In this Book
- Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America
- Book
- 2006
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Series: Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology
summary
A century and a half before the modern information technology revolution, machinists in the eastern United States created the nation's first high technology industries. In iron foundries and steam-engine works, locomotive works, machine and tool shops, textile-machinery firms, and firearms manufacturers, these resourceful workers pioneered the practice of dispersing technological expertise through communities of practice. In the first book to study this phenomenon since the 1916 classic, English and American Tool Builders, David R. Meyer examines the development of skilled-labor exchange systems, showing how individual metalworking sectors grew and moved outward. He argues that the networked behavior of machinists within and across industries helps explain the rapid transformation of metalworking industries during the antebellum period, building a foundation for the sophisticated, mass production/consumer industries that figured so prominently in the later U.S. economy.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- List of Illustrations
- pp. vii-viii
- List of Tables
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgments
- p. xi
- Introduction. Machinists’ Traces
- pp. 1-21
- PART I: THE FORMATION OF THE NETWORKS, 1790–1820
- PART II: THE ELABORATION OF THE NETWORKS, 1820–1860
- 5. Networked Machinists Build Locomotives
- pp. 146-171
- 8. Machine Tool Networks
- pp. 240-271
- Abbreviations
- pp. 281-282
- Essay on Sources
- pp. 301-305
Additional Information
ISBN
9780801889226
Related ISBN(s)
9780801884719
MARC Record
OCLC
213305500
Pages
328
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No