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Technology’s Stories v. 7, no. 2 – 10.15763/jou.ts.2019.06.13.02 PDF: Shorey_Making Core Memory In a two-minute clip from the docuseries Moon Machines, two women in white smocks pass a needle back and forth through a matrix of eyelet openings.[1] Sitting under task lamps in a Raytheon facility outside of Boston, they are making “core memory” for…
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Introduction: Representation of Machinery Use in Argentine Culture and Film In this technology story, I use ethnographic material from my original documentary film, Stories of the Harvester (https://vimeo.com/395115057), to discuss how the camera evokes spectators’ feelings about the subculture of farm machinery. I was influenced by Fernando Birri’s Tire Di’e spectacular film of children in…
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In the late nineteenth century, local governments began to install telephone lines in Latin American cities. Among the first countries to introduce telephone service were Cuba, Chile, and Mexico, all of whom did so in the 1880s. At first, the telephone was a medium of communication for urban elites. It entered government offices, enterprises, and…
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In a study on water vending in Tanzania, Marianne Kjellén points out that in most developing countries, a piped water supply in the city is the norm for the richer households, while poorer households struggle to access water by other means.[1] Most of the urban poor live in ‘illegal’ spaces (slums, informal and squatter areas).…
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In the history of technology, there is no shortage of artefacts that, once propagated as supremely modern and useful, quickly disappeared and were forgotten as more practicable standards, simpler technological solutions for the same problem or just a company with better market coverage brought those devices to the fore that appear in hindsight as touchstones…
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The twentieth century saw the rise of the automobile as the most important consumer product and economic lever in the United States. Driving became a required expression of American nationalism and citizenship. Yet American car culture was also inextricably intertwined with race. The automobile emerged as an important economic, technological, aesthetic, and racial category of…
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Jacinto S. García arrived to Mexico City in the summer of 1909. Astonished to find a “beautiful, clean, grand and Europeanized city,” the business representative of the Argentine government judged it deserved to be listed among the urban centers of the civilized world.[1] Throughout the route, he noted, there were “no longer any Teocallis, or…
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