Jeffrey Herf: Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (1985)
Filed under book | Tags: · engineering, enlightenment, fascism, germany, marxism, modernism, national socialism, nationalism, nazism, politics, romanticism, technology, weimar republic
“In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists’ rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls ‘reactionary modernism’ found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, called the ‘steel-like romanticism of the twentieth century’. By associating technology with the Germans, rather than the Jews, with beautiful form rather than the formlessness of the market, and with a strong state rather than a predominance of economic values and institutions, these right-wing intellectuals reconciled Germany’s strength with its romantic soul and national identity.”
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1985
ISBN 0521338336, 9780521338332
251 pages
Reviews: R.J. Overy (English Historical Review), Geoff Eley (Telos).
Commentary: Thomas Rohkraemer (Contemporary European History).
Donald F. McLean: Restoring Baird’s Image (2000)
Filed under book | Tags: · electricity, engineering, history of technology, image, phonograph, sound, technology, television, video, vision
Betty Bolton recorded in c1932 by engineer John Logie Baird in an early television experiment (GIF via Continuo Docs)
John Logie Baird, Britain’s foremost television pioneer, experimented with video recording onto gramophone discs in the late 1920s. Though unsuccessful at the time, his experiments resulted in several videodiscs, some 25 years before the videotape recorder became practical. These videodiscs – called Phonovision – remained neglected over the decades, considered by experts as unplayable.
In the early 1980s, the author sought out and restored the surviving Phonovision discs. Using computer-based techniques in an investigation reminiscent of an archaeological dig, the author has not only revealed the images on the discs but also uncovered details of how the recordings were made. The Phonovision discs have now become recognised as one of Baird’s most important legacies.
In 1996 and 1998, amateur ‘off-air’ recordings of the BBC’s 30-line Television Service (1932–35) were found, giving us our first view of what viewers were then watching. The author’s restoration overturns established views on mechanically scanned television, providing us today with a true measure of Britain’s heritage of television programme-making before electronic television.
As well as helping to explain a poorly understood and complex period in television’s history, this unique book, heavily illustrated with previously unpublished or rarely-seen historic photographs restored by the author, sheds light on the achievements of Baird, the development of video recording and the definition and invention of television itself.
Publisher Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2000
Volume 27 of History of Technology series
ISBN 0852967950, 9780852967959
295 pages
K. G. Beauchamp: Exhibiting Electricity (1997)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1800s, 1900s, electricity, engineering, exhibition, history of science, history of technology, machine, science, technology, telegraphy
“This unusual book traces the history of public and technical exhibitions, from their origins in the late 18th century to present day, and, particularly, how they have reflected the progress of science and technology (especially electrical technology). Not only does the author show how electrical innovation and manufacture have been presented to the wider public through this period, but he also shows how the exhibitions themselves have required technological advice. It is through this combination of roles that the importance of these exhibitions within scientific and technological advance can be understood.”
Publisher Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1997
IEEE History of Technology Series, Volume 21
ISBN 0852968957, 9780852968956
352 pages
review (Bernard S. Finn, Technology and Culture)
review (Iwan Rhys Morus, The British Journal for the History of Science)