Author: Thomas P. Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780307773265
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Rescuing Prometheus
Author: Thomas P. Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780307773265
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780307773265
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Rescuing Prometheus
Author: Thomas P. Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679739386
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679739386
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Technologies of Power
Author: Michael Thad Allen
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262511247
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374
Book Description
This collection explores how technologies become forms of power, how people embed their authority in technological systems, and how the machines and the knowledge that make up technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, and cultural power. The authors suggest ways in which a more nuanced investigation of technology's complex history can enrich our understanding of the changing meanings of modernity. They consider the relationship among the state, expertise, and authority; the construction of national identity; changes in the structure and distribution of labor; political ideology and industrial development; and political practices during the Cold War. The essays show how insight into the technological aspects of such broad processes can help synthesize material and cultural methods of inquiry and how reframing technology's past in broader historical terms can suggest new directions for science and technology studies.The essays were written in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, whose spirit of inquiry they seek to continue. Contributors Janet Abbate, Michael Thad Allen, W. Bernard Carlson, Gabrielle Hecht, Erik P. Rau, Eric Schatzberg, Amy Slaton, John Staudenmaier, Edmund N. Todd, Hans Weinberger
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262511247
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374
Book Description
This collection explores how technologies become forms of power, how people embed their authority in technological systems, and how the machines and the knowledge that make up technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, and cultural power. The authors suggest ways in which a more nuanced investigation of technology's complex history can enrich our understanding of the changing meanings of modernity. They consider the relationship among the state, expertise, and authority; the construction of national identity; changes in the structure and distribution of labor; political ideology and industrial development; and political practices during the Cold War. The essays show how insight into the technological aspects of such broad processes can help synthesize material and cultural methods of inquiry and how reframing technology's past in broader historical terms can suggest new directions for science and technology studies.The essays were written in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, whose spirit of inquiry they seek to continue. Contributors Janet Abbate, Michael Thad Allen, W. Bernard Carlson, Gabrielle Hecht, Erik P. Rau, Eric Schatzberg, Amy Slaton, John Staudenmaier, Edmund N. Todd, Hans Weinberger
The Development of Propulsion Technology for U.S. Space-Launch Vehicles, 1926-1991
Author: J. D. Hunley
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603449876
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
In this definitive study, J. D. Hunley traces the program’s development from Goddard’s early rockets (and the German V-2 missile) through the Titan IVA and the Space Shuttle, with a focus on space-launch vehicles. Since these rockets often evolved from early missiles, he pays considerable attention to missile technology, not as an end in itself, but as a contributor to launch-vehicle technology. Focusing especially on the engineering culture of the program, Hunley communicates this very human side of technological development by means of anecdotes, character sketches, and case studies of problems faced by rocket engineers. He shows how such a highly adaptive approach enabled the evolution of a hugely complicated technology that was impressive—but decidedly not rocket science. Unique in its single-volume coverage of the evolution of launch-vehicle technology from 1926 to 1991, this meticulously researched work will inform scholars and engineers interested in the history of technology and innovation, as well as those specializing in the history of space flight.
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603449876
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
In this definitive study, J. D. Hunley traces the program’s development from Goddard’s early rockets (and the German V-2 missile) through the Titan IVA and the Space Shuttle, with a focus on space-launch vehicles. Since these rockets often evolved from early missiles, he pays considerable attention to missile technology, not as an end in itself, but as a contributor to launch-vehicle technology. Focusing especially on the engineering culture of the program, Hunley communicates this very human side of technological development by means of anecdotes, character sketches, and case studies of problems faced by rocket engineers. He shows how such a highly adaptive approach enabled the evolution of a hugely complicated technology that was impressive—but decidedly not rocket science. Unique in its single-volume coverage of the evolution of launch-vehicle technology from 1926 to 1991, this meticulously researched work will inform scholars and engineers interested in the history of technology and innovation, as well as those specializing in the history of space flight.
