History of Technology and Innovation Research Papers (original) (raw)

This paper attempts to review the development of the Web until 1999, the date when it is published the standard HTML 4.0. In this paper it is also explained the development of HTML standard, which is currently the primary infrastructure where the World Wide Web is built. During this time we focus on some of the most noteworthy events of this period, we collect the set of institutions that today lead the Web and we outline some of the most significant innovations and the first conflicts of interest that rise up in the paradigm of public and private players and different organizations. Finally, as an appendix we deal with technologies and associations that deserve a separate section of this retrospective and the famous «browser wars» that have had a major impact on the way that today´s companies, standards and business models are commanded.

- by Raúl Tabarés Gutiérrez
- •
- History, The Internet, History of Technology and Innovation, HTML

Innovation wird heute als der bezeichnende Erfolgsfaktor für die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des deutschen und europäischen Wirtschaftsraumes dargestellt. Für die Zukunft stellt sich die Herausforderung, diesen Wettbewerbsfaktor unter sich verändernden Rahmenbedingungen aufrechtzuerhalten. Um Wirtschaft, Politik, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft bei der Orientierung, Positionsbestimmung und Zukunftsgestaltung in Innovationssystemen zu unterstützen, verfolgt der Fraunhofer-Verbund Innovationsforschung das Ziel, die Zukunft der Innovation zu thematisieren, besser zu verstehen und mit unterschiedlichen Akteuren zu reflektieren. Hierzu wird in diesem Beitrag die Historie der industriellen Innovation entlang der Handlungsfelder des Fraunhofer FuE-Assessements analysiert, insbesondere, um Lerneffekte bezüglich ausgewählter Thesen für Innovation im Jahr 2030 zu ermöglichen. Insbesondere in den Handlungsfeldern der Strategie, der Mitarbeiter und der Organisation, aber auch in kontinuierlichen oder wiederkehrenden Trends und Entwicklungen liegen Potenziale um aus der Vergangenheit zu lernen.

The theoretical contribution of Technip’s history lies in the confrontation between inheritances and mutations which contributed to form an independant economic entity with an original growth path. The achievement of the multidivisional integration of Technip in the sense of Alfred Chandler seem strongly linked to a moment of rupture of Schumpeterian innovation cycles and to the internalization of technical progress as a production factor in the sense of Oliver Williamson. The shift to a new growth model, the historical moment of detachment from the State and the real apparition of a private and multinational company.

- by Julien Brault
- •
- Economic History, Political Economy, Business History, Economic policy
- by Julien Brault
- •
- Economic History, Business History, First World War, Lorraine

Wie hängen Innovation und Wandel bei den Schweizerischen Bundesbahnen zusammen? Woher kam der Druck zur Veränderung? Wer generierte innovative Ideen generiert und wie konnten sich diese durchsetzen? So lauten einige Kernfragen der Untersuchung von Gisela Hürlimann, die sich als eine „integrative Unternehmensgeschichte“ der SBB versteht. Die zweite Hälfte der 1960er-Jahre, in der die die Bundesbahnen in eine Defizitphase eintraten, stellt den Ausgangspunkt dar. Anhand der Projekte für eine automatische Zugsicherung, für den Taktfahrplan Schweiz und für eine Schnellbahn Bern-Zürich spannt die Autorin einen weiten Bogen in die Gegenwart. Darin zeigt sie, wie das Bahnunternehmen um die Mitte der 1980er-Jahre dank cleverem Marketing und dank dem Mega-Trend Umweltschutz den Turnaround schaffte und die historische Kurve von einer „public social railway“ zu einer „public business railway“ nahm. Zu dieser Erfolgsstory gehört die „Bahn 2000“, die 1984/85 das unbeliebte Projekt der „Neuen Haupttransversalen“ (NHT) ablöste. Dabei kommt auch die Sichtweise der Ingenieure, Betriebswirtschaftler und Generaldirektoren nicht zu kurz, mit denen die Autorin Interviews für eine „Oral History“ der SBB führte. Mit den Bundesbahnen steht auch die schweizerische Verkehrspolitik in ihrem Verhältnis zu Europa im Fokus der Untersuchung. Denn die Untersuchung bezieht systematisch Impulse mit ein, die von der „Internationalität der Eisenbahn“ und von der EG-Liberalisierungspolitik ausgingen. Gleichzeitig liefert die Darstellung am Beispiel des SBB-Spinnerclubs auch eine exemplarische Analyse vom Funktionieren eines intraorgansationalen Innovationsnetzwerks, dessen „Subversionen“ dem gesamten Betrieb nützten. Die Darstellung endet in den späten 1990er-Jahren, als die Bahn- und Unternehmensreform in Kraft trat und als die SBB eine Pionierrolle beim „European Train Control System“ (ETCS) übernahmen. Angesichts der Herausforderungen durch zukünftige Bahreformen, durch die NEAT und die Veränderungen der Lebensgewohnheiten – Wohnen über den Gleisen und Reisen durch die ganze Nacht? – scheinen die Weichen wieder offen für eine stets neue „Eisenbahn der Zukunft“.

