Adoption and adaption of Technology in American Culture: How Electrification of the Home, Transformed 'Everyday' 20th Century America (original) (raw)
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Electricity has been defined by American society as a modern and clean form of energy since it came into practical use at the end of the nineteenth century, yet no comprehensive study exists which examines the roots of these definitions. This dissertation considers the social meanings of electricity as an energy technology that became adopted between the midnineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries. Arguing that both technical and cultural factors played a role, this study shows how electricity became an abstracted form of energy in the minds of Americans. As technological advancements allowed for an increasing physical distance between power generation and power consumption, the commodity of electricity became consciously detached from the steam and coal that produced it. This factor, along with cultural factors led the public to define electricity as mysterious, utopian, and an alternative to proximal fire-based energy sources. With its adoption occurring simultaneously with Progressivism and consumerism, electricity use was encouraged and seen as a integral part of improvement and modernity which led Americans to culturally construct electricity as unlimited and environmentally inconsequential.
Power to the people: electricity and domestic design
2004
To be wired or not to be wired? This paper will stress the dominance of design history in the research of the 'domestic appliance revolution' and map possible scenarios for future research into domestic product design. The main thrust of the paper will be that of energy supplies and particularly the post World War II emphasis upon embracing electricity into the home with all of its concomitant 'labour saving' devices.
Electricity and Culture: Conceptualizing the American Case
Annales historiques de l’électricité, 2004
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Review of "Domesticating Electricity" by Graeme Gooday
This study evocatively brings to light a more nuanced interdisciplinary consideration of a key 20th C technological advance: how gender asserted a prominent role in “domesticating” electricity for everyday household use, thereby influencing a modern revisioning of the domestic dividing line between how the sexes allocated labor in the home, as well as how consumers changed spending habits in the evolving early 20th C economy.
This chapter considers electric light as a key element in the mediation of modernism in the USA, one that provides continuity and connection between groups and ideas that have often been treated in isolation within the historical record. Nowhere is the advantage of such an approach more revealing than in the study of the development of the modern American interior—an area of study that also suffers from its long-held position in the scholarly shadows of architecture. Already at a disadvantage, the central role of electric light in the transformation of the modern interior aesthetically, socially, and technologically has remained largely obscured through such disciplinary biases. Just as the floodlighting of America’s skyscrapers and dazzling array of electrified signs, streetlights, and shop windows of the nation’s white ways helped forge a new nocturnal landscape for the modern city, so too electric lighting transformed the design, use, experience, and appearance of modern interiors in the same period. From domestic interiors to cafes, movie places, museums and department stores, electric lighting not only symbolized modernity and affluence, but also provided unprecedented glamor and convenience without transgressing the fundamental tenets of modernism. The central role of electric lighting in the imaging and articulation of American modernity, both aesthetically and culturally, forms a principle theme of this chapter. Through the examination of popular and professional literature promoting electric light and its fundamental difference from gas or flame based illuminates, this chapter highlights discussions and explorations of the immateriality of electric light as an aesthetic medium, and its association with core aspects of modernity.
Technology and Behaviour in the Use of Electricity
2010
In the literature on the potential of reducing householder's consumption of electrical energy, two interpretations can be discerned. On the one hand a technologist's view that technological change will do the work; on the other a sociologist's view that practice is at the heart of the matter. I argue that both views are important for our understanding, but at the same time reductionist. In this article I will discuss this based on studies of the use of electrical equipment among households in Sweden.
The Grid Comes Home: Wiring and Lighting the American Farmhouse
Abstract: Established in 1935 under the New Deal, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) brought affordable electricity to underserved agrarian populations throughout the United States. The arrival of electricity transformed everyday patterns of work and leisure on the American farm, powering innumerable conveniences such as water heaters, electric milkers, and refrigerators. But perhaps no change was more immediately palpable than the clean, steady glow of electrical light. Many times brighter than the dirty kerosene lamps they replaced, electric lights became a sought-after commodity even among farm families unwilling to invest in other electrified conveniences. During the late Depression, war years, and the immediate postwar period, REA, along other government agricultural agencies and corporations such as General Electric, published numerous advertisements and guides that promoted best practices in lighting and wiring. Seizing on rural enthusiasm for electric illumination, these publications showed proper light as the first, critical step towards attaining an all-electric mode of living. Despite the prescriptive nature of this material, these publications nevertheless merit closer investigation. Through text, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs, wiring and lighting materials articulated a new approach to farm planning and rural space that preempted many of the farm's architectural transformations of the later postwar years.