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Bezig met laden... Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940door David E. Nye
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How did electricity enter everyday life in America? Using Muncie, Indiana--the Lynds' now iconic Middletown--as a touchstone, David Nye explores how electricity seeped into and redefined American culture. With an eye for telling details from archival sources and a broad understanding of cultural and social history, he creates a thought-provoking panorama of a technology fundamental to modern life. Emphasizing the experiences of ordinary men and women rather than the lives of inventors and entrepreneurs, Nye treats electrification as a set of technical possibilities that were selectively adopted to create the streetcar suburb, the amusement park, the "Great White Way," the assembly line, the electrified home, and the industrialized farm. He shows how electricity touched every part of American life, how it became an extension of political ideologies, how it virtually created the image of the modern city, and how it even pervaded colloquial speech, confirming the values of high energy and speed that have become hallmarks of the twentieth century. He also pursues the social meaning of electrification as expressed in utopian ideas and exhibits at world's fairs, and explores the evocation of electrical landscapes in painting, literature, and photography. Electrifying America combines chronology and topicality to examine the major forms of light and power as they came into general use. It shows that in the city electrification promoted a more varied landscape and made possible new art forms and new consumption environments. In the factory, electricity permitted a complete redesign of the size and scale of operations, shifting power away from the shop floor to managers. Electrical appliances redefined domestic work and transformed the landscape of the home, while on the farm electricity laid the foundation for today's agribusiness. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)973History and Geography North America United StatesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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There is a lot of fascinating detail here. Part of the argument of the book is that electricity didn't just replace the mechanical power of steam and flowing water. The greater flexibility of electric power allowed factories to take on new forms, and for manufacturing processes to be reorganized.
Another theme of the book was rather technical but still interesting. A challenge for power generation facilities still today is managing load fluctuations. Power companies would promote those uses of electricity that would help to reduce fluctuations. Electric trolley companies built or supported amusement parks at the ends of their lines, to increase traffic and electricity usage outside the normal business hours when load was greatest. Electric trolley companies would supply power to communities along their routes - that's another fun tidbit I picked up here. ( )