Technology and transformation in the American electric utility industry

Technology and transformation in the American electric utility industry PDF Author: Richard F. Hirsh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electric utilities
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description

Technology and transformation in the American electric utility industry

Technology and transformation in the American electric utility industry PDF Author: Richard F. Hirsh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electric utilities
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description


Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry

Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry PDF Author: Richard F. Hirsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521524711
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This book illuminates the role of technological stagnation in the decline of the American electric utility industry in the late 1960s and 1970s. Unlike other interpreters of the industry's woes, Professor Hirsh argues that a long and successful history of managing a conventional technology set the stage for the industry's deterioration. After improving steadily for decades, the technology that brought unequalled productivity growth to the industry appeared to stall in the late 1960s, making it impossible to mitigate the economic and regulatory assaults of the 1970s. Unfortunately, most managers did not recognize (or did not want to believe) the severity of the technological problems they faced, and they chose to focus instead on issues (usually financial or public relations) that appeared more manageable. Partly as a result of this lack of attention to technological issues, the industry found itself in the 1980s challenged by the prospects of deregulation and restructuring.

Powering American Farms

Powering American Farms PDF Author: Richard F. Hirsh
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443627
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
"Challenging traditional scholarship on the New Deal, the book reinterprets the history of rural electrification. It tells the previously unacknowledged story of how private power companies, with allies in land-grant universities, engendered social and technical innovations in the 1920s and early 1930s that enabled growing numbers of farmers to obtain electrical service, well before the creation of Depression-era government programs"--

Too Far on a Whim

Too Far on a Whim PDF Author: Tyler A. Pitrof
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817361405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Argues that the US Navy's commitment to high-steam propulsion for its World War II fleet was a tactical, technological, and bureaucratic failure

The Power Makers

The Power Makers PDF Author: Maury Klein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596918349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
Maury Klein is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and society. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet - the "power revolution" that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century. The steam engine; the incandescent bulb; the electric motor-inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The cast of characters includes inventors like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs like George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, bare-knuckled battles in the marketplace. In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked and cutthroat--a biography of America in its most astonishing decades.

The Quest

The Quest PDF Author: Daniel Yergin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143121944
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes . . .” —Wall Street Journal “It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape . . . [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. The Quest is . . . the definitive guide to how we got here.” —The Financial Times This long-awaited successor to Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Prize provides an essential, overarching narrative of global energy, the principal engine of geopolitical and economic change A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Daniel Yergin continues the riveting story begun in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Prize. In The Quest, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change and conflict, in a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. The Quest tells the inside stories, tackles the tough questions, and reveals surprising insights about coal, electricity, and natural gas. He explains how climate change became a great issue and leads readers through the rebirth of renewable energies, energy independence, and the return of the electric car. Epic in scope and never more timely, The Quest vividly reveals the decisions, technologies, and individuals that are shaping our future.

Energy Systems and Environment

Energy Systems and Environment PDF Author: Pavel Tsvetkov
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1789237106
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book looks at environmental aspects of energy technologies, from common traditional sources in use, new sources, and emerging sources and technologies. The objective of this book is to serve as a one-stop comprehensive information resource on energy and environment topics, from energy science to energy engineering to energy politics. Starting with science and technology topics we link them to economics and politics showcasing interconnections between energy sources, energy utilization, energy conversion, and sustainability under the common theme of energy and environment. The book achieves its objective by offering and integrating deeply technical and socioeconomics papers together on energy and environment topics.

The Structure of American Industry

The Structure of American Industry PDF Author: James Brock
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478608161
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Americans continually cross paths with major industries that comprise the U.S. economy. These industries face and raise challenging issues that in turn generate important economic questions: How are individual industries organized and structured? What share of their market do they represent? What are the major public policy issues they affect? What are the economic consequences of addressing them? A single text examining every industry would provide a disjointed, haphazard analysis. The case-study approach taken in The Structure of American Industry avoids such shortcomings. The expert author of each case studyfourteen in allpresents a comprehensive and coherent analysis of a specific industry. The holistic, in-depth treatment sparks lively interest, does not succumb to theoretical abstractions, and offers practical answers to economic questions.

Sociotechnical Communication in Engineering

Sociotechnical Communication in Engineering PDF Author: Jon Leydens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131768365X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
This collection explores why engineering communication constitutes sociotechnical communication. Sociotechnical communication acknowledges that engineering communication occurs not in a vacuum but shapes and is shaped by multiple social forces. Through diverse research cases, the authors show how sociotechnical communication disrupts common myths in engineering communication: the myth that communication can be purely technical and neutral, and that data speak for themselves. The book highlights these myths, considering first how styles, types, and means of sociotechnical communication played pivotal—and differing—roles in the evolution of wind power technology in Denmark and Germany. The role of myth in engineering blogs in also examined, wherein the effect of engineers maintaining "objective" or "neutral" personae, accentuating technical facts over their social relevance, and eschewing controversy, is to decrease public interest in engineering issues. We see the myths emerge again via product development engineers, whose narrow technical roles constrain their identities and may contribute to constraining their design innovation capacities, in contrast to more holistic, flexible spaces that foster innovation. The myths are also apparent in constructing bridges across Millennial-Baby Boomer generational divides, to facilitate engineering collaboration and knowledge transfer among engineers. Finally, the myths are situated in light of related myths and broader research trends in engineering communication. This book was originally published as a special issue of Engineering Studies.

Cities of Light and Heat

Cities of Light and Heat PDF Author: Mark H. Rose
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271024820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Cities of Light and Heat takes us to Kansas City and Denver during the late nineteenth century when gas and electricity were introduced to these &"instant cities&" of the west. With rich detail, Mark Rose shows how the new technology spread during the next century from a few streets and businesses within the city limits to countless private homes in the suburbs. In Kansas City and Denver, as in most communities throughout the U.S., business executives, city leaders, and engineers acted as early promoters of the new technology. But by the early 1900s educators, home builders, architects, and salespersons were becoming increasingly important as gas and electric utilities and appliances reached more and more American homes. But these voices for the new technology brought with them their own social attitudes and cultural values. By mid-century, whether in the classroom or in advertisements, Americans were regularly encouraged to fit the new technology within prevailing notions of cleanliness, comfort, convenience, and gender. Although in hindsight the spread of modern technology might seem inevitable to us, Rose shows how even the leaders of the nation's great gas and electric corporations with their vast production and distribution facilities were subject to geography, competing ideologies, urban politics, and even the choices of ordinary consumers. Rose thus locates the driving force behind the diffusion of technology in the neighborhoods, kitchens, and offices of the city. Cities of Light and Heat shows the importance of culture, politics, and urban growth in shaping technological change in the cities of North America.