History of Technology

Information is arranged by topics and includes links to relevant books and article, especially those available on line. Some books and article will require being logged into the university's network.  The tables following each topic include links to relevant Wikipedia articles.  This page will be updated often, feel free to suggest any additions or corrections.

| General | Inventions and Inventors | Science Fiction |  Guns, Germs & Steel Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Agriculture | Writing | Mathematics | Cities and Civilization | Food Preparation and Storage | Materials | Clocks | Observation and Measurement | Navigation | Medicine | Voting Technology | Money and Banking | Factories and the Industrial Revolution | Cotton | Telegraph, Facsimile and Telephone | Networks: The Internet and its Predecessors | Personal Computers | Business Computers and Data Management | Vacuum Tubes, Transistors and Integrated Circuits | Computer Software and Programs | Artificial Intelligence | Typewriters, Printers and Copiers | Newspaper and Book Publishing | Music, Sound and Audio Recording | Photography, Motion Pictures and Video | Radio, Radar and Television | Steam Engines and Turbines | Horses | Land and Water Transportation | Internal Combustion Engine | Automobiles and Highways | Aviation | Rockets and Space Travel | Artificial Illumination | Household Technology | Wood and Biomass | Coal | Petroleum | Electricity | District Heating | Batteries and Electric Storage | Natural Gas | Nuclear Energy | Hydropower | Geothermal | Solar | Wind | Green New Deal |

Other On-Line Resources
| Internet Archive | Wayback Machine | Google | Google Books | HathiTrust | Encyclopædia Britannica | Encyclopedia.com | River Campus Libraries Databases |

General References
A Timeline of Very Bad Future Predictions

History of Technology (Brittanica)

International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC)

Society for the History of Technology (SHOT)

Technology and Culture (Journal)

1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (Published in many editions)

1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, by Thorstein Veblen

1931 Only Yesterday An Informal History Of The Nineteen Twenties, by Frederick Lewis Allen

1939 Since Yesterday:  The 1930s in America, by Frederick Lewis Allen

1952 The Big Change, by Frederick Lewis Allen

1964 Quest for America, 1810-1824, edited by Charles L. Sanford
Original documents about steamboat explosions, waterworks, etc

1969 Theatre of the world by Frances A. Yates

1988 Nuts and bolts of the past : a history of American technology, 1776-1860, by David Freeman Hawke

1990 Technology in America, edited by Carroll W. Pursell, Second Edition | first edition |

1997 A social history of American technology, by Ruth Schwartz Cowan

2000 The machine in the garden: technology and the pastoral ideal in America, by Leo Marx

2007 Technology in Postwar America: A History, by Carroll Pursell

2007 The Machine in America:  A Social History of Technology by Carroll Pursell

2022 From Leonardo to the Internet, by Thomas J. Misa and Jonathan Todd Ross (recorded book)

Inventions and Inventors
1994 Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty, by Robert Friedel

2015 Eureka: how invention happens, by Gavin Weightman

2018 How WWI Made the Zipper a Success  

2019 One hundred patents that shaped the modern world, by David Segal

2025 "The Genius Whose Simple Invention Saved Us From Shame at the Gas Station," The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2025

Science Fiction
ca. 200 A True History, by Lucian of Samosata.  The first science fiction book.

1865 From the Earth to the Moon: Direct in Ninety-seven Hours and Twenty Minutes by Jules Verne (1890 edition)

Guns, Germs, & Steel, Episode 1 - Out of Eden
Episode 1 Video (YouTube)

Study shows ancient contact between Polynesian and South American peoples

Agriculture
2011 Agriculture in World History, by Mark B. Tauger

2015 Foods that changed history: how foods shaped civilization from the ancient world to the present, by Christopher Cumo

Guns, Germs & Steel, Episode 2 - Conquest
Episode 2 Video (YouTube)

2018 Ancient civilizations of the New World, by Richard E. W. Adams

Diverse variola virus (smallpox) strains were widespread in northern Europe in the Viking Age

Writing
1883 The penman's hand-book : for penmen and students, embracing a history of writing ... many complete alphabets, by George A. Gaskell