Guilds ruled many European crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Each guild regulated entry to its occupation, requiring any practitioner to become a guild member and then limiting admission to the guild. Guilds intervened in the markets for their members’ products, striving to keep prices high, limit output, suppress competition, and block innovations that might disrupt the status quo. Guilds also acted in input markets, seeking to control access to raw materials, keep wages low, hinder employers from competing for workers, and prevent workers from agitating for better conditions. Guilds treated women particularly severely, usually excluding them from apprenticeship and forbidding any female other than a guild member’s widow from running a workshop. Guilds invested large sums in lobbying governments and political elites to grant, maintain, and extend these privileges.
Guilds had the potential to compensate for their cartellistic activities by creating countervailing benefits. Guild quality certification was one possible solution to information asymmetries between producers and consumers, which could have made markets work better. Guild apprenticeship had the potential to solve imperfections in markets for skilled training, and thus to encourage human capital investment. The cartel profits generated by guilds could in theory have encouraged technological innovation by enabling guild masters to appropriate more of the social benefits of their innovations, while guild journeymanship and spatial clustering could diffuse new technical knowledge. A rich scholarship on European guilds makes it possible to assess the degree to which guilds created such benefits, outweighing the harm they caused.
After about 1500, guild strength diverged across Europe, declining gradually in Flanders, the Netherlands, and England, surviving in France and Italy, and intensifying across large tracts of Iberia, Scandinavia, and the German-speaking lands. The activities of guilds contributed to variations across Europe in economic performance, urban growth, and inequality. Guilds interacted significantly with both markets and states, which helps explain why European economies diverged in the crucial centuries before industrialization.

Ročenka o dejinách baníctva a hutníctva / Jahrbuch für Geschichte des Berg- und Hüttenwesens

- by Miroslav Lacko and +3
- •
- History, History of Science and Technology, Economic History, Early Modern History

The Natural History Museum Vienna undertakes extensive research at the site Hallstatt, comprising not only interdisciplinary analysis of the finds and the contexts but also Experimental Archaeology.
Here we focus on a tablet woven band (HallTex 152), which seems to be a very simple design at the first glimpse. The pattern of the band – lozenges with cross-filling - is also present at other Hallstatt period artefacts such as pottery or bronze sheet objects. We present seven different ways to recreate the pattern. Detailed experiments were carried out with different threading concepts for the weaving tablets and different weaving mechanisms and turning sequences. The different solutions to create that design were discussed in comparison with the the original textile.

- by Karina Grömer and +1
- •
- Experimental Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Textiles, Material Culture Studies
- by Konstantinos Tselos
- •
- Geography, Social Networking, Capacity Building, European Union Politics

This study suggests that the origins of the economics of technical change go back to many years before Schumpeter's contributions. The Scottish philosopher John Rae with his book Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, issued in 1834, put forward the basis of the Economics of innovation individuating the nature, causes of technological innovations (e.g., steam engine) and effects of technological progress on economic growth of nations. Rae also discusses the evolution and role of vital technologies for the wealth and employment in Europe and North America. Overall, then, Rae's work is basic for the origin of the Economics of innovation, for defining the domain of this discipline and for explaining the effects of vital technologies in society. However, the conclusions of this study are tentative. There is need for much more detailed research into this research topic.

Der gemeinsame von Robert Dorbritz, Ulrich Weidmann (beide IVT ETHZ) und Gisela Hürlimann (FSW UZH) herausgegebene Band enthält die Beiträge zur Tagung "Die Revolution der Automation - Verkehrsautomatisierung und Gesellschaft", die am 25.6.2009 an der Universität Zürich stattfand. Autorinnen und Autoren: Gisela Hürlimann, Claus Pias, James W. Cortada, Michel Joye, Nicolas Latuske, Markus Montigel, Siegfried Gerlach, Johannes Weyer, Klaus Kornwachs.

