History of Technology

ICOHTEC was founded in Paris 1968 when bitterness divided the nations in the Eastern and Western worlds. The intent was to provide a forum of scholars for the history of technology from both sides of the ‚iron curtain‘. It was constituted as a Scientific Section within the Division of the History of Science and Technology of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS/DHST). The first President was E. Olszewski (Poland), with Vice-Presidents S. V. Schuchardine (USSR) and Melvin Kranzberg (USA). The first Secretary-General was Maurice Daumas (France), through whose ini­tia­tive the French government hosted the first inde­pendent symposium at Pont-a-Mousson (1970). Symposia have been held almost every year, and the proceedings of many meetings have been published, although in a variety of forms.
Whereas national organisations have their membership bases in their re­spective countries, ICOHTEC has its membership base mainly in Europe, but also in the Americas, Japan, India and Australia. Research activities, in which ICOHTEC members cooperate, reflect this special interest. The issues are investigated on a comparative national basis, stressing aspects of cooperation between various nations, regions or institutions. The first statutes of ICOHTEC were approved in Paris in 1968; they were then amended in 1974, 1985, and 1993.

the development over time of systematic techniques for making and doing things. The term technology, a combination of the Greek technē, “art, craft,” with logos, “word, speech,” meant in Greece a discourse on the arts, both fine and applied. When it first appeared in English in the 17th century, it was used to mean a discussion of the applied arts only, and gradually these “arts” themselves came to be the object of the designation. By the early 20th century, the term embraced a growing range of means, processes, and ideas in addition to tools and machines. By mid-century, technology was defined by such phrases as “the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment.” Even such broad definitions have been criticized by observers who point out the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between scientific inquiry and technological activity.

On this day...

125 -BC- Origin of Era of Tyre
615 St Deusdedit I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1298 Rindfleish-140 Jews of Heilbron Germany are murdered
1765 Stamp Act Congress met in NY, wrote decl of rights & liberties
1781 Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown at 2 PM; Revolutionary War ends
1812 Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow
1818 US & Chicasaw Indians sign a treaty
1845 Wagner's opera Tannh„user performed for 1st time
1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became 1st woman in US to receive medical degree
1853 1st flour mill in Hawaii begins operations
1856 James Kelly & Jack Smith fight bareknuckle for 6h15m in Melbourne
1859 Wilhelm Tempel discovers diffuse nebula around Pleid star Merope
1864 Approx 25 Confederates make surprise attack on St Albans, Vermont
1864 Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, Union beats back Conf attackers
1870 1st (4) blacks elected to House of Reps
1872 World's largest gold nugget (215 kg) found in New South Wales
1888 Moshav Gederah is attacked by the Arabs
1901 Santos-Dumont proves airship maneuverable by circling Eiffel Tower
1912 Tripoli (Libya) passes from Turkish to Italian control
1919 1st Distinguished Service Medal awarded to a woman
1919 Reds beat White Sox, 5 games to 3 in 16th World Series. This series is known as the black sox scandal as 7 White Sox throw the series
1933 Berlin Olympic Committee vote to introduce basketball in 1936
1936 HR Ekins of "NY World-Telegram" beats 2 other reporters in a race around the world on commercial flights, by 18« days
1941 1st woman jockey in North America, Anna Lee Wiley in Mexico
1943 Theater Guild presentation of "Othello" opens at Shubert
1943 Yankee 2nd baseman Joe Gordon announces retirement (hates NY)
1944 US forces land in Philipines
1949 Yanks trade Joe Gordon to Cleveland for Allie Reynolds
1950 UN forces entered Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea
1951 Pres Harry S Truman formally ends state of war with Germany
1953 1st jet transcontinental nonstop scheduled service
1953 Singer Julius LaRosa is fired on TV by Arthur Godfrey
1957 Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Mont, became 1st NHLer to score 500 goals
1959 Florence Henderson joins the Today Show panel
1960 France grants Mauritania independence
1960 Martin Luther King Jr arrested in Atlanta sit-in
1960 The US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba
1963 Beatles record "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
1967 Igor Ter-Ovanesyan of USSR, sets then long jump record at 27' 4 3/4"
1967 Mariner 5 makes fly-by of Venus
1968 Golden Gate Bridge charges tolls only for southbound cars
1969 Oakland Darryle Lamonica passes for 6 touchdowns vs Buffalo (50-21)
1970 John Frazier kills Ohta's declares WW 3 has begun
1973 Ringo releases "Photograph"
1974 Det Red Wing Mickey Redmond scores the 1st hat trick against Wash Caps
1974 Detroit Pistons beat Trailblazers in Portland (next win 6-1-90)
1977 Supersonic Concorde jet's 1st landing in NYC
1980 Steve McPeak rides 101'9" unicycle
1981 LA Dodgers beat Montreal Expos for NL pennant
1982 Automaker John DeLorean arrested on cocaine charges (Not guilty)
1983 Columbia moves to Orbiter Processing Facility
1986 USSR expells 5 US diplomats
1987 "Black Monday"-Dow Jones down 508.32, 4« times previous record
1987 Billy Martin hired as manager of NY Yankees for 5th time
1987 US warships destroy 2 Iranian oil platforms in Persian Gulf
1988 3 Americans win Nobel in physics; 3 W Germans win chemistry Nobel
1988 Britain bans broadcast interviews with IRA members
1988 Car bomb kills 7 Israelis, wounds 11 near Lebanon border
1988 Roxette releases "Roxette Look Sharp!" album
1988 S Afr anti-apartheid leader Sisulu wins $100,000 Human Rights prize
1988 Senate passes bill curbing ads during children`s TV shows

