Sławomir ŁotyszPolish Academy of Sciences | PAN · Institute for the History of Science
Sławomir Łotysz
Ph.D. (with Habilitation)
About
45
Publications
12,035
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
38
Citations
Introduction
Sławomir Łotysz is a professor of history at the Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences (since 2014). His research interests include history of technology and environmental history. He received his doctor degree and habilitation (second dissertation) in 2005 and 2014 respectively. In 2017-2021 he has been the President of International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC).
Additional affiliations
October 2014 - present
October 1998 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (45)
The invention of silk bullet-proof fabric, a response to growing violence and anarchy, and intended to protect politicians and public figures, as well as police officers and soldiers, is discussed in the wider context of the world’s political situation at the turn of the 19th century. The complex question of the ownership of this innovation is addr...
The history of technology is not as popular discipline in Poland as we might wish. An average scholar or student of either historical or technical sciences has probably not heard about ICOHTEC, its mission and goals. He or she would be more than surprised to learn that the first president of the Committee was a Polish professor, Eugeniusz Olszewski...
Global developments influence the concepts and content of scholarly research. The article aims to make these influences visible by analysing changes in the ideas and concepts of the history of technology. Thus, the paper presents different approaches to, and topics of, the history of technology, as developed by nine researchers, embedded in their c...
W 1931 r. miała w Polsce miejsce premiera utworu Odlewnia stali sowieckiego kompozytora Aleksandra Mosołowa. Kompozycja należała do popularnego wówczas nurtu „muzyka maszyn”. Wykonania tego utworu budziły duże emocje wśród polskiej publiczności nie tylko z uwagi na styl artystyczny, ale również na przekaz ideowy oraz poglądy polityczne kompozytora....
Abstract: Beginning in October 1941, a rumour circulated in the occupied territories and in the press of the free world that Jews deported from the ghettos were being sent to the Pripet Marshes for land reclamation. In reality, this was fake news created by the Nazis to cover up the ongoing Holocaust. The false claims reached the West through the J...
W 1936 r. pierwszym polskim filmem krótkometrażowym nagrodzonym na Festiwalu Filmowym w Wenecji zostało Polesie. Reportaż z krainy tęsknych pieśni w reżyserii Maksymiliana Emmera i ze zdjęciami Jerzego Maliniaka. Film doceniono za autentyzm, z jakim autorzy pokazali przyrodę i życie społeczne mieszkańców Polesia, podmokłej krainy we wschodniej częś...
Repair, reuse and disposal are closely interlinked phenomena related to the service lives and persistence of technologies. When technical artefacts become old and worn out, decisions have to be taken: is it necessary, worthwhile or even possible to maintain and repair, reuse or dismantle them – or must they be discarded? These decisions depend on f...
Repair, reuse and disposal are closely interlinked phenomena related to the service lives and persistence of technologies. When technical artefacts become old and worn out, decisions have to be taken: is it necessary, worthwhile or even possible to maintain and repair, reuse or dismantle them - or must they be discarded? These decisions depend on f...
Representing a crucial intervention in the history of internationalism, transnationalism and global history, this edited collection examines a variety of international movements, organisations and projects developed in Europe or by Europeans over the course of the 20th century. Reacting against the old Eurocentricism, many areas of scholarship have...
Unused Assets. International Aid and the Birth of Vocational Rehabilitation in Poland after the Second World War In 1946, at the request of the Polish government, UNRRA sent in two British experts in vocational rehabilitation to help establish the national framework of helping people with disabilities. During numerous meetings with government repre...
The paper is an analysis of the activities of Witold Odrzywolski, who in 1944 was the first Pole to produce penicillin - in a military hospital in the Middle East. The author also outlines the status of penicillin research at the time, the problems associated with the production of penicillin, and its use in military medicine in the final stages of...
