Awards

The Edelstein Prize

The Edelstein Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology published in the preceding three years. Established as the Dexter Prize in 1968 through the generosity of the late Sidney Edelstein—founder of the Dexter Chemical Corporation, noted expert on the history of dyes and dye processes, and 1988 recipient of SHOT's Leonardo da Vinci Medal—the Edelstein Prize is donated by Ruth Edelstein Barish and her family in memory of Sidney Edelstein and his commitment to excellence in scholarship in the history of technology.

The 2003 Edelstein Prize was awarded to Edmund Russell for War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to "Silent Spring" (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). The citation read:

The Society for the History of Technology is pleased to award its 2003 Edelstein Prize to Edmund Russell for his outstanding comparative study of the development and use of chemical weapons in the interconnected battles against both human and insect enemies. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to "Silent Spring" is a well-researched, engagingly written, and thoughtfully argued assessment of the multiple intersections between the chemical industry and the technologies it produced; the military services, including the Chemical Warfare Service, later renamed the Chemical Corps; federal agencies such as the Bureau of Entomology; civilian university researchers; and, of course, nature itself, in the form of insects. Russell thus positions his work where the history of technology intersects with environmental, military, cultural, and science history, to name but a few of the multiple elements he blends together.

It is Russell's contention, one he meticulously supports, that in the twentieth century "war and the control of nature coevolved: the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature" (p. 2). He persuasively argues that chemical warfare and pest control fueled each other's expansion on three levels: ideologically, scientifically and technologically, and organizationally. Thus it was that German and Japanese enemies were frequently portrayed as insect "pests," while lice and malaria carrying mosquitoes became "enemies," both of which should be "eradicated." Scientific and technological knowledge, actualized in the form of incendiary weapons and insecticides such as DDT and dispensing artifacts such as flamethrowers and flit guns, increased the scale of both chemical warfare and pest control. Organizationally, the linkages between military, corporate, and civilian governmental and academic institutions grew and stimulated developments in both areas. With examples ranging from the development of an effective insecticide to battle the boll weevil in order to enhance cotton production needed for soldiers' clothing, tents, and bandages, to military-derived aerial "foggers" also useful for the peacetime dispersal of DDT and dieldrin in the civilian war against mosquitoes and fire ants, Russell explicates America's technological struggle to control nature, all the while noting the material agency of nature, as revealed, for example, by the increased pesticide resistance of insects over time.

War and Nature is a case study, yet at the same time it pushes > the reader to broader levels of generalization and analysis of the relationships between humanity and nature. It is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. We, the members of SHOT, and the broader historical community are in debt to Ed Russell and Cambridge University Press for this provocative contribution to the history of technology.

The Sally Hacker Prize

The Sally Hacker Prize was established in 1999 to recognize the best popular book written in the history of technology in the three years preceding the award. The prize recognizes books in the history of technology that are directed to a broad audience of readers. The winner of the 2003 Hacker Prize was Philip Ball, for Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). The citation:

In Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, Philip Ball examines the symbiotic relationship between pigment, technology and art from the ancient Egyptians to the twentieth century. In an...