Hopewell Furnace by W. David Lewis, Walter Hugins, and: Where Industry Failed: Water-Powered Mills at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia by Dave Gilbert, and: The Bethlehem Oil Mill 1745–1934: German Technology in Early Pennsylvania by Carter Litchfield, et al (review)
1986; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tech.1986.a889654
ISSN1097-3729
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
Resumo148 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The instruments described and illustrated have been selected from approximately a dozen museums in England, Scotland, The Nether lands, Italy, and Switzerland. A supplement lists makers of scientific instruments, although not inventors, who exhibited at the Great Ex hibition of 1851 in London, and there is an extensive bibliography and comprehensive index. Handsomely printed and bound and well illus trated with photographs and engravings on the same pages to which they relate, Nineteenth-CenturyScientificInstruments is a resource that will afford considerable pleasure at the same time that it provides useful information. It should be particularly welcomed by science museums and those American colleges and universities retaining collections of science teaching instruments and apparatuses acquired from England and the Continent in the 19th century. Dealers in and collectors of scientific instruments and apparatuses in particular will find value in this most definitive work. The author is the senior assistant curator of the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University. Internationally recognized for his publications on the history of scientific instruments and particu larly for his studies of early telescopes and microscopes, T urner is secretary of the Scientific Instruments Commission of the Interna tional Union of the History of Science and editor of Annals of Science. Silvio A. Bedini* Hopewell Furnace. National Park Handbook 124. By W. David Lewis and Walter Hugins. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1983. Pp. 95; illustrations, maps, bibliography. $1.50 (paper). Available from Hopewell Village National Historic Site, RD 1, Box 345, Elver son, Pennsylvania 19520. Where Industry Failed: Water-PoweredMills at Harpers Ferny, West Virginia. By Dave Gilbert. Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories Publishing (4103 Virginia Avenue, S.E. 25304), 1984. Pp. 86; illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $6.95 (paper). The Bethlehem Oil Mill 1745—1934: German Technology in Early Pennsylva nia. By Garter Litchfield, Hans-Joachim Einke, Stephen G. Young, and Karen Zerbe Huetter. Kemblesville, Pa.: Olearius Editions (Drawer H 19347), 1984. Pp. 128; illustrations, notes, appendix, index. $22.50+ $1.50 handling. The three volumes under review have much in common. They are narrowly focused studies of industry and technology in particular *Mr. Bedini is keeper ofthe rare books at the Smithsonian Institution. His latest books are At the Sign of the Compass and Quadrant: The Life and Times of Anthony Land) (Phil adelphia, 1984) and Thomas Jefferson and His Copying Machines (Charlottesville, Va., 1984). TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 149 communities, rely on artifacts along with written records as evidence, and are written to appeal to a general audience. Photographs, draw ings, plans, and maps account for about half of each volume. All three include brief bibliographies, but only the Litchfield volume offers full scholarly documentation. Together, they demonstrate the significant contribution that industrial archaeology can make to the history of technology but also the limited value of most site-specific studies. The Hopewell Furnace book is divided into three parts. The first, “Ironmaking in Early America,” by David Lewis, briefly describes the main iron-making processes and places Hopewell in the context of the colonial iron industry. Walter Hugins wrote part 2 (pp. 24—73), “Hopewell Furnace,” which considers the furnace operations, includ ing the problems of management and marketing, the development of Hopewell as a community, and the economic and technological history of the furnace. This was a reasonably profitable ironworks specializing in the production of stove plates from its foundation in 1771 through 1844. The furnace operated intermittently from the 1850s until it closed in 1883 and then slowly deteriorated until the federal govern ment bought the property in 1935. Restoration began in earnest three years later, when Hopewell Village became a National Historic Site within the National Park system. The book’s concluding segment is a concise guide to the park. Given its brief length and narrow focus, this is a valuable study of a charcoal blast furnace and its community in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dave Gilbert’s book on Harpers Ferry mills is the least narrow ofthe volumes under review yet the least satisfactory of the three. Much of the book considers the geology ofthe region, early settlement patterns, the development of transportation, and the general...
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