The Sin of Knowledge
Author: Theodore Ziolkowski
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Adam, Prometheus, and Faust--their stories were central to the formation of Western consciousness and continue to be timely cautionary tales in an age driven by information and technology. Here Theodore Ziolkowski explores how each myth represents a response on the part of ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and sixteenth-century Christian culture to the problem of knowledge, particularly humankind's powerful, perennial, and sometimes unethical desire for it. This book exposes for the first time the similarities underlying these myths as well as their origins in earlier trickster legends, and considers when and why they emerged in their respective societies. It then examines the variations through which the themes have been adapted by modern writers to express their own awareness of the sin of knowledge. Each myth is shown to capture the anxiety of a society when faced with new knowledge that challenges traditional values. Ziolkowski's examples of recent appropriations of the myths are especially provocative. From Voltaire to the present, the Fall of Adam has provided an image for the emergence from childhood innocence into the consciousness of maturity. Prometheus, as the challenger of authority and the initiator of technological evil, yielded an ambivalent model for the socialist imagination of the German Democratic Republic. And finally, an America unsettled by its responsibility for the atomic bomb, and worrying that in its postwar prosperity it had betrayed its values, recognized in Faust the disturbing image of its soul.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Adam, Prometheus, and Faust--their stories were central to the formation of Western consciousness and continue to be timely cautionary tales in an age driven by information and technology. Here Theodore Ziolkowski explores how each myth represents a response on the part of ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and sixteenth-century Christian culture to the problem of knowledge, particularly humankind's powerful, perennial, and sometimes unethical desire for it. This book exposes for the first time the similarities underlying these myths as well as their origins in earlier trickster legends, and considers when and why they emerged in their respective societies. It then examines the variations through which the themes have been adapted by modern writers to express their own awareness of the sin of knowledge. Each myth is shown to capture the anxiety of a society when faced with new knowledge that challenges traditional values. Ziolkowski's examples of recent appropriations of the myths are especially provocative. From Voltaire to the present, the Fall of Adam has provided an image for the emergence from childhood innocence into the consciousness of maturity. Prometheus, as the challenger of authority and the initiator of technological evil, yielded an ambivalent model for the socialist imagination of the German Democratic Republic. And finally, an America unsettled by its responsibility for the atomic bomb, and worrying that in its postwar prosperity it had betrayed its values, recognized in Faust the disturbing image of its soul.
The Bomb and America's Missile Age
Author: Christopher Gainor
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421426048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
How nuclear weapons helped drive the United States into the missile age. The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), designed to quickly deliver thermonuclear weapons to distant targets, was the central weapons system of the Cold War. ICBMs also carried the first astronauts and cosmonauts into orbit. More than a generation later, we are still living with the political, technological, and scientific effects of the space race, while nuclear-armed ICBMs remain on alert and in the headlines around the world. In The Bomb and America’s Missile Age, Christopher Gainor explores the US Air Force’s (USAF) decision, in March 1954, to build the Atlas, America’s first ICBM. Beginning with the story of the guided missiles that were created before and during World War II, Gainor describes how the early Soviet and American rocket programs evolved over the course of the following decade. He argues that the USAF was wrongly criticized for unduly delaying the start of its ICBM program, endangering national security, and causing America embarrassment when a Soviet ICBM successfully put Sputnik into orbit ahead of any American satellite. Shedding fresh light on the roots of America’s space program and the development of US strategic forces, The Bomb and America’s Missile Age uses evidence uncovered in the past few decades to set the creation of the Atlas ICBM in its true context—not only in the America of the postwar years but also in comparison with the real story of the Soviet missiles that propelled the space race and the Cold War. Aimed at readers interested in the history of the Cold War and of space exploration, the book makes a major contribution to the history of rocket development and the nuclear age.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421426048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
How nuclear weapons helped drive the United States into the missile age. The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), designed to quickly deliver thermonuclear weapons to distant targets, was the central weapons system of the Cold War. ICBMs also carried the first astronauts and cosmonauts into orbit. More than a generation later, we are still living with the political, technological, and scientific effects of the space race, while nuclear-armed ICBMs remain on alert and in the headlines around the world. In The Bomb and America’s Missile Age, Christopher Gainor explores the US Air Force’s (USAF) decision, in March 1954, to build the Atlas, America’s first ICBM. Beginning with the story of the guided missiles that were created before and during World War II, Gainor describes how the early Soviet and American rocket programs evolved over the course of the following decade. He argues that the USAF was wrongly criticized for unduly delaying the start of its ICBM program, endangering national security, and causing America embarrassment when a Soviet ICBM successfully put Sputnik into orbit ahead of any American satellite. Shedding fresh light on the roots of America’s space program and the development of US strategic forces, The Bomb and America’s Missile Age uses evidence uncovered in the past few decades to set the creation of the Atlas ICBM in its true context—not only in the America of the postwar years but also in comparison with the real story of the Soviet missiles that propelled the space race and the Cold War. Aimed at readers interested in the history of the Cold War and of space exploration, the book makes a major contribution to the history of rocket development and the nuclear age.
