History of Technology Volume 28

Technical standards have received increasing attention in recent years from historians of science and technology, management theorists and economists. Often, inquiry focuses on the emergence of stability, technical closure and culturally uniform modernity. Yet current literature also emphasizes the durability of localism, heterogeneity and user choice. This collection investigates the apparent tension between these trends using case studies from across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The History of Technology addresses tensions between material standards and process standards, explores the distinction between specifying standards and achieving convergence towards them, andexamines some of the discontents generated by the reach of standards into ''everyday life''. Includes theSpecial Issue "By whose standards? Standardization, stability and uniformity in the history of information and electrical technologies"

Product details

• Authors: Ian Inkster, Ian Inkster
• Assisted by: Graeme Gooday (Editor), Ian Inkster (Editor), James Sumner (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.03.2009
• EAN: 9780826438751
• ISBN: 978-0-8264-3875-1
• No. of pages: 192
• Series: History of Technology; History of Technology
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Technology > General, dictionaries; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History, History of engineering and technology, History of engineering & technology