The Las Vegas Meeting, 12-15 October 2006

The forty-seventh meeting of the Society for the History of Technology took place at the Imperial Palace Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on 12–15 October 2006. Members of the program committee were Jennifer Light (chair), Paul Ceruzzi, and Dan Holbrook. Local arrangements were made by Bill Leslie and Eric Nystrom. Special thanks to the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation; the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University; Michigan Technological University; Lehigh University; the Johns Hopkins University Press; the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the MIT Press; the Department of History and the Public History Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Department of History, and the Program in History of Technology and Science at Iowa State University; the School of History, Technology, and Society at the Georgia Institute of Technology; the University of Delaware–Hagley Program; the Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota; The Atomic Testing Museum; Paul Nienkamp, Wade Franck, Jason Chrystal, and Greg Bennet of Iowa State University; and SHOT's Cynthia Bennet.

Sessions

Writing Lives: Biography as a Window to Interpreting Technology

Organizer and chair: Roger D. Launius, National Air and Space Museum

Participants: James T. Andrews, Iowa State University; W. Bernard Carlson, University of Virginia; Tom D. Crouch, National Air and Space Museum; James Rodger Fleming, Colby College; Amy E. Foster, University of Central Florida; James R. Hansen, Auburn University; W. David Lewis, Auburn University; Michael J. Neufeld, National Air and Space Museum

High-Tech Manufacturing

Organizers: Christophe Lécuyer, University of California, and David Brock, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Chair: Timothy Lenoir, Duke University

Comment: Steve Usselman, Georgia Institute of Technology

Papers: "Dirt Never Sleeps: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Manufacturing Origins of Clean Room Technology," Dan Holbrook, Marshall University; "Silicon Gate: The Making of a High-Tech Manufacturing Process," Christophe Lécuyer, University of California, and David Brock, Chemical Heritage Foundation; "Biomanufacturing and Knowledge Production: Commercializing Recombinant Human Insulin and Growth Hormone at Genetech Inc., 1975–1985," Ted Everson, Chemical Heritage Foundation; "Nano-manufacturing: Disruptive Technology or Incremental Innovation?" Ann Johnson, University of South Carolina

Technology and National Pride

Chair: Richard Hirsh, Virginia Tech

Papers: "'Power, Wonder, and Suspicion': The Cultural Meaning of Electricity in Korea, 1885–1910," Sungook Hong, Seoul National University; "Technology, Architecture, and the Presidency: Early Developments of the West Wing," Edmund Potter, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library; "Comrades and Their Cars: Mobility and Society in the Early Soviet Period," Tracy Nichols Busch, Ferris State University; "Sounding and Lighting the Tropical Space: Early Indian Rocketry and Images of Modernity," Ashok Maharaj, Georgia Institute of Technology

Standards in Business

Chair: Finn Arne Jørgensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Papers: "Technological Discussions in Iron and Steel, 1871–1885," Peter Meyer and Carol Siri Johnson, U.S. Bureau of Statistics and New Jersey Institute of Technology; "Mapping the Terrain of the File: Machines, Methods, and Notions of Modernity in the British Civil Service, 1890–1956," Barbara Craig, University of Toronto; "Cargo Containerization: A Technological Innovation That Has Revolutionized Surface Freight Transportation Worldwide," Arthur Donovan, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy; "Professionalization of Research and Development Activities in Finnish Companies before the 1970s," Jari Saarinen, Technical Research Center of Finland

Roundtable: Learning from Las Vegas in the Media Age

Participants: Susan Nigra Snyder and George E. Thomas, Civic Visions; Alan Hess, San Jose Mercury News; and Thomas Hughes, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Inventors

Chair: Wiebe Bijker, University of Maastricht

Comment: Paul Ceruzzi, National Air and Space Museum

Papers: "'To do Honor to Grandfather': The Myth Building and Centennial Celebration of Cyrus McCormick and the Grain Reaper," Wade Franck, Iowa State University; "Technological Risk, Its Management, and the Early Promotion of Arms Contracts with the U.S. Government: Whitney's 1798 Musket Contract," Thomas Sadowski, Independent Scholar; "The Silent Revolution: How Robert H. Goddard Helped Start the Space Age," Frank Winter, Smithsonian Institution

Technology and Play

Chair...