Lehigh University Research Articles

Practical Measurement of X-ray Detection Performance of Large-Angle Silicon Drift Detectors Toward Quantitative Analysis in the Newly Developed 300 kV Aberration-Corrected Grand ARM

Journal Article Practical Measurement of X-ray Detection Performance of Large-Angle Silicon Drift Detectors Toward Quantitative Analysis in the Newly Developed 300 kV Aberration-Corrected Grand ARM Get access M Watanabe, M Watanabe Dept of Materials Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem. PA 18015 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar T Sasaki, T Sasaki JEOL Ltd., 3-1-2 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, 196-8558, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Y Jimbo, Y Jimbo JEOL Ltd., 3-1-2 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, 196-8558, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar E Okunishi, E Okunishi JEOL Ltd., 3-1-2 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, 196-8558, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar H Sawada H Sawada JEOL Ltd., 3-1-2 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, 196-8558, Japan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Microscopy and Microanalysis, Volume 21, Issue S3, 1 August 2015, Pages 1223–1224, https://doi.org/10.1017/S143192761500690X Published: 23 September 2015

Dawn of a New Era

Dawn of a New Era

Identification of Putative Co‐receptors for Neuropillin2a

The skeleton provides structure, allows movement, and protects organs from damage. The Iovine lab is interested in skeletal morphogenesis and uses the zebrafish regenerating caudal fin as a model. Prior findings show that the gap junction gene connexin43 (cx43) influences skeletal growth and patterning. A microarray analysis identified semaphorin3d (sema3d) as a downstream mediator of Cx43. Sema3d is a secreted signaling molecule that works through Neuropillin2a (Nrp2a) and PlexinA3 (PlxnA3) as cell surface receptors. Sema3d-Nrp2a influences cell proliferation (growth) while Sema3d-PlxnA3 influences joint formation (patterning). One current focus of the lab is to define Sema3d signaling pathways. The cytoplasmic domain of Nrp2a is relatively short, and is believed to require a co-receptor to transduce its signal. Candidate co-receptors include integrins itga1b, itgb1a, and itgb1b. By method of in situ hybridization we tested these candidates for co-expression with nrp2a in the regenerating fin. Indeed, each integrin was co-localized with nrp2a in the proliferating cells of the regenerating fin. Independently we identified candidate co-receptors from the AB9 cell line by isolating Nrp2a complexes. Mass spectrometry was utilized to identify putative binding partners. Remarkably, Itgb1b was identified. Therefore two independent analyses provide compelling evidence suggesting that Nrp2a and Itg1b function as co-receptors. Functional studies to demonstrate that this receptor influences cell proliferation are underway. This research was supported by Lehigh University Biosystems Dynamic Summer Institute (funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute).

분산 클러스터 메모리 기반 대용량 OWL Horst Lite 온톨로지 추론 기법

Current ontology studies use the Hadoop distributed storage framework to perform map-reduce algorithm-based reasoning for scalable ontologies. In this paper, however, we propose a novel approach for scalable Web Ontology Language (OWL) Horst Lite ontology reasoning, based on distributed cluster memories. Rule-based reasoning, which is frequently used for scalable ontologies, iteratively executes triple-format ontology rules, until the inferred data no longer exists. Therefore, when the scalable ontology reasoning is performed on computer hard drives, the ontology reasoner suffers from performance limitations. In order to overcome this drawback, we propose an approach that loads the ontologies into distributed cluster memories, using Spark (a memory-based distributed computing framework), which executes the ontology reasoning. In order to implement an appropriate OWL Horst Lite ontology reasoning system on Spark, our method divides the scalable ontologies into blocks, loads each block into the cluster nodes, and subsequently handles the data in the distributed memories. We used the Lehigh University Benchmark, which is used to evaluate ontology inference and search speed, to experimentally evaluate the methods suggested in this paper, which we applied to LUBM8000 (1.1 billion triples, 155 gigabytes). When compared with WebPIE, a representative mapreduce algorithm-based scalable ontology reasoner, the proposed approach showed a throughput improvement of 320% (62k/s) over WebPIE (19k/s).

