User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers

Acknowledgments

219 acknowledgments I owe thanks to a generation of archivists, librarians, and curators who have helped me along the way. I began my research at the Ford Motor Company archives at the Henry Ford Museum (now known as The Henry Ford), in Dearborn, Michigan, where I was fortunate to meet Dave Crippen, then the head of the archives, who shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the collections and turned me loose in the acres of stacks to conduct my research. I returned many times to the Ford archives, and for nearly two decades have been kindly assisted by other staff there, including Steve Hamp, Linda Skolarus, Patricia Orr, Cynthia Reid, and automotive curators Randy Mason and Bob Casey. All have helped with this book. As my research broadened beyond automobiles to embrace nineteenth-century technologies such as clocks and sewing machines as well as late-twentieth-century personal computers and other devices, I incurred debts to staff at other libraries and museums. I want to thank Kathleen A. Zar of the John Crerar Library at the University of Chicago; Kim M. Miller of the Antique Automobile Club of America Library and Research Center, in Hershey, Pennsylvania; John B. Straw at the Library at Ball State University; Stuart McDougall, who presided over the automobile research collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia; Henry Lowood and Maggie Kimball of Stanford University’s Special Collections and Archives departments; Chris Cotrell, Jim Roan, and Stephanie Thomas of the library at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). Of particular importance in my work has been the NMAH. It has over many years provided me with intellectual stimulation and financial support during various sojourns there as a researcher, most recently during the 2006–7 academic year when I was a Fellow at its Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and then a Senior Smithsonian Fellow at the museum. My project adviser at the NMAH, Roger White, generously shared materials from the Transportation Division’s collections and made possible a visit to the museum’s automobile storage facility in Maryland. Getting behind the wheel of those early vehicles, even though not operative and in a warehouse, allowed me to better imagine and write about the challenges drivers faced eighty or more years earlier. Carlene Stephens similarly enabled me to study firsthand early clocks and watches in the museum’s collection, 220 Acknowledgments just as Hal Wallace and David Allison did with VCRs and early computers, respectively ; Heather Paisley-Jones of the Education Department loaned me an old footpowered sewing machine so I could learn for myself how tricky working a treadle is while also feeding fabric under the needle; sewing machine curator Barbara Janssen , aided by seamstress-curators Maggie Dennis, Alison Oswald, Kay Peterson, and history intern Amy Isaacs, participated in a “sewing bee” that I organized in which we all examined a group of early-nineteenth-century sewing machines in the museum’s collections, an exercise that answered many questions about that early household technology. Over an extended period I have also had profitable conversations with many others at NMAH and want to thank in particular John Fleckner, David Haberstich, Craig Orr, and Alison L. Oswald of the museum’s Archive Center staff; Joyce Bedi and Art Molella of the Lemelson Center; and curators David Allison, William L. Bird, Michelle Delaney, Paul Forman, Bart Hacker, Steve Lubar, David D. Miller, Jeffrey K. Stine, Carlene Stephens, Gary Sturm, Margaret Vining, Bill Withuhn, Helena Wright, and the late David Shayt. Numerous other colleagues and friends have also given me valuable suggestions, leads to materials, or just moral support, and I want to thank those I can remember while apologizing to those whose names I may have forgotten: Aaron Alcorn, Reggie Blaszczyk, Kevin Borg, Lonnie Bunch, Jonathan Coopersmith, Rolf Diamant, Susan J. Douglas, Kathleen Franz, Brian Horrigan, Peter L. Jakab, Elizabeth Johns, David Kirsch, Bob Loughlin, David N. Lucsko, Stephen L. McIntrye, Clay McShane, Alan Meyer, Nora Mitchell, Arwen Mohun, Erik Rau, Michael Schiffer, Bruce Sinclair , Rebecca Slayton, Roe Smith, Mark and Stephanie Weiner, and Roz Williams. Even though we had and have never met, Roger C. Allison, a collector of Winton automobiles, corresponded with me at length about the company’s early vehicles and generously shared copies of technical publications and other materials. Other friends and colleagues have read all or part of the manuscript and contributed to making it a better book, so I want to express special appreciation...