Rational Action
Author: William Thomas
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262028506
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
The evolution of a set of fields—including operations research and systems analysis—intended to improve policymaking and explore the nature of rational decision-making. During World War II, the Allied military forces faced severe problems integrating equipment, tactics, and logistics into successful combat operations. To help confront these problems, scientists and engineers developed new means of studying which equipment designs would best meet the military's requirements and how the military could best use the equipment it had on hand. By 1941 they had also begun to gather and analyze data from combat operations to improve military leaders' ordinary planning activities. In Rational Action, William Thomas details these developments, and how they gave rise during the 1950s to a constellation of influential new fields—which he terms the “sciences of policy”—that included operations research, management science, systems analysis, and decision theory. Proponents of these new sciences embraced a variety of agendas. Some aimed to improve policymaking directly, while others theorized about how one decision could be considered more rational than another. Their work spanned systems engineering, applied mathematics, nuclear strategy, and the philosophy of science, and it found new niches in universities, in businesses, and at think tanks such as the RAND Corporation. The sciences of policy also took a prominent place in epic narratives told about the relationships among science, state, and society in an intellectual culture preoccupied with how technology and reason would shape the future. Thomas follows all these threads to illuminate and make new sense of the intricate relationships among scientific analysis, policymaking procedure, and institutional legitimacy at a crucial moment in British and American history.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262028506
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
The evolution of a set of fields—including operations research and systems analysis—intended to improve policymaking and explore the nature of rational decision-making. During World War II, the Allied military forces faced severe problems integrating equipment, tactics, and logistics into successful combat operations. To help confront these problems, scientists and engineers developed new means of studying which equipment designs would best meet the military's requirements and how the military could best use the equipment it had on hand. By 1941 they had also begun to gather and analyze data from combat operations to improve military leaders' ordinary planning activities. In Rational Action, William Thomas details these developments, and how they gave rise during the 1950s to a constellation of influential new fields—which he terms the “sciences of policy”—that included operations research, management science, systems analysis, and decision theory. Proponents of these new sciences embraced a variety of agendas. Some aimed to improve policymaking directly, while others theorized about how one decision could be considered more rational than another. Their work spanned systems engineering, applied mathematics, nuclear strategy, and the philosophy of science, and it found new niches in universities, in businesses, and at think tanks such as the RAND Corporation. The sciences of policy also took a prominent place in epic narratives told about the relationships among science, state, and society in an intellectual culture preoccupied with how technology and reason would shape the future. Thomas follows all these threads to illuminate and make new sense of the intricate relationships among scientific analysis, policymaking procedure, and institutional legitimacy at a crucial moment in British and American history.
A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management
Author: Charles I. Budd PMP
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523097027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
The Best Resource on Earned Value Management Just Got Better! This completely revised and updated guide to earned value (EV) project management is the go-to choice for both corporate and government professionals. A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition, first offers a general overview of basic project management best practices and then delves into detailed information on EV metrics and criteria, EV reporting mechanisms, and the 32 criteria of earned value management systems (EVMS) promulgated by the American National Standards Institute and the Electronic Industries Alliance and adopted by the Department of Defense. This second edition includes new material on: • EV metrics • Implementing EVMS • Government contracts • Time-based earned schedule metrics • Critical chain methodologies
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523097027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
The Best Resource on Earned Value Management Just Got Better! This completely revised and updated guide to earned value (EV) project management is the go-to choice for both corporate and government professionals. A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition, first offers a general overview of basic project management best practices and then delves into detailed information on EV metrics and criteria, EV reporting mechanisms, and the 32 criteria of earned value management systems (EVMS) promulgated by the American National Standards Institute and the Electronic Industries Alliance and adopted by the Department of Defense. This second edition includes new material on: • EV metrics • Implementing EVMS • Government contracts • Time-based earned schedule metrics • Critical chain methodologies
E-Research
Author:
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135855072
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 366
Book Description
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135855072
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 366
Book Description
Scientists in the Classroom
Author: J. Rudolph
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230107362
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
During the 1950s, leading American scientists embarked on an unprecedented project to remake high school science education. Dissatisfaction with the 'soft' school curriculum of the time advocated by the professional education establishment, and concern over the growing technological sophistication of the Soviet Union, led government officials to encourage a handful of elite research scientists, fresh from their World War II successes, to revitalize the nations' science curricula. In Scientists in the Classroom , John L. Rudolph argues that the Cold War environment, long neglected in the history of education literature, is crucial to understanding both the reasons for the public acceptance of scientific authority in the field of education and the nature of the curriculum materials that were eventually produced. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped resources from government and university archives, Rudolph focuses on the National Science Foundation-supported curriculum projects initiated in 1956. What the historical record reveals, according to Rudolph, is that these materials were designed not just to improve American science education, but to advance the professional interest of the American scientific community in the postwar period as well.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230107362
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
During the 1950s, leading American scientists embarked on an unprecedented project to remake high school science education. Dissatisfaction with the 'soft' school curriculum of the time advocated by the professional education establishment, and concern over the growing technological sophistication of the Soviet Union, led government officials to encourage a handful of elite research scientists, fresh from their World War II successes, to revitalize the nations' science curricula. In Scientists in the Classroom , John L. Rudolph argues that the Cold War environment, long neglected in the history of education literature, is crucial to understanding both the reasons for the public acceptance of scientific authority in the field of education and the nature of the curriculum materials that were eventually produced. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped resources from government and university archives, Rudolph focuses on the National Science Foundation-supported curriculum projects initiated in 1956. What the historical record reveals, according to Rudolph, is that these materials were designed not just to improve American science education, but to advance the professional interest of the American scientific community in the postwar period as well.