About an Iron Age tablet woven border from Dürrnberg in Austria showing a new and very technically complicated tablet weaving technique.

- by Karina Grömer and +1
- •
- Archaeology, Archaeological textiles, History of Technology and Innovation, Archaeological textiles and clothing

The consequences of state reforms in 1748 and 1749 on mining and metallurgy must be perceived at two levels: from the perspective of financial history – when explaining the incorporation of industrial fields into the state financial system – as well as from the perspective of the
history of the state administration, since the development of the monarchy’s mining administration was significantly affected by reforms that may truly be considered as ground-breaking. The close interconnection of the economic and political objectives (being the repayment of state debt, i. e., including the saturation of military needs) of the Habsburg monarchy as a fiscal-military state and the constant pressure to promote innovation in the everyday production practices of the proto-industrial mining and metallurgical plants, which was persuasively proven during the reformation occurring after the War of the Austrian Succession, are extraordinarily fascinating.

- by Miroslav Lacko
- •
- Economic History, Early Modern History, Czech History, Central Europe

Inför första världskriget var ubåten ett relativt nytt och oprövat vapen. Den hade endast använts i krig vid ett fåtal tillfällen. Osäkerheten var därför stor angående hur ubåtar skulle användas på bästa sätt och hur effektiva de kunde vara i en stridssituation. Men i många kretsar fanns det högt ställda förväntningar. De största optimisterna menade att ubåten i grunden skulle kunna ändra krigföringen till havs och göra stora och starkt bestyckade fartyg mer eller mindre värdelösa. Ubåtarnas insatser under kriget följdes därför med stort intresse inte bara
i de krigförande länderna utan även i Sverige. Vilka erfarenheter drog den
svenska marinen av krigshändelserna för ubåtsvapnets del? Hur såg man på ubåtar före, under och efter världskriget?

The introduction of general anesthesia in the 1840s has been credited with launching a veritable explosion of new surgical procedures. Yet a large number of surgical innovations can be located in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, rendering explanations of the growth of surgery based solely on technological determinism problematic, and opening up new questions about the driving forces behind innovation in surgery. The surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach is often regarded as one of the most innovative characters in the development of German surgery during this period. Accounts of Dieffenbach’s innovative activity have largely been limited to crediting him with a series of pragmatic technical additions to surgical procedures and the introduction of new techniques, taking the motivation for these innovations as self-evident. Paradoxically, for a figure that has become almost emblematic of surgical progress, Dieffenbach was profoundly ambivalent towards innovation. Using Dieffenbach’s writings on surgery, his published case studies, as well as his clinical lectures recorded by one of his students, the following chapter will explore this paradox at the heart of Dieffenbach’s surgical philosophy, arguing that he sought innovation not merely through the development and branding of new surgical techniques, but through a renewal of the surgical approach in its entirety. He envisioned surgery as a non-empiric discipline based on the principles of physiology, oriented towards the restoration of bodily forms and functions, rather than their destruction or removal. Plastic surgery (which Dieffenbach defined broadly) offered a particularly apt platform to formulate and promote these larger goals. While Dieffenbach described a considerable amount of new techniques, he emphasized the importance of the individuality of each case, and warned surgeons not to follow these instructions blindly. Instead, they ought to learn the physiological principles underlying surgical procedures, and, like an artist, apply them creatively and differently in each case. This particular episode reflects the larger tensions accompanying the process of professionalization and institutionalization of Prussian surgery, and identifies experimental physiology as a powerful driving force of surgical innovation in the first half of the nineteenth century. It also echoes the book’s contention that surgical innovations are not merely pragmatic fixes to pre-existing problems, but articulations of how surgery should be performed. Dieffenbach used his innovations in plastic surgery to project his vision of a scientifically grounded, predictable and controllable surgery.