China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing (1644–1911) by Anthony E. Clark (review)

Reviewed by: China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing (1644–1911) by Anthony E. Clark Gail King China’s Saints: Catholic Martyrdom during the Qing (1644–1911). By Anthony E. Clark. [Studies in Missionaries and Christianity in China.] (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2011. Pp. xvi, 270. $39.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-61146-145-9.) Little has been written on China’s Catholic Christian martyrs in English, particularly those from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the Chinese martyrs, for whom scarce documentation exists even in Chinese. Hence this volume supplies a noticeable lack in information about Catholic Christian martyrs in China and is a welcome addition to the field. Clark discusses methodology in the introduction, emphasizing the need to give an account that takes seriously the martyrs’ religious faith while observing academic objectivity. What he hopes to achieve, he states, is to retell the history of Catholic martyrs in China “… with equal respect for both the motives of martyrdom [End Page 184] and for the scholarly works that describe it” (p. 3). He notes the difficulties of dealing with the available sources—Chinese and Western, secular and religious. Chapter 1 is a very useful discussion of how the concept of Christian martyrdom was explained to Chinese Christians. Although in Western usage the word martyr is always understood to include the idea of being a witness for the faith, there is no Chinese equivalent of this concept. Martyrdom was mostly understood negatively in traditional Chinese society because once dead, a son could no longer carry out the sacrifices to the family or to his ancestors. Taught the Christian meaning of martyrdom, Chinese Christian martyrs died as witnesses and also believing that their death would lead them to a paradise very different from the bleak afterlife of the Chinese traditional view. Chapter 2 gives an overview of Catholic Christianity in China beginning with the legend of St. Thomas, the Nestorians of the Tang Dynasty, the Franciscans of the thirteenth century, the Jesuits and their arrival at the end of the sixteenth century with their accommodative approach and concern for Chinese culture, and the Rites Controversy. The chapter ends with a short overview of the Boxer Uprising and a review of the attitude of the Chinese Communists toward Christianity when the People’s Republic of China was established, foreshadowed by the killing of the monks at the monasteries of Our Lady of Consolation and Our Lady of Joy in 1947. Chapters 3 through 6 tell the stories of the martyrs, beginning with the Dominicans, then Jesuits, then Franciscans, and then martyrs from other missions. For each martyr, Clark summarizes what is known (which, for some of the Chinese Christians, is very little) and gives the background and events of their martyrdom. His decision to discuss the martyrs by religious order is probably due to the fact that China was evangelized by religious orders that were given the right to work in certain areas, and their priest missionaries were the ones who watched over the flocks in those areas. Still, a brief explanation of why this way of organizing the book was chosen would have been helpful. Otherwise, it seems, the religious order really has no connection with the fact of martyrdom, especially in the Boxer Uprising. This is a well-crafted book that provides the first English narrative of most of these martyrdoms. The inclusion of the controversy that erupted after Pope Saint John Paul II canonized the 100 martyrs on October 1, 2000, shows that the cultural differences and misunderstandings that lay at the roots of many of the martyrdoms in the earlier centuries still exist. [End Page 185] Gail King Brigham Young University Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

Ghana during the First World War: The Colonial Administration of Sir Hugh Clifford

Book Review| March 01 2015 Ghana during the First World War: The Colonial Administration of Sir Hugh Clifford Ghana during the First World War: The Colonial Administration of Sir Hugh Clifford, by Elizabeth Wrangham. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013; pp. 338, $50.00 paper. Kwame Essien Kwame Essien Lehigh University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of West African History (2015) 1 (1): 182–184. https://doi.org/10.14321/jwestafrihist.1.1.0182 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Kwame Essien; Ghana during the First World War: The Colonial Administration of Sir Hugh Clifford. Journal of West African History 1 March 2015; 1 (1): 182–184. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/jwestafrihist.1.1.0182 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressJournal of West African History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

