Ian Inkster – författare

Japan's escape from colonialism and its subsequent industrialisation has taken it to the point where its economy is second only to that of the US. This comprehensive volume examines how this rapid change of fortunes occurred, and the impact it has had on East Asia and the world at large. Taking a wide range and focus, Inkster looks at the history of Japan's industrial development in a social and cultural context.

This book reveals that the manipulation of culture was of more importance than the character of the original cultural stock in explaining Japan's modern industrialization. Thus the features of private enterprise culture that are so often isolated as keys to the nation's historical competitiveness may have been only temporary reflections of this wider process of cultural engineering: a necessary input into the program of technology transfer and late development.This book provides a highly reliable guide to the industrial economy and history and covers a wide ground; it will be of great interest to those involved in Asian studies, Japanese studies, plus economists and professionals in business and enterprise culture.

This collection of case studies, focusing on British scientific culture during the first industrial revolution, explores the social basis of science in the period and asks why such an extraordinarily rich variety of cultural-scientific experience should have flourished at the time.The book analyses science and scientific culture in their local contexts, both metropolitan and provincial, examining where possibel the relations between the two, and emphasizing the range of scientific associations in London, to individual savants in the provinces.This book was first published in 1983.

This special edition focuses on morality, locality and 'standardization' in the work of British consulting electrical engineers, 1880-1914. The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life--social, cultural and economic--and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. The series deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - showing how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures are taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred. Volume 27 includes a special issue on "The Professional Identity of Engineers: Historical and Contemporary Issues".

Ian Inkster’s intent in these studies is to move beyond the high culture and expertise of science towards the construction of the culture of urban communities. The work draws on a mass of detailed research and focuses on Britain's social and cultural advantages over other industrialising nations in the years prior to the Great Exhibition of 1851, an advantage which was not created by any single decision, nor by any explicit investment effect. Out of urban culture emerged a public sphere and an information system within which class divisions were abrogated; at the same time the relations between information and technique became complex and decidedly non-linear. So was created a social asset drawn upon by business interests, technicians, tinkerers and inventors throughout the period, and for some considerable time beyond it. Industrial Britain was made from diverse materials, amongst which were those fabricated in the course of cultural dissent and social ambition.

These thirteen essays embrace case studies of Britain, Japan, Europe, China, India and Australasia and cover a period from circa 1700 to the present day. The author’s main intention is to illustrate a ’political economy' approach to industrial and technological history, to demonstrate the relations between technical and instutitional transformations, and to bring the history of technology into a wide historical perspective.

Recent criticism is now fully appreciating the nuanced and complex contribution made by Dissenters to the culture and ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain. This is the first sustained study of a Dissenting family - the Aikins - from the 1740s to the 1860s. Essays by literary critics, historians of religion and science, and geographers explore and contextualize the achievements of this remarkable family, including John Aikin senior, tutor at the celebrated Warrington Academy, and his children, poet Anna Letitia Barbauld, and John Aikin junior, literary physician and editor. The latter's children in turn were leading professionals and writers in the early Victorian era. This study provides new perspectives on the social and cultural importance of the family and their circle - an untold story of collaboration and exchange, and a narrative which breaks down period boundaries to set Enlightenment and Victorian culture in dialogue.

Recent criticism is now fully appreciating the nuanced and complex contribution made by Dissenters to the culture and ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain. This is the first sustained study of a Dissenting family - the Aikins - from the 1740s to the 1860s. Essays by literary critics, historians of religion and science, and geographers explore and contextualize the achievements of this remarkable family, including John Aikin senior, tutor at the celebrated Warrington Academy, and his children, poet Anna Letitia Barbauld, and John Aikin junior, literary physician and editor. The latter's children in turn were leading professionals and writers in the early Victorian era. This study provides new perspectives on the social and cultural importance of the family and their circle - an untold story of collaboration and exchange, and a narrative which breaks down period boundaries to set Enlightenment and Victorian culture in dialogue.

This collection of case studies, focusing on British scientific culture during the first industrial revolution, explores the social basis of science in the period and asks why such an extraordinarily rich variety of cultural-scientific experience should have flourished at the time.The book analyses science and scientific culture in their local contexts, both metropolitan and provincial, examining where possibel the relations between the two, and emphasizing the range of scientific associations in London, to individual savants in the provinces.This book was first published in 1983.

Despite having undergone major advances in recent years, the history of technology in Latin America is still an understudied topic. This is the first English-language volume to bring together a variety of critical perspectives on the history of technology in Latin America from the early-19th century through to the present day. This special issue, assembled by guest editor David Pretel, brings together a range of experts to explore a plethora of topics in Latin America's technological history. Papers include a study of rural telephony in in 20th-century Latin America; the rise of the ‘Techno-class’ in modern Brazil; an analysis of the rise and fall of three Caribbean commodities; the history of educational technology in Latin America, and science and technology in Cold War Chile.Special Issue: Technology in Latin American HistoryEdited by David Pretel (Colegio de Mexico, Mexico) and Helge Wendt (Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Germany)

This book offers a new way of looking at Chinese history through their technological advances. The technical problems confronting different societies and periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change and explores the relationship of technology to other aspects of life - social, cultural and economic - and shows how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it occurred.