1916 A History of Paper-manufacturing in the United States, 1690-1916, by Lyman Horace Weeks

2001 Paper before print: the history and impact of paper in the Islamic world, by Bloom, Jonathan

2012  The Evolution of Global Paper Industry 1800¬2050: A Comparative Analysis

2013 American Paper Mills, 1690–1832: A Directory of the Paper Trade with Notes on Products, Watermarks, Distribution Methods, and Manufacturing Techniques by John Bidwell

Mathematics
2013 The history of mathematics: a brief course, by Roger Cooke

2013 When Computers Were Human, by David Alan Grier
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.

2016 Hidden figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race, by Margot Lee Shetterly
Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America's aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens."

2016 Quite right: the story of mathematics, measurement, and money, by Norman Biggs

2017  A brief history of mathematical thought, by Luke Heaton

2020 "Technology and Mathematics," by Sven Ove Hansson, Philosophy & Technology 33:117–139(2020)
Modern technology would be unthinkable without mathematics.

Cities and Civilization
1868 The History of Civilization, by Amos Dean, 7 volumes

1935 The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant, 11 volumes

1990 The Rise of Cities

2004 The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation, by John M. Hobson

2014 How the West won: the neglected story of the triumph of modernity, by Rodney Stark

Guns, Germs & Steel, Episode 3 - Into the Tropics
Episode 3 Video (YouTube)

Food Preparation and Storage
2000 The Cambridge World History of Food

Materials
1939 The history of paper merchandising in New York city, by Blaine S. Britton

2012 Concrete and Culture : A Material History, by Adrian Forty

2020 Pentagon, Lynas sign contract to kick off design work for U.S. rare earths facility

Clocks
2002  Empires of time: calendars, clocks, and cultures, by Anthony F. Aveni

2005 History of Time : A Very Short Introduction, by Leofranc Holford-Strevens

2009 Shaping the Day : A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800, by Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift

Observation and Measurement
1882 Modern metrology; a manual of the metrical units and systems of the present century, by Lowis D'Aguilar Jackson

1965 About measurement, by Margaret Friskey

1995  Longitude, by Dava Sobel

1997 Greenwich time and the longitude, by Derek Howse

2005 The illustrated longitude, by Dava Sobel

2017 Time and Time Again: Determination of longitude at sea in the 17th Century, by Richard De. Grijs

2018 History and Measurement of the Base and Derived Units, by Steven A. Treese

2020 Metric/Imperial Conversion Errors

2020 "America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them," by Alanna Mitchell, The New York Times, August 18, 2020, Page D1

Navigation
1903 Latitude and longitude: how to find them, by W. J. Millar

1995  Longitude, by Dava Sobel

2002 The riddle of the compass: the invention that changed the world, by Amir D Aczel

2017 Time and Time Again:  Determination of longitude at sea in the 17th Century, by Richard de Grijs

Medicine
1946 Penicillin and other antibiotic agents, by Wallace E. Herrell

1993 Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine: a brief description 

1997 Western medicine : an illustrated history  

2002 The History of Medicine by Lisa Yount

2006 The History of Medicine by Michael Woods

2015 Discovering tuberculosis: a global history, 1900 to the present, by Christian W. McMillen

Filtration of Public Water Supplies

Disinfection of Public Water Supplies

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, on JSTOR

National Library of Medicine

Voting Technology
1894 "Voting by Machinery," Scientific American 71(21):325 (November 24, 1894) | pdf |

Jacob H. Myers of Rochester, inventor of the Automatic Voting Machine  

Money and Banking
2012 Money and its origins, by Shahzavar Karimzadi

2013 A history of money, by Glyn Davies

Factories and the Industrial Revolution
1864 A History of American Manufactures, from 1608 to 1860: Exhibiting ... Comprising Annals of the Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures and Useful Arts, with a Notice of the Important Inventions, Tariffs, and the Results of Each Decennial Census, Volume 1, by John Leander Bishop | Volume 2 | Volume 3 |

