Early American Scientific and Technical Literature

Early American Scientific and Technical Literature PDF Author: Margaret Batschelet
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810823181
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
"...useful to researchers in the history of science and in early American history." --ARBA

Early American Scientific and Technical Literature

Early American Scientific and Technical Literature PDF Author: Margaret Batschelet
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810823181
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
"...useful to researchers in the history of science and in early American history." --ARBA

The First Scientific American

The First Scientific American PDF Author: Joyce Chaplin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465008852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Famous, fascinating Benjamin Franklin -- he would be neither without his accomplishments in science. Joyce Chaplin's authoritative biography considers all of Franklin's work in the sciences, showing how, during the rise and fall of the first British empire, science became central to public culture and therefore to Franklin's success. Having demonstrated in his earliest experiments and observations that he could master nature, Franklin showed the world that he was uniquely suited to solve problems in every realm. In the famous adage, Franklin "snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from the tyrants" -- in that order. The famous kite and other experiments with electricity were only part of Franklin's accomplishments. He charted the Gulf Stream, made important observations on meteorology, and used the burgeoning science of "political arithmetic" to make unprecedented statements about America's power. Even as he stepped onto the world stage as an illustrious statesman and diplomat in the years leading up to the American Revolution, his fascination with nature was unrelenting. Franklin was the first American whose "genius" for science qualified him as a genius in political affairs. It is only through understanding Franklin's full engagement with the sciences that we can understand this great Founding Father and the world he shaped.

The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature

The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature PDF Author: Kevin J. Hayes
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019518727X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
Organized primarily in terms of genre, this handbook includes original research on key concepts, as well as analysis of interesting texts from throughout colonial America. Separate chapters are devoted to literary genres of great importance at the time of their composition that have been neglected in recent decades.

The Early American Daguerreotype

The Early American Daguerreotype PDF Author: Sarah Kate Gillespie
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262034107
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
The American daguerreotype as something completely new: a mechanical invention that produced an image, a hybrid of fine art and science and technology. The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as “the American process.” The daguerreotype—now perhaps mostly associated with stiffly posed portraits of serious-visaged nineteenth-century personages—was an extremely detailed photographic image, produced though a complicated process involving a copper plate, light-sensitive chemicals, and mercury fumes. It was, as Sarah Kate Gillespie shows in this generously illustrated history, something wholly and remarkably new: a product of science and innovative technology that resulted in a visual object. It was a hybrid, with roots in both fine art and science, and it interacted in reciprocally formative ways with fine art, science, and technology. Gillespie maps the evolution of the daguerreotype, as medium and as profession, from its introduction to the ascendancy of the “American process,” tracing its relationship to other fields and the professionalization of those fields. She does so by recounting the activities of a series of American daguerreotypists, including fine artists, scientists, and mechanical tinkerers. She describes, for example, experiments undertaken by Samuel F. B. Morse as he made the transition from artist to inventor; how artists made use of the daguerreotype, both borrowing conventions from fine art and establishing new ones for a new medium; the use of the daguerreotype in various sciences, particularly astronomy; and technological innovators who drew on their work in the mechanical arts. By the 1860s, the daguerreotype had been supplanted by newer technologies. Its rise (and fall) represents an early instance of the ever-constant stream of emerging visual technologies.