- by Lisa Haushofer
- •
- German History, History of Medicine, History of Science, German Romanticism

The early modern period, from roughly 1450 to 1800, was a time of global social and political upheaval. Driven by rivalry between the great powers of Europe and their efforts to explore, colonize, and conquer new territories, it was an era during which revolutionary changes occurred in science, technology, and culture that continue to shape the modern world. Theologically, it encompassed the cultural revolutions of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Intellectually, it witnessed the radical conceptual shifts that have come to be known as the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Technologically, it saw the first economic transformations arising from the British Agricultural Revolution, while laying the foundations for the Industrial Revolution. Politically, it was punctuated by revolutions in Britain, France, and the Americas, and included extended periods of military conflict throughout Europe, as well as colonial wars in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Arguably the most shameful legacies of this period are the European colonizers’ despoliation of indigenous cultures and an enormous escalation in the slave trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas. All these transformations—however they are now interpreted—are fundamental to what it means to be modern.

This paper attempts to review the development of the Web until 1999, the date when it is published the standard HTML 4.0. In this paper it is also explained the development of HTML
standard, which is currently the primary infrastructure where the World Wide Web is built. During this time we focus on some of the most noteworthy events of this period, we collect the set of institutions that today lead the Web and we outline some of the most significant innovations and the first conflicts of interest that rise up in the paradigm of public and private players and different organizations. Finally, as an appendix we deal with technologies and associations that deserve a separate section of this retrospective and the famous «browser wars» that have had a major impact on the way that today´s companies, standards and business models are commanded.

- by Raúl Tabarés Gutiérrez
- •
- History, Internet & Society, The Internet, Html5

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncriti-cally understood as 'technological innovation' and 'commercialized innovation.' On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation (RRI) suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI.

K transferu inovácií v stredoeurópskom hutníctve: Bartolomej Ľudovít Hechengartner (1702–1773) a zhutňovanie medi na Spiši v prvej polovici 18. storočia [Zum Innovationstransfer im mitteleuropäischen Hüttenwesen: Bartholomäus Ludwig Hechengartner (1702–1773) und die Kupferverhüttung in der Zips in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts], in: Montánna história / Die Montangeschichte : Ročenka o dejinách baníctva a hutníctva / Jahrbuch für Geschichte des Berg- und Hüttenwesens 7 (2014), S. 162–199.

- by Julien Brault
- •
- Economic History, Political Economy, Business History, 20th century France

The management of R&D and innovation in industrial companies is often said to be on its path to a major transformation within the next decades. Key drivers include technological developments, enabling a higher degree of digitisation or automation and a cultural shift towards democratisation and openness, both leaving behind organisational models of single inventors or centrally organised R&D departments see e.g. [Bul16], [Sch16], 17]. A key question is, if there is a next big thing or a disruption coming up in industrial innovation. Referring to a rather non-academic statement, it might also be that " it's all just a little bit of history repeating " 1. This is the reason why we propose a historical analysis of previous developments and milestones in the key action fields of R&D Management as a basis for an in-depth analysis of potential future developments.

- by Sven Schimpf
- •
- History of Technology and Innovation, Future of Innovation
- by Julien Brault
- •
- Economic History, Business History, Beer (Alcohol Studies), France

Innovation has been approached and defined in various ways, mainly as a result or a process. In this paper, I am approaching it as a historical phenomenon, more concretely as a mode of historical existence. My approach is based on the thesis that innovation is a precondition not only for development but in some cases for survival, in other words it is impossible for a historical entity to survive long without innovating.
History is the in-time relation and interaction between the human being and its environment, both animate and inanimate. This relation may be better studied, if we focus on two perpetual efforts of the human being: to accumulate knowledge and transform this knowledge into technology, both material and immaterial (examples of immaterial technology may be written and unwritten law, religious systems, ethical codes, social norms, cultural values etc.). Both these efforts are in what Aristotle would call aei kinesis, an endless movement which includes past, present and future.
This kinesis is better understood historically if we approach it as the result of a constant dialogue between past and future that takes place in any given present, a dialogue between what Reinhard Koselleck has coined as “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation” (see R. Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York 2004, pp. 255–276).
For any historical entity, there are three possible modes of historical kinesis, in other words modes of historical existence: inertial kinesis, change and innovation. The difference between inertial kinesis and innovation is temporal, the difference between change and innovation ontological. Furthermore, inertial kinesis and alteration may co-exist (in fact, change is a lot of times exactly inertial kinesis), but innovation cannot coexist with any of them.
Approached this way, innovation as a historical phenomenon could be defined as: (a) The ontological alteration of the relevant historical entity in its kinesis from any given past to the relevant future; or (b) the acceleration or deceleration of the velocity of the relevant historical entity in its kinesis from any given past to its respective future.
In the paper, I am presenting the three modes of historical kinesis, and then I am focusing on innovation to analyse it as ontological and/or temporal alteration.