1865 Lives of Boulton and Watt: Principally from the Original Soho Mss. Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Steam Engine, by Samuel Smiles

1995 "Industries of old put Flour City on the map," by Sally Parker, Rochester business Journal, December 29, 1995

2008 Industrial Enlightenment: Science, technology and culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, by Peter Jones

2013 Liberty's Dawn : A People's History of the Industrial Revolution, by Emma Griffin

2013 Cotton: the fabric that made the modern world, by Giorgio Riello

2014 Industrialization in the Modern World : From the Industrial Revolution to the Internet, by John Hinshaw and Peter N. Stearns

Cotton
1835 History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain : with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe : a description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain, and a view of the present state of the manufacture and the condition of the classes engaged in its several departments, by Sir Edward Baines

1836 Memoir of Samuel Slater: the father of American manufactures : connected with a history of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in England and America, with remarks on the moral influence of manufactories in the United States, by George Savage White and Levi Woodbury

1845 Considerations on the Cultivation, Production and Consumption of Cotton: Connected with the Questions of Currency, Credit, Commerce and Banking : Addressed to the Cotton Manufacturers of Massachusetts, by Henry Lee

1853 Cotton: A Paper on the Growth, Trade, and Manufacture of Cotton, by J. G. Dudley

1855 Cotton is king, or, The culture of cotton: and its relation to agriculture, manufactures and commerce; to the free colored people; and to those who hold that slavery is in itself sinful, by David Christy

1858 Cotton is king, or, The culture of cotton: and its relation to agriculture, manufactures and commerce; to the free colored people; and to those who hold that slavery is in itself sinful, by David Christy

1860 Cotton is king, and pro-slavery arguments: comprising the writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this important subject

1860 First Report to the Cotton Planters' Convention of Georgia, on the Agricultural Resources of Georgia, by Joseph Jones

1862 The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observation on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States : Based Upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations, Volume 1, by Frederick Law Olmsted | Volume 2 |

1863 Cotton, not slavery, the immediate cause of the Rebellion : speech of Hon. Amasa Walker, of Massachusetts, on the Indemnity bill, delivered in the House of Representatives, Feb. 18, 1863. by Amasa Walker | also in the Congressional Globe, February 18, 1863, Pages 1083-1084.

1863 Introduction and Early Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in the United States, by Samuel Batchelder

1868 Cotton Culture, by Joseph B. Lyman

1923 Cotton and the Cotton Market, by W. Hustace Hubbard

1960 Historical statistics of the United States, colonial times to 1957

1981 Transatlantic industrial revolution: the diffusion of textile technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s, by David J. Jeremy

2005 Inventing the cotton gin: machine and myth in antebellum America, by Angela Lakwete

2009 Cotton and race in the making of America: the human costs of economic power, by Eugene R. Dattel

2009 The fragile fabric of Union : cotton, federal politics, and the global origins of the Civil War, by Brian Schoen

2014 The half has never been told: slavery and the making of American capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist

Why Was Cotton ‘King’? by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Telegraph, Facsimile and Telephone
1852 The electric telegraph: its history and progress, by Edward Highton

1859 The Telegraph Manual: A Complete History and Description of the Semaphoric, Electric and Magnetic Telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, Ancient and Modern, by Taliaferro Preston Shaffner

1882 The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States, Volume 1, by William Rattle Plum | Volume 2 |

1911 The History of the Telephone, by Herbert Newton Casson

1924 Cables and Wireless and Their Role in the Foreign Relations of the United States, by George Abel Schreiner

1937 The world's first emergency telephone number (999) was launched in London.

1976 Telephone: the first hundred years, by John Brooks

1979 This great contrivance: the first hundred years of the telephone in Rochester, by F. L. Howe

1992 Endless Voices: The Story of Rochester Tel, Rochester Telephone Corporation, Rochester, New York, by F. L. Howe

1994 America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, by Claude S. Fischer

1998 The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's on-Line Pioneers, by Tom Standage

2010 Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, by Richard R. John

2015 Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine, by Jonathan Coopersmith | also here |

2018 The Victorian internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's on-line pioneers, by Tom Standage | also here |

