Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things from the Colonial Era to 1850.

• Author: Jacobs, Cindy A.

This work is a collection of interpretive and historical essays on American technology before 1850, a time period given relatively little attention by scholars. The purpose of the volume is not only to illuminate the wide range of technologies in use during this era, but also to stimulate more interest in early American technology. The book's three introductory chapters are followed by eight essays, each highlighting a particular technology. The mid-Atlantic region, with its well-developed urban sectors, diverse industrial base, and frontier agriculture, provides the geographical focus for most of the historical essays. A lengthy bibliography follows, providing the reader with an extensive listing of source material.

Although the reader is well into the book before completing the introductory chapters, each contributes importantly to understanding early American technological history. In her overview, editor Judith McGaw offers a working definition of technology that includes not only the tools used for a particular technology, but also encompasses the skills, knowledge and decision-making necessary to employ these tools. McGaw describes the difficulty of "experiencing" early American technology, which necessitates reconciling the different legal, political, and economic systems of the colonial and early national eras. It also requires working with fragmentary historical records, and perhaps most importantly, learning a new language by which Americans comprehended the use of technology. It is understanding the knowledge base by which these tools are used to make and do things that enables one to "experience" early American technology.

In the essay that follows, Robert Post outlines the intellectual debate in the historiography of technology over the last 30 years, notably, the collapse of consensus among historians that technology is ultimately beneficient and that the artifacts of technology can be synthesized as intellectual advancement; an alternative historical viewpoint has emerged which emphasizes the class conflict - and failures - that have arisen along with the use of technology. Brook Hindle's 1966 essay, reprinted in this volume, still deserves close attention. In it, he illuminates how various multidisciplinary approaches have enriched the study of technology, and examines the motivations to innovate behind the practitioners of technology.

The common feature of the historical essays that follow is to examine "ordinary"...