The animated diagram an engine showing the triple-expansion transfer of heat from one cylinder yo another the warmest colors being red and orange to the cooler colors being yellow and blue, and the exhaust of waste heat. The performance of such an engine is more efficient because it reuses the waste heat from the initial cylinder to a second and third chamber. Such a heat transfer mechanism is called cogeneration of power. To keep the force of the engine's output in an operationally efficient range of performance a flywheel is attached to propel the drive shaft and is seen on the far right.
By studying the performance of simple expansion engines -- or steam engines, the French inventor Sadi Carnot dicovered one of three laws of thermodynamics which are a basic concept in physics.
Among the many ways of knowing, consider these four:
spiritual & speak
How do machines alter our responses?
Draw or sketch the machines you see on campus:
Then try to Diagram how one of these machines work.
Read aloud a key passage from Pacey or Pursell on how a machine works:
What aspect, or facet of machinery did you describe in the drawing?
Are we responsible for our machinery or can we blame tools for the damages that they are associated with?
Automobile accidents and "no fault insurance."
Airline disasters, delays or cancellations.
Northeastern blackout, electrical power failures.
Nuclear power plants such as Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl.
Industrial Accidents, mining collapse, explosions.
Train wrecks or oil spills.
Read aloud contrasting or complementary passages from Pacey and Pursell on how a machinery affected the people who use or did use it:
Speech is of course a technology that acted as a means of transforming the tools used by early peoples.
How is reading different from reading a passage aloud?
Key dates & words:
• 1453 Copernican revolution
was one of the origins of the mechanical worldview.
1687 Newtonian mathematics
1763 Watt perfects Newcomen’s engine
1803 Oliver Evan’s steam engine
1898 Marconi’s "wireless" electricity
Background:
Domestication of space and time transformed culture.
Social organization of urban craftsmen depended on agriculture.
Mechanical worldview spread with inventions of new machinery.
Population growth from 1600 - 1850 doubled as a consequence.
Content:
Mechanization of work was followed by harnessing new forms of energy: wind, water, steam, petroleum:
What do industrial machines do to families, work, home & recreation?
preindustrial decline in family size & rise in illegitimacy
gender equity & family employment in factory work
piece work and clock work as forms of compensation
growth in the size of & specialization within the household
social dislocation (job loss) & leisurely pastimes
Imagery of God turned from a "Good Shepherd" to a "clock-maker."
Case: Railways, imperialism and financial speculation.
Pacey’s
"dreams" and
Pursell’s nightmares
of a perfect mechanical world!
Automation of machinery & the ideology of persuasion.
Bureaucracy and the social reorganization of work.
The elevation of science and precision as a cultural value was embodied in railways.
New concepts:
technological determinism & the reification of techniques
idea of progress in the Eighteenth Century’s "Enlightenment" highly figurative character and fanatic beliefs associated with "ideology"
Lesson: "Every silver lining has its cloud."
We have often substituted technology for purpose, relying on an abundance of energy or resources to ignore the consequences of our inability to fairly meet each other’s needs.
Forestry practices like clear cutting on this Oregon hillside is an example of industrial impacts of resource extraction for timber. Railroads needed enormous amounts of timber in the last century.
Technology may give us the capacity, and may encourage us to take the liberty to act, but should we be constrained only by the tools we are using, or is there another guide to control the material we have invented from making important decisons for us?
Course overview and Techological Complexes
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Tools of Toil: what to read. | ||
| Tools are historical building blocks of technology. | ||