Networks:  The Internet and its Predecessors
1995 A Brief History of the Internet : The Bright Side: the Dark Side, by Michael Hart and Maxwell Fuller

1998 Media technology and society: a history from the telegraph to the Internet, by Brian Winston

2010 A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, by Johnny Ryan

2012 Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum

2014 Digital wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet, by Charles Arthur

2015 How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network, by Shane M. Greenstein

2017 The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, by Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland

2018 The Victorian internet : the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century's on-line pioneers, by Tom Standage

The Whole Earth on CD-ROM in HyperCard in Your Browser

Personal Computers
2014 Fire in the valley: the birth and death of the personal computer, by Michael Swaine, Michael and Paul Freiberger

2017 Infographic: A Simple History of a Personal Computer (timeline with pictures)

2018 A people's history of computing in the United States, by Joy Lisi Rankin

2022 "The Commodore 64 at 40: back to the future of video games," The Guardian, August 24, 2022

Computer History Museum

Computer Museum of America

Business Computers and Data Management
2012 A Brief History of Computing, by Gerard O'Regan

2014 Computer: a history of the information machine, by Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, Jeffrey Yost and Nathan Ensmenger

2014 It began with Babbage: the genesis of computer science, by Subrata Dasgupta

2017 The Turing Guide, by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, and Robin Wilson

2020 The First Computers: History and Architectures, by Raúl Rojas and Ulf Hashagen

2020 Cosmic rays may soon stymie quantum computing

Computer History Museum

Computer Museum of America 

Vacuum Tubes, Transistors and Integrated Circuits
2020 "The incredible shrinking machine,". The Economist. July 18, 2020.
A new material promises chips that will pack in more miniature circuits

Computer Software and Programs
2003 From airline reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: a history of the software industry, by Martin Campbell-Kelly

2014 Bill Gates: a biography, by Michael B. Becraft

2014 The technical and social history of software engineering, by Capers Jones

2015 The software paradox: the rise and fall of the commercial software market, by Stephen O'Grady

Artificial Intelligence
2020 "Reality Check," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Not So Big," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Algorithms and Armies," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Brain Scan an AI for an Eye," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Machine Learning," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Road Block," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "Autumn in Coming," The Economist, June 13, 2020

2020 "AI Slays Top F-16 Pilot In DARPA Dogfight Simulation," by Theresa Hitchens, Breaking Defense, August 20, 2020

Typewriters, Printers and Copiers
1909 The History of the Typewriter: Being an Illustrated Account of the Origin, Rise and Development of the Writing Machine, by George Carl Mares

1918 The Early History of the Typewriter, by Charles Edward Weller

1949  The Story Of The Typewriter From The Eighteenth To The Twentieth Centuries, by Rupert T. Gould

2000 The typewriter : an illustrated history  

2018 Woman's Place Is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers, 1870-1930, by Margery W. Davies

Newspaper and Book Publishing
2002 The Gutenberg revolution : the story of a genius and an invention that changed the world, by John Mann

2008  Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press by Diana Childress

Music, Sound and Audio Recording
2003 Recorded Music in American Life : The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945, by William Howland Kenney

2005 Always Already New : Media, History, and the Data of Culture, by Lisa Gitelman

2009 The Cambridge companion to recorded music, by Nicholas Cook

2013 The Inventor of Stereo, by Robert Alexander

2013 Digital Audio and Compact Disc Technology, 2nd Edition, by Luc Baert, Luc Theunissen and Guido Vergult

2020 Gender in Music Production, by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, Jay Hodgson, Liesl King, Mark Marrington

2023 The History of the Music Video Is Much Longer—and Weirder—Than You Know x

2026 Phonographs, Player Pianos and Betamax: The Inventions That Transformed Entertainment, February 14, 2026

Photography, Motion Pictures and Video
2006 George Eastman:  A Biography, by Elizabeth Brayer

2010 Mass appeal: the formative age of the movies, radio, and TV, by Edward D. Berkowitz

2015 Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression, by Cara A. Finnegan

