Lecture IV: Technology

This lecture explores telephones, bicycles, cars, and domestic technologies to consider change over time. In general terms, portable technologies have changed from wood, to metal, to plastic over the last two centuries. Another general remark we might make is that while the forms of machines made before about 1900 follow ideas about their functions, those produced since that time have different priorities. A particularly interesting one is the 20th-century near-obsession with invisible power sources.

The change from an open architecture, where individual parts and how they work were visible, to a closed, black box is evident in several technologies, most notably the telephone. Here we look at the popular
candlestick model, to the Dreyfuss dial phone popular after 1949, to today's cordless and cellular phones. Televisions, cameras , and washing machines have seen the same change from controls comprised of dials, to the use of buttons. The ultimate example of this "disconnectedness" is the remote control for the television. The development of electricity has been central to the rise of certain machines in Canada, especially those for the home.

Fig. IV1: Candlestick telephone. Postcard included in exhibition entitled Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design.

Fig. IV2: Dreyfuss dial telephone. Advertisement, Bell Telephone System, Mechanical Brides Exhibition.

Fig. IV3: Box camera, 1907. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Fig. IV4: Pentax LX camera, 1980. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Figure IV5: "Easy" washer, c. 1925. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Figure IV6: Washer using agitation system. Mechanical Brides Exhibition.

A technology which hasn't changed much over time is the bicycle . We discuss the particulars of Canadian cycling, the impact on social mores of the day, and the relationship of bicycles to broader political concerns (women's equality, the environmental movement).

Figure IV7: "Ordinary" bicycle, c. 1880. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Figure IV8: Montreal Bicycle Club, Montreal, 1885. McCord Museum.

Figure IV9: Bicycle riding, circa 1895. Advertisement poster for Massey Harris Company. National Museum of Science and Technology.

The history of car design illustrates the "hangover" principle in the history of technology, whereby a new form retains characteristics of the form which preceded its development. With cars, too, we look at the larger implications for families and cities, illustrating how technology expresses notions of class, power, and gender. For those of us in material culture, technology is a window on ourselves, as well.

Figure IV10: Ford Model T, 1914. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Figure IV11: Nash Motor Home, 1932. National Museum of Science and Technology.

Prof. Annmarie Adams: Adams@urbarc.lan.mcgill.ca