Between the Lwa and Stwiga Rivers. Stanisław Kulczyński and His 1932 Plan for a Grand Natural Park in Pripet Marshes
In 1928, when the Bureau for the Project of Amelioration of Polesie (a large marshy area in the eastern part of interwar Poland) began its fi eld studies, environmental concerns were low on the list of its priorities. A year later, th...
Władysław Szafer and Józef Próchnik in a debate on environmental policy in Pripet Marshes
(Journal name: Analecta. Studia i Materiały z Dziejów Nauki, ISSN 1509-0957)
Shortly after Poland regained its independency in 1918, law was proposed that would comprehensively protect the environment. The idea was, however, considered somewhat premature, as...
The clothes iron is the most basic item of household equipment. It has been present in European homes for the last two hundred years; long enough to have become part of popular culture. The advent of electric irons in the first few decades of the 20th century was welcomed as a revolutionary change, making household duties less exhausting. Electric...
Shortly after Poland regained its independency in November 1918, the Chief of State Józef Pilsudski signed two decrees introducing the patent law in the country and bringing the Polish Patent Office into existence. In recent literature, the introduction of both decrees has been acknowledged as the starting point of legal patent protection in the in...
The trans-European waterway through Poland and the question of reclaiming the Polesie marshes in the interwar period
The reclamation of the Pinsk marshes, as envisaged in interwar Poland, was one of the most ambitious national investment projects of the era. The plan was closely linked with the concept of a trans-European waterway running through...
Journal title (thanks, Researchgate, for not letting to insert the title manually): Journal of the Social History of Medicine and Health (医疗社会史研究)
(In Chinese): In early 1946, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) announced a new program of building penicillin factories in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Be...
Unknown image of the reality of the occupation: the issue of rubber plant cultivation in recollections of Auschwitz female prisoners, farmers and children.
Between 1942 and 1943 the Nazis conducted experiments in occupied Poland attempting to cultivate Kazakh dandelion, a rubber producing plant originating in Central Asia. Botanical and chemical ex...
This article will focus on efforts to address the problem of sexually-transmitted disease among a maritime labour force in the first half of the twentieth-century as it became a core concern for a wide range of international health organizations. In focusing on those working on the Rhine it challenges existing accounts that have considered the plac...
第一次世界大战带来的影 响 之 一 是 性 病 在 欧 洲 商 船 水 手 间
的感染率显著上升。许多国家的政府和国 际 卫 生 组 织 尝 试 通 过 正 式
的合作来解决这一问题。1924年, 《布鲁塞尔协议》 签订,呼 吁 在
各缔约国的主要港口建立针对性病的 特 殊 医 疗 中 心, 于 是, 莱 茵 河
上的性病问题引起了人们 的 关 注。1936年,名 为 “莱 茵 河 委 员 会 ”
的机构建立,旨在解决这一问题。然而, 以 上 两 次 尝 试 均 未 取 得 很
大成效。但是,第二次世界大战之后, 新 莱 茵 河 委 员 会 成 立, 在 世
界卫生组织的指导下,其成效更为显著。 以 上 一 新 一 旧 两 个 莱 茵 河
委员会的工作告诉我们,在解决国际卫 生 问 题 时,...
In the first half of the 19 th century, when most of the European countries set their national railroad gauge standards to George Stephenson's 4ft 8½ in (or 1435 mm), Russia chose differently. Their tracks, with an 89 mm wider clearance between the rails, have become not only the base principle of a technological regime, but also an immanent part o...
The Polish national historiography remains silent on the reconstruction of damaged towns and cities that was undertaken by the German administration after capturing Poland in September 1939. This paper, on the war-time restoration of the National Economy Bank’s headquarters in Warsaw, is an attempt to at least partially fill the gap. Designed by ce...
The forty-first annual symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) was hosted by the Transylvania University of Brasov, Romania, from 29 July to 2 August 2014. The main theme, “Technology in Times of Transition,” was perfectly chosen for a meeting held in Eastern Europe, since over the past few decades the entir...