2016 Documenting the World : Film, Photography, and the Scientific Record, by Gregg Mitman and Kelley Wilder

2017 Seizing the light: a social & aesthetic history of photography, by Robert Hirsch

Radio, Radar and Television
Wipe Out: When the BBC Kept Erasing Its Own History, by Jake Rossen

1996 The invention that changed the world: the story of radar from war to peace, by Robert Buderi

2010 Mass appeal: the formative age of the movies, radio, and TV, by Edward D. Berkowitz

2016 100 Years of Radar by Gaspare Galati

2018 The Business of Teleivision, by Ken Basin

2020 R.I.P. Cable TV: Why Hollywood Is Slowly Killing Its Biggest Moneymaker   

Steam Engines and Turbines
1824 A Descriptive History of the Steam Engine, by Robert Stuart

1826 History of the Steam Engine: From Its First Invention to the Present Time, by Elijah Galloway

1862 History of the steam engine, from the second century before the Christian era to the time of the Great Exhibition, by Robert Wallace

1865 Lives of Boulton and Watt: Principally from the Original Soho Mss. Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Steam Engine, by Samuel Smiles

1878 A History of the Growth of the Steam-engine, by Robert Henry Thurston

1904 The steam turbine, by Robert Morrison Neilson

1939 A Short History of the Steam Engine, by HenryWinram Dickinson

Horses
1859 A Practical Treatise on Street Or Horsepower Railways: Their Location, Construction and Management: With General Plans and Rules for Their Organization and Operation; together with examinations as to their comparative advantages over the Omnibus System and Inquiries as to Their Value for Investment; Including Copies of Municipal Ordinances Relating Thereto, by Alexander Easton {Easton later built a failed water works system in Rochester.}

1872 "The Position of the Horse in Modern Society," The Nation 383:277-278 (October 31, 1872)

1878 The World on Wheels; or Carriages, with Their Historical Associations from the Earliest Time to the Present Time, Including a Selection from the American Centennial Exhibition, by Ezra M. Stratton

1894 The Animal as a Machine and Prime Mover, by Robert Henry Thurston

1956 "By Horse and Waggon: The Diary of Alpheus Sherman," by Peter B. Schroeder, New York History 37(4):432-451 (October, 1956)  Journey from New York City to Central New York and return in 1822.

1997 "The Centrality of the Horse to the Nineteenth-Century American City,” by Joel Tarr and Clay McShane, from The Making of Urban America, pp. 105-130 | excerpt here |

1999 “A Note on the Horse as an Urban Power Source,” by Joel Tarr, Journal of Urban History 25:434-448 (March, 1999)

2007 The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century, by Clay McShane and Joel Tarr | also here |

2008 "The Horse as an Urban Technology," by Joel A. Tarr and Clay McShane, Journal of Urban Technology 15(1):5-17 (April, 2008)

2009 Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, by Ann Norton Greene | also here |

2018 Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History, by Ulrich Raulff

Land and Water Transportation
1840 A description of the canals and rail roads of the United States, comprehending notices of all the works of internal improvement throughout the several states, by
Henry Schenck Tanner

1849 Canal Or Railroad Between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: Report February 20, 1849

1852 Colton's traveler and tourist's guide-book through the United States of America and the Canadas : containing the routes and distances of the great lines of travel by railroads, canals, stageroads, and steamboats : together with descriptions of the several states and the principal cities, towns, and villages in each : accompanied with a large and accurate map.

1852 Ulysses S. Grant's 1852 trip to California, crossing the isthmus of Panama.

1889 The Electric Railway, by Fred H. Whipple

1908 A Congressional History of Railways in the United States to 1850 by Lewis Henry Haney

1910 A Congressional History of Railways in the United States: Volume II, The railway in Congress: 1850-1887, by Lewis Henry Haney

1912 Genesis of Steamboating on Western Rivers: With a Register of Officers on the Upper Mississippi, 1823-70, by
George Byron Merrick, William R. Tibbals | also here |

