Steven Walton

Michigan Technological University | MTU · Department of Social Sciences

A Cultural History of Objects in the Age of Industry covers the period 1760 to 1900, a time of dramatic change in the material world as objects shifted from the handmade to the machine made. The revolution in making, and in consuming the things which were made, impacted on lives at every scale from body to home to workplace to city to nation. Beyon...

This report is a Historic Resource Study (HRS) for Pullman National Monument. It is the third and final report in a series of studies for Pullman NM, including a White Paper1 and an Archaeological Overview and Assessment. 2 Michigan Technological University and the National Park Service initiated this work in November 2016 as part of the project en...

This Historic Resource Study is a Baseline Research Report for Pullman National Monument. This HRS summarizes the historical writings about Pullman, provides context for the significant themes identified in its founding document, collates collections of primary documents and historical resources that are important sources of information on those th...

The Archaeological Overview and Assessment (Archaeological O&A, or simply O&A) is a Baseline Research Report within the National Park Service's Culture Resource Management system. This report presents basic research results intended to help support planning regarding and management of park cultural resources, as well as supporting interpretive prog...

This is a duplicate entry in Research Gate. The other entry has the pdf of this report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337692657_Archaeological_Overview_and_Assessment_Pullman_National_Monument_Town_of_Pullman_Chicago_Illinois_Technical_Report_No_142 The Archaeological Overview and Assessment (Archaeological O&A, or simply O&A) is a Basel...

The category of “military mathematical practitioners” consists of those active soldiers and engineers who consciously broadcast their use of mathematical methods to achieve their goals in warfare. These are but a subset of mathematical practitioners more broadly, and they existed on a continuum from the practical to the theoretical, with each demon...

With the arrival of gunpowder in Europe in the 14th century, military practitioners were faced with a new challenge on the battlefield (though they initially tried to conceptualise the threat in old terms). They soon learned that gunpowder posed challenges for attacking the enemy as well as defending one's army or one's stronghold. This paper looks...

It has long been shown that medieval builders primarily used geometrical constructions to design medieval architecture. The thought processes involved, however, have been considered to be remote from the natural philosophical speculations of the Scholastics, who, following Aristotle, had taken the basis of physics to be the study of dynamics, or ch...

This book is devoted to the study of medieval manuscripts of a technical nature that provide information about manual activities such as textile industry, metallurgy, painting and illumination. The high level of specialization of these crafts involved the need to rely on recipe books, handbooks and treatises. These texts illustrate the various aspe...

GerbinoAnthony and JohnstonStephen, with a contribution by HiggottGordon, Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England, 1500–1750. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. 207. ISBN 978-0-300-15093-3. £30.00 (hardback). - Volume 44 Issue 2 - Steven A. Walton

Fortification became a geometrical science throughout the sixteenth century, and England struggled with where to find men expert in this new art to build or remodel its defenses. After initially importing and relying on Continental experts under Henry VIII, a tense arrangement, the state later turned to domestic experts who gained experience and he...

The West Point Foundry began as the brainchild of Gouverneur Kemble (1786-1875), who turned from his family's mercantile background to become an iron founder and in particular into an ordnance contractor for the US military. Kemble partnered with General Joseph Gardner Swift (1783-1865), his brother William Kemble (1795-1881), and a number of other...

Technology and Culture 47.1 (2006) 179-180 In his latest book, demographer John Landers turns his attention to the intersection of technology and economics, production, and people over the longue durée of the pre-industrial West. Taking as his focus the "organic economies" before the Industrial Revolution (those based principally on muscle power an...

The result of two conferences in the late 1990s, this volume on early modern military science offers a baker's dozen of first-rate essays from the leaders in the field. Arranged roughly chronologically, from Kelly DeVries's look at fourteenth- and fifteenth-century gunpowder fortification to Brett Steele's work on military "progress" and Enlightenm...

Technology and Culture 45.1 (2004) 168-170 For those working on early modern military technology, Ranier Leng has produced an indispensable work. Comparisons might even be made to George Sarton, Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, or Paul Kristeller, though it would be too much to say that Leng demonstrates quite their command of the sources. Neverthel...

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 47.2 (2004) 310-312 Pamela Long has written a rare book—in many senses of the word. It is rare that a scholar is able to master such a diverse array of topics, time periods, languages, and material. It is also rare to see such an ambitious project crossing so many disciplinary and chronological boundaries. The w...

The ancient philosopher Theophrastus (c.371-285 BC) described a gemstone called lyngurium, purported to be solidified lynx urine, in his work De lapidibus ('On Stones'). Knowledge of the stone passed from him to other classical authors and into the medieval lapidary tradition, but there it was almost always linked to the 'learned master Theophrastu...

The Renaissance saw the evolution of troop management, fortification and artillery into 'mathematical' sciences and those who practiced these tasks into 'mathematical practitioners'. These terms have been allowed to imply that these areas were deeply theoretical, whereas they varied from theoretical to simply numerical. Gunnery, in particular, tend...

Technology and Culture 41.4 (2000) 836-837 Medieval Warfare: A History. Edited by Maurice Keen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii+340; illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $40. This new history of warfare from the eighth through the fifteenth centuries provides an interesting synthesis of current and classic scholarship on the...

Technology and Culture 40.3 (1999) 715-716 In just over a century, reinforced concrete has developed from a material for very large flowerpots to an indispensable element in the construction of the modern infrastructure, particularly bridges. In the first half of this century its use was initially resisted, and even once accepted its exact role in...

Photographs of a freshwater harbour and contiguous wetlands were electronically scanned and then altered, to study effects of visual cues of water quality on various judgments. Subjects viewed the images on a computer monitor and indicated their ratings by clicking a ‘mouse’. Effects were assessed by between-group comparisons of responses to pictur...

Steven A. Walton, University of Toronto, swalton@chass.utoronto.ca

Steven A. Walton, Penn State University, sawalton@mtu.edu