A highly compressed account of the history of technology such as this one must adopt a rigorous methodological pattern if it is to do justice to the subject without grossly distorting it one way or another. The plan followed in the present article is primarily chronological, tracing the development of technology through phases that succeed each other in time. Obviously, the division between phases is to a large extent arbitrary. One factor in the weighting has been the enormous acceleration of Western technological development in recent centuries; Eastern technology is considered in this article in the main only as it relates to the development of modern technology.

Within each chronological phase a standard method has been adopted for surveying the technological experience and innovations. This begins with a brief review of the general social conditions of the period under discussion, and then goes on to consider the dominant materials and sources of power of the period, and their application to food production, manufacturing industry, building construction, transport and communications, military technology, and medical technology. In a final section the sociocultural consequences of technological change in the period are examined. This framework is modified according to the particular requirements of every period— discussions of new materials, for instance, occupy a substantial place in the accounts of earlier phases when new metals were being introduced but are comparatively unimportant in descriptions of some of the later phases—but the general pattern is retained throughout. One key factor that does not fit easily into this pattern is that of the development of tools. It has seemed most convenient to relate these to the study of materials, rather than to any particular application, but it has not been possible to be completely consistent in this treatment. For further discussion of specific areas of technological development, see such articles as electronics; exploration; information processing

Essentially, techniques are methods of creating new tools and products of tools, and the capacity for constructing such artifacts is a determining characteristic of manlike species. Other species make artifacts: bees build elaborate hives to deposit their honey, birds make nests, and beavers build dams. But these attributes are the result of patterns of instinctive behaviour and cannot be varied to suit rapidly changing circumstances. Man, in contrast with other species, does not possess highly developed instinctive reactions but does have the capacity to think systematically and creatively about techniques. He can thus innovate and consciously modify his environment in a way no other species has achieved. An ape may on occasion use a stick to beat bananas from a tree: a man can fashion the stick into a cutting tool and remove a whole bunch of bananas. Somewhere in the transition between the two, the hominid, or the first manlike species, emerges. By virtue of his nature as a toolmaker, man is therefore a technologist from the beginning, and the history of technology encompasses the whole evolution of man.

In using his rational faculties to devise techniques and modify his environment, man has attacked problems other than those of survival and the production of wealth with which the term technology is usually associated today. The technique of language, for example, involves the manipulation of sounds and symbols in a meaningful way, and similarly the techniques of artistic and ritual creativity represent other aspects of the technological incentive. This article does not deal with these cultural and religious techniques, but it is valuable to establish their relationship at the outset because the history of technology reveals a profound interaction between the incentives and opportunities of technological innovation on the one hand and the sociocultural conditions of the human group within which they occur on the other.