1915 A history of travel in America, showing the development of travel and transportation from the crude methods of the canoe and the dog-sled to the highly organized railway systems of the present, together with a narrative of the human experiences and changing social conditions that accompanied this economic conquest of the continent, Volume 1, by Seymour Dunbar | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 |

1916 The New York Central railroad, 1831-1915

1919 The Railroad Builders: A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, by John Moody

1921 America's greatest railroad system--the New York Central, by Charles Frederick Carter

1921 The greatest highway in the world; historical, industrial and descriptive information of the towns, cities and country passed through between New York and Chicago via the New York Central Lines

1926 The beginnings of the New York Central Railroad; a history, by Frank Walker Stevens.

1932 "Early Railroads of New York," by Edward Hungerford, New York History 13(1):75-89 (January, 1932)

1938 Men and iron; the history of New York Central, by Edward Hungerford.

1951 The transportation revolution, 1815-1860, by George Rogers Taylor.

1936 The American railroad network, 1861-1890, by George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu

1972 "The Page Locomotive: Federal Sponsorship of Invention in Mid-19th-Century America," by Robert C. Post, Technology and Culture 13(2):140-269 (April 1972)

1976 Physics, Patents, and Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page, by Robert C. Post

2016 The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson

Internal Combustion Engine
1915 The Internal Combustion Engine: A Text-book for the Use of Students and Engineers by Harry Egerton Wimperis

1980  The origins of the turbojet revolution, by Edward W. Constant

2016 Internal Combustion Engines : Applied Thermosciences, by Colin R. Ferguson and Allan T. Kirkpatrick

Automobiles and Highways
1984 Hounds of the road : a history of the Greyhound Bus Company, by Carlton Jackson

1987 Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, by Bruce E. Seely

1994 Down the asphalt path : the automobile and the American city, by Clay McShane.

2010 "The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways: The Road to Success?," by Elisheva Blas, The History Teacher 44(1):147-142 (November, 2010)

Aviation
1932 History of aviation, with interesting records, by Major Edward M. Brower.

1980  The origins of the turbojet revolution, by Edward W. Constant

2013 The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry, by Edward J. Roach

2020 "This Plane Flies Itself. We Went for a Ride," Wired (August 20, 2020)
Xwing is testing a Cessna that's controlled from the ground, not the cockpit. Its goal is to automate as much as possible, while keeping a human in the loop.

Rockets and Space Travel
1865 From the Earth to the Moon: Direct in Ninety-seven Hours and Twenty Minutes by Jules Verne (1890 edition)

Artificial Illumination
1856 The Chemistry of Artificial Light: Including the History of Wax, Tallow , and Sperm Candles, and the Manufacture of Gas ... and a Descriptive Sketch of Lamps and Other Apparatus. [A Separate Issue of Part of “Practical Chemistry” by George Gore, M. Sparling and J. Scoffern.]

1860 Observations upon artificial light, by A. H. Renton

1914 The Elementary Principles of Illumination and Artificial Lighting, by Arthur Blok

1920 Artificial Light: Its Influence Upon Civilization, by Matthew Luckiesh

1951 "Artificial Lighting in America:  1830-1860," by C. Malcolm Watkins, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution

1995 Disenchanted Night:  The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

2019 Brilliant:  The Evolution of Artificial Light, by Jane Brox

2019 American Lucifers:  The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865, by Jeremy Zallen | dissertation | book review |

Household Technology
1906  Modern conveniences for the farm home, by Elmina T. Wilson

2011 Everyday appliances, by Nicolas Brasch

2014 Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything, by Salvator Basile

Documentary History of American Water Works  

Wood and Biomass
1618 Holzsparkunst, by Franz Kessler; translated into French the following year as Espargne-Bois [Saving Fuel, first book written on energy conservation, has never been translated into English.]