- by Apostolos Spanos
- •
- History, Cultural History, Social History, Social and Cultural History

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation (RI) focus on how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI.

- by Lucien von Schomberg
- •
- Philosophy, Ontology, Philosophy of Technology, Phenomenology

Akin to the mathematical recreations, John Wilkins' Mathematicall Magick (1648) elaborates the pleasant, useful and wondrous part of practical mathematics, dealing in particular with its material culture of machines and instruments. We contextualize the Mathematicall Magick by studying its institutional setting and its place within changing conceptions of art, nature, religion and mathematics. We devote special attention to the way Wilkins inscribes mechanical innovations within a discourse of wonder. Instead of treating ‘wonder’ as a monolithic category, we present a typology, showing that wonders were not only recreative, but were meant to inspire Wilkins' readers to new mathematical inventions.

- by Koen Vermeir and +1
- •
- History, History of Science and Technology, Intellectual History, Cultural History
- by Francesco Ammannati
- •
- Economic History, Book History, Patents, History of Technology and Innovation

- by Julien Brault
- •
- Economic History, Macroeconomics, Political Economy, Health Economics
- by Guido Guerzoni
- •
- Modern History, Intellectual History, Economic History, Early Modern History
- by Timo Myllyntaus
- •
- Economic History, Renewable Energy, Nordic History, Transportation Studies

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as 'technological innovation' and 'commercialized innovation.' On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation (RRI) suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI.

Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, The European Guilds uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honourable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"--women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others--desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups--guild members and political elites. Exploring guilds' inner workings across eight centuries, The European Guilds shows how privileged institutions and exclusive networks shape the wider economy--for good or ill.

- by Sheilagh Ogilvie
- •
- European History, Medieval History, Quality Management, Early Modern History

What is an asset? How is something made into an asset? How is the boundary of an asset defined? What is the role of technoscience in this transformation? Assets can include things like intellectual property, land and natural resources, personality, emissions, infrastructure, etc. More and more STS scholars (and others) are puzzling over the specific techno-economic transformations entailed in the creation of an asset.

- by Kean Birch
- •
- History of Science and Technology, Sociology, Geography, Economic Geography

This study suggests that the origins of the economics of technical change go back to many years before Schumpeter’s contributions. The Scottish philosopher John Rae with his book Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, issued in 1834, put forward the basis of the Economics of innovation individuating the nature, causes of technological innovations (e.g., steam engine) and effects of technological progress on economic growth of nations. Rae also discusses the evolution and role of vital technologies for the wealth and employment in Europe and North America. Overall, then, Rae’s work is basic for the origin of the Economics of innovation, for defining the domain of this discipline and for explaining the effects of vital technologies in society. However, the conclusions of this study are tentative. There is need for much more detailed research into this research topic.

This talk presents the first outline of a new global history project on skilled migration in the early modern world which will study the interlinkages of migration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer by investigating the conditions for, and obstacles to, the successful application and diffusion of the knowledge and skills brought by immigrant experts in the early modern world, specifically including non-elite, non-European, and female migrants. Comparative across time and space it will contrast colonial and metropolitan case-studies from Britain, France, the Indian and the German princely states in the period 1680 to 1790, focussing on the most innovative manufacturing industries of the time which had close ties both to formal scientific enquiry and to state-support schemes in an age when nascent industrialisation coincided with interstate rivalries.

In this text, we will actually consider the early historical phases of the regional foie gras sector – that means a period that began in the late eighteenth-century with the first real developments of the commercial production of duck liver pies and ended with the invention of the liver block [bloc de foie gras] in the middle of the 1950’s
During this period, the South-West France foie gras industry grew assimilating innovations and using new transport systems to obtain its perishable raw material or to gain new markets and customers throughout the world easier. Logically, these first phases of the foie gras industry were also a time during which more or less successful firms specialized in fattened liver processing were founded. Prior to discussing these technological and capitalistic aspects of regional foie gras history, it is necessary to examine certain features of the foie gras that was processed by the industry. Foie gras processing is one of the latest step of a long agro-alimentary chain.

- by Frédéric Duhart
- •
- Gastronomy, Anthropology of Food, Food History, History Of Food Consumption

Article about new cultural heritage: I.E: LGBT and "Garage" heritage in US

- by Guido Guerzoni
- •
- Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Museum Studies