A Road Course in Early American Literature

A Road Course in Early American Literature PDF Author: Thomas Hallock
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817320830
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst explores a two-part question: what does travel teach us about literature, and how can reading guide us to a deeper understanding of place and identity? Thomas Hallock charts a teacher’s journey to answering these questions, framing personal experiences around the continued need for a survey course covering early American literature up to the mid-nineteenth century. Hallock approaches literary study from the overlapping perspectives of pedagogue, scholar, unrepentant tourist, husband, father, friend, and son. Building on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s premise that there is “creative reading as well as creative writing,” Hallock turns to the vibrant and accessible tradition of American travel writing, employing the form of biblio-memoir to bridge the impasse between public and academic discourse and reintroduce the dynamic field of early American literature to wider audiences. Hallock’s own road course begins and ends at the Lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina, following a circular structure of reflection. He weaves his journey through a wide swath of American literatures and authors: from Native American and African American oral traditions, to Wheatley and Equiano, through Emerson, Poe, and Dickinson, among others. A series of longer, place-oriented narratives explore familiar and lesser-known literary works from the sixteenth-century invasion of Florida through the Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the American Civil War. Shorter chapters bridge the book’s central themes—the mapping of cognitive and physical space, our personal stake in reading, the tensions that follow earlier acts of erasure, and the impossibility of ever fully shutting out the past. Exploring complex cultural histories and contemporary landscapes filled with ghosts and new voices, this volume draws inspiration from a tradition of travel, place-oriented, and literature-based works ranging from William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Wendy Lesser’s Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, and Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch. An accompanying bibliographic essay is periodically updated and available at Hallock’s website: www.roadcourse.us.

Science on American Television

Science on American Television PDF Author: Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226921999
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This volume narrates the history of science on television, from the 1940s to the turn of the 21st-century, to demonstrate how disagreements between scientists and television executives inhibited the medium's potential to engage in meaningful science education.

Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz PDF Author: Christoph Irmscher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547577672
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
A provocative new life restoring Agassiz--America's most famous natural scientist of the 19th century, inventor of the Ice Age, stubborn anti-Darwinist--to his glorious, troubling place in science and culture.

American Literature and Science

American Literature and Science PDF Author: Robert Scholnick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813149436
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Literature and science are two disciplines are two disciplines often thought to be unrelated, if not actually antagonistic. But Robert J. Scholnick points out that these areas of learning, up through the beginning of the nineteenth century, "were understood as parts of a unitary endeavor." By mid-century they had diverged, but literature and science have continued to interact, conflict, and illuminate each other. In this innovative work, twelve leaders in this emerging interdisciplinary field explore the long engagement of American writers with science and uncover science's conflicting meanings as a central dimension of the nation's conception of itself. Reaching back to the Puritan poet-minister-physician Edward Taylor, who wrote at the beginning of the scientific revolution, and forward to Thomas Pynchon, novelist of the cybernetic age, this collection of original essays contains essential work on major writers, including Franklin, Jefferson, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, Hart Crane, Dos Passos, and Charles Olson. Through its exploration of the ways that American writers have found in science and technology a vital imaginative stimulus, even while resisting their destructive applications, this book points towards a reconciliation and integration within culture. An innovative look at a neglected dimension of our literary tradition, American Literature and Science stands as both a definition of the field and an invitation to others to continue and extend new modes of inquiry.

Diseases in the District of Maine 1772 - 1820

Diseases in the District of Maine 1772 - 1820 PDF Author: Richard J. Kahn
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190053259
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description
Jeremiah Barker : Background, Education, and Writings -- Obtaining and Sharing Medical Literature, 1780-1820 -- The Old Medicine and the New : why Barker wrote this manuscript, for whom was it written, and why was it not published? -- "Alkaline Doctor" and "A Dangerous Innovator" -- Thoughts to Consider While Reading Barker's Manuscript.

Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds

Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds PDF Author: Thomas Apel
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804797405
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From 1793 to 1805, yellow fever devastated U.S. port cities in a series of terrifying epidemics. The search for the cause and prevention of the disease involved many prominent American intellectuals, including Noah Webster and Benjamin Rush. This investigation produced one of the most substantial and innovative outpourings of scientific thought in early American history. But it also led to a heated and divisive debate—both political and theological—around the place of science in American society. Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds opens an important window onto the conduct of scientific inquiry in the early American republic. The debate between "contagionists," who thought the disease was imported, and "localists," who thought it came from domestic sources, reflected contemporary beliefs about God and creation, the capacities of the human mind, and even the appropriate direction of the new nation. Through this thoughtful investigation of the yellow fever epidemic and engaging examination of natural science in early America, Thomas Apel demonstrates that the scientific imaginations of early republicans were far broader than historians have realized: in order to understand their science, we must understand their ideas about God.