1854 On the history and art of warming and ventilating rooms and buildings, Volume 1, by Robert Meikleham | Volume 2 |

1970 "The Mystery of Fuel Wood Marketing In the United States," by Arthur H. Cole, Business History Review, 44(3):339-359 (October 1970)

1991 A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, by John Perlin | Google books | borrow from Internet Archive |

2018 Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”

Coal
1661 Fumifugium, by John Evelyn

1866 Special Report on Coal: Showing Its Distribution, Classification and Cost Delivered Over Different Routes to Various Points in the State of New York, and the Principal Cities on the Atlantic Coast, by Sylvanos H. Sweet

1893 Testimony taken before the special Senate committee relative to the coal monopoly.

1911 The natural history of coal, by E. A. Newell Arber, Cambridge

1918 The New York state canals; the canal as a carrier of coal

1923 Smoke Abatement, by Osborn Monnett

1971 "Coal Trains North: The Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company," by Robert R. Rothfus, The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 54(3):264-273 (July, 1971)   The Rochester and Pittsburgh was one of several railroads competing for the coal trade from western Pennsylvania to the Great Lakes during the 1880's.

1977 "The Wilsonians as War Managers:  Coal and the 1917-18 Winter Crisis," by James P. Johnson, Prologue 7:193-208 (Winter, 1977) | pdf |

1977 The coal industry in America : a bibliography and guide to studies, by Robert F. Munn

2000 Petrolia: the landscape of America's first oil boom, by Brian Black

2001 The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution, by Rolf Peter Sieferle,  Translated from the German original by Michael P. Osman. Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2001.

Petroleum
1895 Petroleum: Its History, Origin, Occurrence, Production, Physical and Chemical Constitution, Technology, Examination and Uses; Together with the Occurrences and Uses of Natural Gas, by Hans Hoefer

1903 The rise and progress of the Standard Oil Company, by Gilbert Holland Montague

1904 The history of the Standard Oil Company, Volume 1,  by Ida Tarbell | Volume 2 |

1916 The American petroleum industry by Bacon, Raymond Foss Bacon, Hamor, William Allen Hamor, McGraw Hill  | Volume 1 | Volume 2 | 

1919 The Shell that Hit Germany Hardest, by P. G. A. Smith

1943 Big Inch Pipelines of WW II

1959 The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859—1899, by Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, Evanston,

1963 The chronological history of the petroleum and natural gas industries, by James A. Clark

1965 The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Energy, 1900—1959, Harold F. Williamson, Ralph L. Andreano, Arnold R. Daum, and Gilbert C. Kiose, Evanston

1991 The Prize:  The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin.  This was also turned into a PBS television series that will be shown in class. | The Prize videos on Youtube |

2000 The Big Inch and Little Big Inch Pipelines, The Most Amazing Government-Industry Cooperation Ever Achieved, Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., May 2000.

2001 "Naval Innovation:  From Coal to Oil," by Erik J. Dahl, Joint Force Quarterly 27:50-56 (Winter 2000-2001)

2013 Titan : the life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr, by Ron Chernow

2018 The Big Inch: Fueling America’s WWII War Effort

Electricity
1887 The Electric Motor and Its Applications, by Thomas Commerford Martin

1894 The Inventions Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla by Thomas Commerford Martin

1895 A History of Electricity: (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) from antiquity to Benjamin Franklin..by Park Benjamin

1910 Edison:  His Life and Inventions, Volume 1, by Frank Lewis Dyer and by Thomas Commerford Martin | Volume 2 |

1921 A superpower system for the region between Boston and Washington, by William Spencer Murray

1925 Superpower, its genesis and future, by William Spencer Murray

1925 "Giant power : large scale electrical development as a social factor," by Moris Llewllyn Cooke, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 118(1) (March 1925)

1927 Report of the Giant power board.

1957 The R.G.& E. Story, A history of Rochester Gas and Electric Company of Rochester, NY.

1983 Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930, by Thomas Parke Hughes | Also here |

1984 "Sources of Energy in Rochester’s History," by Rod Baily, Rochester History 46 (3 & 4):1-24 (July & October, 1984)

1986 Power struggle: the hundred-year war over electricity by Richard Rudolph and Scott Ridley

1991 The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880-1930, by Harold L. Platt

1992 The Electrification of Russia, 1880-1926, by Jonathan Coopersmith

1998 "The Development of Gas & Electricity in Rochester," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 60(4):1-24 (Fall, 1998)

