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Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and early 20th century Germany and Britain

In 19th and Early 20th Century Germany and Britain

  • Book
  • © 1997

Overview

Editors:
  1. Jed Z. Buchwald

    1. The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, USA

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Part of the book series: Archimedes (ARIM, volume 1)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Buying the Dark Lines of the Solar Spectrum: Joseph Von Fraunhofer’s Standard for the Manufacture of Optical Glass

    • Myles W. Jackson
    Pages 1-22

  3. Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss, and the Transformation of Microscopical Optics

    • Stuart M. Feffer
    Pages 23-66

  4. The Zeiss Werke and the Ultramicroscope: The Creation of a Scientific Instrument in Context

    • David Cahan
    Pages 67-115

  5. Precision, Tolerance, and Consensus: Local Cultures in German and British Resistance Standards

    • Kathryn M. Olesko
    Pages 117-156

  6. Syntony and Credibility: John Ambrose Fleming, Guglielmo Marconi, and the Maskelyne Affair

    • Sungook Hong
    Pages 157-176

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 177-182
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Keywords

About this book

The articles in this first volume of ARCHIMEDES explicitly and intentionally cross boundaries between science and technology, and they also illuminate one another. The first three contributions concern optics and industry in 19th century Germany; the fourth concerns electric standards in Germany during the same period; the last essay in the volume examines a curious development in the early history of wireless signalling that took place in England, and that has much to say about the establishment and enforcement of standard methods in a rapidly-developing technology that emerged out of a scientific effect. Historical work over the last few decades has shown that technology cannot be characterized simply, or even usually, as applied science. The beliefs, the devices, and the natural objects that are created or discovered by scientists, often play altogether minor roles in the construction of technologies. Taking this realization as a given, the essays in Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards effectively argue that we must now seek to go beyond it; we must also begin to think carefully about the role that science actually did play when it was explicitly deployed by technologists.

Editors and Affiliations

  • The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, USA

    Jed Z. Buchwald

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Scientific Credibility and Technical Standards in 19th and early 20th century Germany and Britain

  • Book Subtitle: In 19th and Early 20th Century Germany and Britain

  • Editors: Jed Z. Buchwald

  • Series Title: Archimedes

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1784-2

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-4241-0Due: 30 November 1996

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-4762-0Published: 05 November 1996

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-009-1784-2Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 1385-0180

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-0064

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 182

  • Topics: History, general, Philosophy of Science, Business and Management, general, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics

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