americans

The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Sugar Industry in the Lafourche Country

The Lafourche Country\u27s narrow highways, characteristic swamplands, and ever present tidal pools convey to the unfamiliar visitor the feeling of being in a strange and rather mysterious land far removed from modern technology and culture. Yet, this land\u27s navigable waterways, favorable climate, and rich soil has long favored a productive sugar cane industry that has been neglected by scholars. A careful examination of the past reveals that the Lafourche Country sugar industry ranked as an equal in terms of innovation and productivity to that of the well-studied plantations along the Mississippi River and Bayou Teche. Indeed, both in the past and in the present, local developments reflected the dynamic technological and organizational changes associated with the international sugar trade. Centered along the banks of the 110 mile-long Bayou Lafourche and the bayous of Terrebonne Parish-Terrebonne, Black, Blue, du Large, Calliou, and Grand Calliou-this important sector of the Louisiana Sugar industry has its historical significance not only statistically in terms of the amount of sugar produced but also because of its leaders who did much to promote and direct the industry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Review: \u27Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City\u27

During the early 1960s, as the Golden Age of the automobile in America began to wane, several commentators, including Lewis Mumford, raised the critical question of whether the automobile existed for the modern city or the city for the automobile. How and when the automobile became central to urban life is deftly addressed in Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. This study is certainly one of the most important monographs focusing on the place of the automobile in American society within a historical context to appear in recent times; it interestingly supplements David Blanke’s Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of America’s Car Culture, 1900 – 1940 (Kansas, 2007). In the process of telling his story, Norton convincingly demonstrates that it was people acting within interest groups who decided how the automobile would be used; this is not a tale of a technology having an irrepressible effect on the marketplace

Rolls Royce Declares Bankruptcy

Despite more than sixty years of engineering excellence, Rolls-Royce failed in its attempt to design and manufacture a radically new jet engine to meet contractual obligations with the Lockheed Corp. Consequently, both British and U.S. governments had to step in to avoid an unprecedented economic catastrophe

The Automobile and American Life

This is the story of how the automobile changed the essence of life in America. Both a general history of the automobile and a broad-ranging analysis of its cultural effects, the text addresses such topics as cars\u27 inception as a mechanical curiosity and later a plaything for the well-to-do; Henry Ford and the rise of the machine age; competition and the evolving consumer in the 1920s; the development of roads and the accompanying road culture; religion, gender, courtship and sex; effects of the Great Depression and World War II; the 1950s golden age of automobiles and the emergence of youth culture; and how American car culture has been represented in film, song, poetry and literature

Automobiles and Auto Manufacturing

In several important respects the automobile and automobile manufacturing proved to be at the heart of North American life during the 1950s. The decade was one characterized as the age of tail fins and chrome, and the automobile was recognized as something far more than ordinary transportation