America's First Chaplain: The Life and Times of the Reverend Jacob Duche

Journal Article America's First Chaplain: The Life and Times of the Reverend Jacob Duché Get access Kevin J. Dellape. (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2013. xxii, 209 pp. $75.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 4, March 2015, Pages 1255–1256, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav059 Published: 01 March 2015

Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations in Mathematics and Physics

1School of Mathematical Sciences, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China 2College of Mathematics and Information Science, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou 325035, China 3Department of Mathematics, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China 4Department of Mathematics, Lehigh University, 14 East Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA 5Department of Mathematics, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

Testing, Measurement, and Characterization of Nanomaterials

1School of Mechatronics Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA 3Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Lehigh University, PA 18015, USA 4Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7910, USA

Zen And The White Whale: A Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick by Daniel Herman (review)

ZEN AND THE WHITE WHALE: A Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick. By Daniel Herman. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press. 2014.Trying to catch Moby Dick the whale, like catching Melville's novel, can be a frustrating and often self-defeating quest. It is not simply the foundational great American novel (see Lawrence Buell's 2014 work, The Dream of the Great American Novel) but a text that cannot be contained by any geographic, disciplinary, or ideological boundaries. Yet, Daniel Herman has caught (or come as close as to catching it) in simply one of the most imaginative, creative, and fascinating academic works I have read in years.In Zen and the White Whale, Herman draws upon his experience and study of Japanese and Chinese Zen Buddhist traditions and writings as the lenses to explore the often illusive meanings of Melville's novel and its key characters. A reader can potentially drown in the speculative nature of Herman's text (and here I refer to the academic work, though the novel also has its casualties). Words and phrases like perhaps, maybe, or it is possible are linked with every one of Herman's assertions, but this is an academic detective novel immersed in the possible, not the actual. Herman is clear that little to no evidence is available to prove Melville was aware or deeply read Zen Buddhist writings (xiv). Ironically, seems to be the case that Melville's (unconscious) awareness of Buddhist principles was sharper before he was more formally exposed to them, as evidenced in some of his later writings (13). Moreover, in some cases, historical scholars can prove that American knowledge of Zen Buddhism was virtually nonexistent when Melville composed Moby Dick, and only imaginative leaps and educated guesses can point to encounters and interactions on Melville's peripatetic global journeys. But no matter: the confluence and mirror images or echoing ideas between Buddhist thought and Melville's novel are so eerie and interrelated that one could call Melville (or perhaps Ishmael) an anonymous Buddhist, if we employ Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's anonymous Christian terminology from the mid-twentieth century. Let me give a few succinct examples.Herman sees Ishmael as the embodiment of the Middle Way (141), where a self transcends the self, free of detachment or illusion or permanent naming. Call me Ishmael, the novel's famous opening, testifies to this fluid and contextual process. …

A Reading of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura by Lee Fratantuono

