IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB757234929

The Shaping of Interwar Physics by Technology: The Case of Piezoelectricity (2018)

Science in Context
Volume: 31
Issue: 3
Pages: 321-350

URI: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/science-in-context/article/shaping-of-interwar-physics-by-technology-the-case-of-piezoelectricity/F911CA4E5025917D6BDCB31D486BE77A

DOI: 10.1017/S0269889718000248

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Research Science and society Piezoelectricity Science and technology, relationships Physics 20th century, early

Concentrating on the important developments of quantum physics, historians have overlooked other significant forces that shaped interwar physics, like that of technology. Based on the case of piezoelectricity, I argue that interests of users of technics (i.e. devices of methods) channeled research in physics into particular fields and questions relevant for industrial companies and governmental agencies. To recognize the effects of such social forces on physics, one needs to study the content of the scientific activity (both experimental and theoretical) of the researchers within its social and disciplinary contexts. By examining paths of individual scientists along with a study of the research in the field as a whole this paper exposes a range of reasons that led researchers to studies pertinent to technics. In particular, it shows that commercial, social, and military powers shaped interwar research through institutions aimed at fostering technology, some of them newly founded, and by a general view that academic research should help technology, a position that became more common at the time.

...More

Included in

Article Shaul Katzir (2018) Introduction: Physics, Technology, and Technics during the Interwar Period. Science in Context (pp. 251-261). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB757234929/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Lunteren, Fran H. van; Hollestelle, Marijn J.; (2013)
Paul Ehrenfest and the Dilemmas of Modernity (/isis/citation/CBB001321213/)

Article Katzir, Shaul; (2012)
Who Knew Piezoelectricity? Rutherford and Langevin on Submarine Detection and the Invention of Sonar (/isis/citation/CBB001251434/)

Article Katzir, Shaul; (2008)
From Ultrasonic to Frequency Standards: Walter Cady's Discovery of the Sharp Resonance of Crystals (/isis/citation/CBB000850601/)

Article Katzir, Shaul; (2010)
War and Peacetime Research on the Road to Crystal Frequency Control (/isis/citation/CBB000954000/)

Article Birch, Kean; (2013)
The Political Economy of Technoscience: An Emerging Research Agenda (/isis/citation/CBB001320493/)

Book Carrier, Martin; Nordmann, Alfred; (2011)
Science in the Context of Application (/isis/citation/CBB001251482/)

Article Stone, Herbert; (2014)
Sensory Evaluation in the Journal of Food Science---1936 to the Present (/isis/citation/CBB001320891/)

Article Neuenschwander, Dwight E.; (2010)
Bright Ideas: From Concept to Hardware in the First Lasers (/isis/citation/CBB001320778/)

Article Joseph D. Martin; (2017)
Prestige Asymmetry in American Physics: Aspirations, Applications, and the Purloined Letter Effect (/isis/citation/CBB816867246/)

Book Collins, Harry; (2013)
Gravity's Ghost and Big Dog: Scientific Discovery and Social Analysis in the Twenty-First Century (/isis/citation/CBB001213158/)

Book Bruce J. Hunt; (2021)
Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire (/isis/citation/CBB544275565/)

Book Paul J. Nahin; (2020)
Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable (/isis/citation/CBB042236017/)

Article Adriana Minor; (2020)
Up-and-down Journeys: The Making of Latin America's Uniqueness for the Study of Cosmic Rays (/isis/citation/CBB177980319/)

Thesis Edwards, Barrington Steven; (2001)
W. E. B. Du Bois, empirical social research and the challenge to race, 1868-1910 (/isis/citation/CBB001562601/)

Article Eckert, Michael; (2008)
Turbulenz -- ein problemhistorischer Abriss (/isis/citation/CBB000930722/)

Article Arapostathis, Stathis; Gooday, Graeme; (2013)
Electrical Technoscience and Physics in Transition, 1880--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001211898/)

Article Pesic, Peter; (2013)
Helmholtz, Riemann, and the Sirens: Sound, Color, and the “Problem of Space” (/isis/citation/CBB001320409/)

Article Sime, Ruth; (2013)
Marietta Blau: Pioneer of Photographic Nuclear Emulsions and Particle Physics (/isis/citation/CBB001320401/)

Article Anthony Lattis; (2020)
Constructing the Electric Eye: Situating the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Wisconsin Collection of Photoelectric Detectors in Historical Context (/isis/citation/CBB105949398/)

Article Nakajima, Hideto; (2013)
Depoliticization or Americanization of Japanese Science Studies (/isis/citation/CBB001201359/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}