This book focuses on the development of four key issues in the development of modern Spain; knowledge, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, and public works. If technology transfer from advanced nations to less developed systems always worked, then the whole world would now be rich. That this is not the case is so obvious, we might well expect that the history of the processes, successes and failures of technology transfer across nations would be a very well-established field of enquiry. In fact, the theme is still a developing one, and the present Special Issue centres on the case of Spain as exemplary in many respects. The collected essays focus upon the four major themes of knowledge, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications and public works. Essays range in time from the 18th century to the present time, from studies of espionage and early links between craftsmen and savants, to the institutions of technology (from training systems, to private enterprise activity, or patents), to case-studies of silk manufacture, shipbuilding, mining, paper-making, and pharmaceuticals.Each essay offers a broad variety of material to bring to bear on a major problem of world development, past, present, and future.

New work on early modern Europe has now opened up the hidden avenues that link changes of technologies with a complex of cognitive, institutional, spatial and cultural elements. It is true that all divisions of history wish to incorporate all other divisions unto themselves, but in the essays of our first collection there are specific cases and analyses clearly delineated to show how technologies and systems for the production, reproduction and representation of technological changes emerged out of fundamental aspects of European society and mentality. The question must be: How far were such fundamental aspects unique (in their entirety and configuration) to Europe?The second collection on patent agency takes the modern industrialization of Europe as its focus, and illustrates the manner in which systems of intellectual property rights generated manifold agencies that acted to both spread and control the use of knowledge in advanced sites. Patent agency has been generally neglected by historians, one reason for this being the difficulty of defining effective agency beyond the obvious confines of those who were actually trained and remunerated as agents of invention. Informal networks or sites may have been crucial in converting general patent systems into local environs of technical advance.

This volume provides an overview of current research in the history of Italian technology in the long run, from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. The contributors focus on different aspects of Italian creativity in a local, transnational and global dimension, tracing the trajectory from primacy to relative decline. The themes range from the creation and establishment of new technologies in laboratories or enterprises, the processes of learning, diffusion, and copying and the institutions involved in the generation of a national technological capability and innovation system. Comparative studies are included in order to illustrate special features of the Italian case. The industries covered in this volume range from silk, iron and steel production, to electricity generation and telecommunications.Special Issue: Italian Technology from the Renaissance to the 20th CenturyEdited by Anna Guagnini and Luca MolaIncluded in this volume:Inventors, Patents and the Market for Innovations in Renaissance ItalyThe Microcosm: Technological Innovation and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire of the Sixteenth centuryDiamonds in Early Modern Venice: Technology, Products and International CompetitionA Global Supremacy. The Worldwide Hegemony of the Piedmontese Reeling Technologies, 1720s-1830sRaw Materials, Transmission of Know-How and Ceramic Techniques in Early Modern Italy: a Mediterranean perspectiveAnabaptist Migration and the Diffusion of the Maiolica from Faenza to Central Europe A Bold Leap into Electric Light. The Creation of the Società Italiana Edison, 1880-1886Keeping Abreast with the Technology of Science. The Economic Life of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Padua, 1847-1857Mechanics “Made in Italy”: Innovation and Expertise Evolution. A Case Study from the Packaging Industry, 1960-98Telecommunications Italian Style. The shaping of the constitutive choices (1850-1914)Beyond the Myth of the Self-taught Inventor. The Learning Process and Formative Years of Young Guglielmo Marconi Technology Transfer, Economic Strategies and Politics in the Building of the First Italian Submarine Telegraph Lights and Shades: Italian Innovation Across the CenturiesEuropean Steel vs Chinese Cast-iron: From Technological Change to Social and Political Choices (4th Century BC-18th Century AD)The Italian National Innovation System. A Long Term Perspective, 1861-2011

While political and social historians have made great progress in trying to understand the making of modern Greece by studying * politics and power struggles, little attention has been given to the co-evolution of the Greek state and the technologies that were developed during this period. This volume helps fills this gap, exploring the formation of the Greek state and the construction of ‘modern’ Greece through the lens of the history of technology and industry. The contributors look at the role of engineering institutions, the press and of infrastructure technological networks in promoting specific technocratic ideals and legitimizing social roles for the engineers of the period. The volume as a whole offers new insights into the way that engineering culture, institutional reforms and infrastructures contributed to the making of ‘modern’ Greece.Special Issue: History of Technology in Greece, from the Early 19th to 21st CenturyEdited by Stathis Arapostathis and Aristotelis Tympas