374 BOOK REVIEWS of heads varies from one to three to at least fifty and sometimes, despairingly, “many”.10 Contrast that with Cerberus presented in Greek art, where it is hard to find more than a single-digit number of heads. Obviouslyit was, and is, difficult to represent a very many heads. Thus the painter or sculptor had to rationalize implicitlynumerical traditions in the interest of art.Does implicitentail explicit? “Rationalization” and its cognates has never, to my knowledge, received a convincing discussion; classical studies takes it as a “given” that logical analysis then and now are identical.11 A case could be made that it is the wrong word, via the enormous amount of work done in the social sciences on rationality, particularly but not exclusively, in its relation to “magic”. If Hawes errs here, it is in company with virtually all classicists, including, but not limited to, E. R. Dodds in his The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951). Still, facilis descenus; classicists would profit greatly from considering the excellent studies of rationality from scholarsin other disciplines.12 That most of this review considers the implications of Hawes’ book betokens my admiration. Her approach based on the texts leads to her conclusion that rationalization of Greek myth was not destructive. My approach based on the nature of scientific and religious “knowledge” concludes that no rationalization could ipso facto be destructive. Our approaches complement each other; I eagerlyanticipate further fruits from her research. In nuce: tolle lege. C.ROBERT PHILLIPS III Lehigh University, prof.robert.phillips@gmail.com * * * * * A Reading of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. By LEE FRATANTUONO. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. Pp. xii + 510. Hardcover, $140.00. ISBN 978-14985-1154-4. Fratantuono’s new book takes the form of a running commentary on the whole of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Unfortunately, this means that the author offers 10 West onHes. Th. 311; Frazer on Apollodorus 2.5.12. 11 Geoffrey Lloyd has come close in his Magic, Reason and Experience Cambridge 1979, chapter four, especially 122–125. 12 Bryan Wilson, ed., Rationality (Oxford,1979). BOOK REVIEWS 375 no central argument for the reader to evaluate. Specialists will nevertheless benefit from consulting this book, not least because Fratantuono often canvasses the range of scholarly opinions regarding points of contention in the DRN (e.g. on lines 44–49 of the first book, 20–21) and because his commentary on most sections of the poem includes footnotes with the most relevant bibliography published through 2014. Fratantuono’s Lucretius is divided into six chapters, one for each book of the DRN. Each chapter advances systematically though the book it treats, section by section. In this respect his new book is just like his earlier volumes on the Aeneid, Metamorphoses, and Pharsalia. Fratantuono offers many insightful comments here and there, though these are often disconnected from one another. Owing to this format, it is impossible for a review of this length to offer total coverage of what Fratantuono has to say about Lucretius. In what follows, then, I will highlight suggestionsand themestowhich Fratantuono frequentlyreturns. One of Fratantuono’s more novel arguments is that Lucretius repeatedly introduces the concept of pietas, which at times the poet would seem implicitly to endorse, only to attack it at others. Such an attack is part of the more sustained criticism of religio in the poem. According to Fratantuono, Lucretius’ pietas is founded on rigid reciprocity between gods and humans and between friends and family. Fratantuono sometimes suggests that Lucretius relies on this notion of pietas to support his criticisms of human irrationality, as he does, for instance, to prove that our earth was not the result of divine providence (323–324) or to lambaste the excessive religiosity of those smitten with love (292). But Fratantuono also suggests that Lucretius views pietas positively, at least when the poet highlights its absence in human society. So, for instance, the vinedresser at the end of DRN 2 laments the moral deterioration that attends the abandonment of pietas in recent times (148–149) or the Athenian who stays with his afflicted familyand friendsin the faceofcertain death isdescribed as optimus (467–473). It would be unfair to conclude on this...