This collection presents twenty-two papers on the past, present, and future of railways in Eastern Europe. It originated from the September 2009 International Railway History Association conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. The topic was chosen to suit the location, and the resulting volume, Eastern European Railways in Transition, looks to be funda...
The continuous availability of this, the first antibiotic, was deemed necessary to combat the plague of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) ravaging war-torn Europe. However, the UNRRA initiative coincided with rising hostility between East and West, and was ultimately obstructed by the United States. The newly-established World Health Organisatio...
We all like to see historical photographs in scholarly books and articles. Usually they illustrate the story quite aptly, right? Well… But how often are the photographs in focus? How often do images of the past inspire us enough to go deeper into the story they tell us?
This presentation draws on the author’s own collection of historical photograph...
The International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) hosted its annual symposium under the auspices of the Twenty-fourth International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICHSTM), which was held in Manchester, UK, during 21–28 July 2013. This massive gathering, one of the largest to date in the history of the fie...
The annual meetings of the International Committee for the History of Technology are conceived primarily as forums of scholarly discussion between historians of technology from different countries. However, since ICOHTEC’s founding in 1968, members have always believed that a good social atmosphere facilitates and tightens scholarly interaction and...
Between 1944 and 1989 – the period of communist power in Poland – the national pharmaceutical market experienced several dramatic changes. The country was a prodigious importer of drugs following the Second World War, with a large portion of the medicine received being donated by various aid organisations. In the 1960s, Poland became a significant...
[first paragraphs from the abstract] The contribution of Polish-American inventors and engineers has not yet been thoroughly researched. The current scholarship in the history of technology, fails to explain how they contributed to development of science and industry in the United Sates. Additionally, although an extensive literature concerning the...
In 1946 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration offered six penicillin factories to Poland, Czechoslovakia and other East European countries that had been devastated by war. The plan was to deliver full equipment that would allow the launching of production using the most up to date and efficient technology. The key device in the pr...
The American home building program launched after the World War II, resulted with 10 million homes built in 10 years. That enormous success attracted considerable attention from foreign engineers and politicians from all over the world. Even those from Soviet block shared that admiration for American housing program in spite officially lauded claim...
Andrzej Paczkowski w wydanej w 1977 roku monografii zatytułowanej " Prasa polonijna w latach 1870-1939" , wskazywał na brak systematycznych badań treści i zawartości prasy polonijnej ukazującej się w Stanach Zjednoczonych 1. Poniższe opracowanie stanowi przyczynek do wypełnienia tej luki w zakresie prezentacji na łamach prasy polskojęzycznej w Amer...
The first tunnel made of segments, which were sunken and then merged under water, was built in 1896. It was a passage for conducting sewerage under Boston Harbor. The first tunnel for passenger traffic was constructed ten years later, also in the United States. Since then more than one hundred immersed tunnels of different size and length have been...
In early 1930s the newspapers and street journals in Europe and the United States were frequently reporting on a case of Zbigniew Dunikowski, a Polish engineer, who claimed to be in possession of a secret formula allowing production of gold from ordinary sand and rocks. He believed that most of those materials contain some particles of gold. For th...
The American home building program, that resulted with 10 millions homes built during ten years after World War II, attracted a considerably attention of all nations, including those from Soviet block. In late 1956, taking an advantage of the recent political thaw in Poland, a housing delegation, lead by vice minister Czeslaw Babinski, and celebrat...
When we are talking about urban space, we mostly think about a pattern of buildings and works of architecture framing the streets and the city's squares. But how do we consider the structures hidden out of sight of an ordinary pedestrian, like subway stations? Being a part of subterranean infrastructure, they were shaped mainly by engineers, accord...
Questions
Question (1)
Take a look at this Call for Papers the 43rd annual meeting of the International Committee for the History of Technology (July 26-30, 2016, Porto, Portugal)