Making the Modern Fan: Readerships and Aesthetics in Austen Studies

RAFF, SARAH. Jane Austen's Erotic Advice. Oxford & New York: Oxford UP, 2014. RAW, LAURENCE, and ROBERT G. DRYDEN, eds. Global Jane Austen: Pleasure, Passion and Possessiveness in the Jane Austen Community. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DUQUETTE, NATASHA, and ELISABETH LENCKOS, eds. Jane Austen and the Arts: Elegance, Propriety and Harmony. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2014. Taken together, Jane Austen's Erotic Advice, Global Jane Austen, and Jane Austen and the Arts provide snapshot of some current preoccupations of scholars of Austen and her contemporaries. Following on studies ranging from Janeites (2000), edited by Deidre Lynch, to Claudia Johnson's Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures (2012), in different ways Raff, Raw, and Dryden all engage with the Austen fandom. Sarah Raff's monograph explains the devotion of the Janeite as only the latest demonstration of the rhetorical power Austen consciously experimented with from her youth; Laurence Raw and Robert Dryden's contributors analyze Austen's popular reception and adaptation across mediums throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Natasha Duquette and Elisabeth Lenckos's interdisciplinary anthology likewise situates Austen's work within wide-ranging frame, though in this case centered around eighteenth-century aesthetic theory as well as musical and other cultural practices. Sarah Raff's Jane Austen's Erotic Advice is scholarly gem: beautifully written, theoretically sophisticated, erudite, and in command of its subject from the eighteenth through to the twenty-first centuries. This monograph draws connections between diverse texts and phenomena, in and of themselves familiar, but given new importance when considered together. Raff's opening insight is that the modern-day Austen devotee, longing for an Austen to script her life and loves, is recasting of that familiar eighteenth-century literary type, the female Quixote. Raff contends that the conviction that today's fans possess, that Austen somehow understands their problems and that her novels are coded guides directing them to happiness and romantic fulfillment, taps into deep truth: Austen the novelist did in fact write advice manuals, though of peculiar, groundbreaking sort. Austen's plots disable critiques of Quixotism by showing that what poses as its opposite, sober didacticism, is in fact its double, since both depend on forms of literary seduction. In Raff's reading, Austen's signal achievement is her extension, particularly in her later novels, to include the reader her or himself in this process. Austen thus achieves unparalleled success in creating state of happy erotic anticipation (164). Raff reaches this conclusion through the deployment of comprehensive literary references, rhetorical analysis, and biographical episodes. The argument closely examines the logic and linguistic structure of the generalization--such as the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice--to show how such pronouncements are essential to both didactic novels and Quixote-inducing narratives. And precisely through its claim as a truth universally acknowledged, the generalization punctures the wall between the fictional world and the world of the reader, promising that, if applied in the real world, it will facilitate the same satisfying outcomes at which the courtship plot aims. After presenting the history of the study's key terms, Raff provides detailed scrutiny of Austen's last four published novels. At first glance, what Raff calls the vanishing narrator of Pride and Prejudice seems to obviate her initial claims about the erotic relation between Austen as author and her readership. Raff's discussion shows, however, that this particular text anticipates Austen's subsequent narrative choices by casting character--Darcy--as the master of the generalization. Elizabeth Bennet's dawning attraction to the hero is concomitant with her realization that he, not those in her neighborhood or her father, knows in the broadest sense the views and expectations of polite society. …

To plant or not to plant? Results from a century-long forest planting experiment

Understanding the long-term affects of management strategies on secondary forest development is particularly important as reforestation and afforestation efforts gain momentum. A forest plantation established in 1915, and left with no active management for a century, was recently rediscovered in eastern Pennsylvania and provides unique insight on the long-term effects of planting on forest succession. The initial planting arrangement of the Lehigh University Experimental Forest, in 43 monospecific and bispecific plots, left a strong legacy on the community composition and forest structure even after 100 years. The legacy of planting was also evident in differing spatial distribution of trees and recruitment dynamics in the LUEF when compared to a non-planted, unmanaged secondary forest.

Experimental and Analytical Study of Water-Driven Debris Impact Forces on Structures1

Water-driven debris generated during tsunamis and hurricanes can impose substantial impact forces on structures that are often not designed for such loads. This paper presents the design and results of an experimental and analytical program to quantify these potential impact forces. Two types of prototypical debris are considered: a wood log and a shipping container. Full-scale impact tests at Lehigh University (LU) were carried out with a wooden utility pole and a shipping container. The tests were carried out in-air. The purpose of these tests was to provide baseline, full-scale results. Because of size limitations, a 1:5 scale shipping container model was used for in-water tests in the Oregon State University (OSU) large wave flume. These tests were used to quantify the effect of the fluid on the impact forces. Results from both experimental programs are presented and compared with analytical predictions. The predictions are found to be in sufficient agreement such that they can be used for design. A fundamental finding is that the impact forces are dominated by the structural impact, with a secondary effect provided by the fluid. Both forces are quantified in the paper.

John Craig William Keating: A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949-1989. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012; pp. 305.

John Craig William Keating: A Protestant Church in Communist China: Moore Memorial Church Shanghai, 1949-1989. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2012; pp. 305.

Philip Drinker

Philip Drinker

Thermodynamics and Kinetics of ThreeMg−H−VNComplexes in Mg:GaN from Combined First-Principles Calculation and Experiment

Donghwa Lee, Brandon Mitchell, Y. Fujiwara, and V. Dierolf Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue L-413, Livermore, California 94550, USA Lehigh University, Physics Department, 16 Memorial Drive E, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, USA Osaka University, Division of Materials and Manufacturing Science, 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan (Received 23 December 2013; revised manuscript received 28 February 2014; published 20 May 2014)

Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer. By Candace Bailey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. - Music, Women, and Pianos in Antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: The Moravian Young Ladies’ Seminary. By Jewel A. Smith. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008.

Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer. By Candace Bailey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. - Music, Women, and Pianos in Antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: The Moravian Young Ladies’ Seminary. By Jewel A. Smith. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2008. - Volume 8 Issue 2

Deciphering Poe: Subtexts, Contexts, Subversive Meanings

Deciphering Poe: Subtexts, Contexts, Subversive Meanings

Our Technological Age, from the Inside Out

Our Technological Age, from the Inside Out Rosalind Williams (bio) From Context to Big Questions The spirit of come-one-come-all has long pervaded our fair society. It is evident in the warm hospitality of our annual meetings, in the carefully chosen title of our journal Technology and Culture, and in founding father Melvin Kranzberg’s tireless invocation of the “contextual history of technology” without specifying any limits or rules as to what context might include. Nevertheless, I have to admit that at times I feel like an imposter among my friends and colleagues here. I may come from a family of engineers, but I myself majored in a combined history and literature program as an undergraduate, wrote a senior thesis on Methodist hymns and Romantic poetry, got a doctorate in intellectual history, avoided math and science courses, never took a course in the history of technology, and never studied with a historian of technology. The ways I have pursued the history of technology work around these embarrassing deficiencies and all too obviously display my apparently unrelated obsessions. Consequently, being awarded the da Vinci Medal feels like an out-of-body experience: this can’t be happening to me! My great pleasure and privilege is to accept this medal on behalf of all SHOT members who also wonder if they belong here. If the society so honors me, then it reaffirms that the SHOT tent is bigger and stronger than ever, and that your deficiencies and obsessions are still welcome here. The remarks that follow are intended to promote such inclusion by suggesting that some humanistic obsessions—notably consciousness and language—do not necessarily result in weak versions of the history of technology but in different and arguably sometimes stronger versions. [End Page 461] A generation ago, in the early 1990s, SHOT’s generous spirit of inclusion gave rise to a debate about contextualism that has never really reached a conclusion, and probably never should. It arose from the publication in 1988 of an edited volume titled In Context: History and the History of Technology—Essays in Honor of Melvin Kranzberg, edited by Stephen Cutcliffe and Robert Post and published upon Mel’s retirement by Lehigh University Press. Three years later, in 1991 (the wheels of the academy can turn slowly), my MIT colleague Leo Marx published a review of the book in the pages of Technology and Culture. At the end of the first paragraph, Leo rather disingenuously raised what he claimed to consider a simple question: What is the rationale for distinguishing the history of technology from history? More generally, what is the rationale for distinguishing specialized histories from general history? Leo Marx was not arguing that technology is unimportant in history. On the contrary, he was arguing that it is so pervasive and influential that it cannot be bracketed off as a special category in the same way that, say, the history of music, or of mathematics, or even the history of science, could be so distinguished. The boundaries of technology are unusually obscure, he proposed, for there is no human activity that does not involve it: “If we grant the claims of the contextualists, how can we justify segregating the history of technology … from the history of the societies and cultures that shape it?”1 Broadening the concept of technology to that of “technological systems,” as had been done in the 1980s, only underscored (in Leo’s view) the lack of a rationale for making this a specialized inquiry. He quoted a remark made by Mel Kranzberg: “We call ours a ‘technological age.’ … How did it get that way? That indeed is the major question that the history of technology attempts to answer.”2 Leo agreed with the centrality of the question. He did not, however, accept Mel’s tacit assumption that its answer would be found in artifacts or processes commonly referred to as technological. Instead, Leo claimed, the most respected scholars who had taken up this question—he listed among others Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, and Thomas Parke Hughes—were open to the possibility that the answer lay in “a culturally nurtured propensity to mechanize as many aspects of life as possible.” Marx...