2007 Powering The Past: A Look Back, Smithsonian Institution

2008 The mantra of efficiency: from waterwheel to social control, by Jennifer Karns Alexander

2013 The History of Energy Efficiency, Alliance Commission on National Energy Efficiency Policy, 2013

2014 Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the emergence of modern American environmentalism, by Robert Lifset

2015 David Brower: The Making of the Environmental Movement

2018 Energy: A Human History, by by Richard Rhodes

2018 "Shedding New Light on Rural Electrification: The Neglected Story of Successful Efforts to Power Up Farms in the 1920s and 1930s," by Richard Hirsh, Agricultural History 92(3):296-327 (Summer 2018)

2019 Scientists warned the US president about global warming 50 years ago today, The Guardian, November 15, 2005

Batteries and Electric Storage
1972 "The Page Locomotive: Federal Sponsorship of Invention in Mid-19th-Century America," by Robert C. Post, Technology and Culture 13(2):140-269 (April 1972)

1976 Physics, Patents, and Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page, by Robert C. Post

2014 Energy Storage, International Energy Agency

2020 Energy storage milestone: PG&E, Tesla begin building 730MWh battery system 

2020 "Million-mile car batteries are coming," The Economist, August 1, 2020, Pages 62-63

Natural Gas
1886 A Brief History of Natural Gas: Its Advantages, Use, Supply, and economy as a fuel to manufacturers.

1895 Petroleum: Its History, Origin, Occurrence, Production, Physical and Chemical Constitution, Technology, Examination and Uses; Together with the Occurrences and Uses of Natural Gas, by Hans Hoefer

1918 Handbook of Natural Gas, by Henry Palmer Westcott | Third Edition (1920) |

1927 A brief history of the natural gas industry, by H C Zwetsch

1957 The R.G.&.E. Story, A history of Rochester Gas and Electric Company of Rochester, NY.

1963 The chronological history of the petroleum and natural gas industries, by James A. Clark

1976 The Natural Gas Story Investigation, U.S. Congress

1984 "Sources of Energy in Rochester’s History," by Rod Baily, Rochester History 46 (3 & 4):1-24 (July & October, 1984)

1994 Facts about Offshore Natural Gas

1998 "The Development of Gas & Electricity in Rochester," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 60(4):1-24 (Fall, 1998)

Nuclear Energy
1970 Metropolitan siting of nuclear power plants / presented by Louis H. Roddis, Jr.  U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

1987 "Nuclear Power Development: history and outlook," IAEA Bulletin (March 1987)

1989 Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission by Richard G. Hewlett, Jack M. Holl, California, 1989

2009 "Atoms for Peace" in Pennsylvania, by Willis L. Shirk Jr., Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, Volume XXXV, Number 2 - Spring 2009

2013 History of Nuclear Power, by R. J. Duffy

2017 Nuclear Power, by Paul A. Breeze

Hydropower
1983 Stronger Than A Hundred Men:  a history of the vertical water wheel, by Terry S. Reynolds

Geothermal
1976 Geothermal resources exploration & exploitation : a bibliography.

A History of Geothermal Energy in America

Solar Energy
1976 Solar Energy:  a bibliography

1980 A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Energy, by John Perlin with Ken Butti

1999 From Space to Earth:  The Story of Solar Electricity, by John Perlin

2013 Let it Shine: 6000 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology, by John Perlin

Solar Energy Industries Association

American Solar Energy Society

New York Unified Solar Permit

Wind
Grand challenges in the science of wind energy

2019 A Wind Turbine Farm The Size Of Delaware Could Power The Entire United States, by Michael Barnard [ or not, his basic assumption about wind turbine footprints is completely wrong ]
The average wind turbine installed in the US in 2018 was 2.6 megawatts (MW) in capacity. Using this average size as our baseline, we would need about 1.26 million of them.
That’s a lot, of course. The US consumes a great deal of energy every year.
But each wind turbine only takes up about a quarter acre of land at the base, so that’s only about 470 square miles of land that would actually have a wind turbine on it.

WINDExchange

American Wind Energy Association

New York State Article 10 Energy Siting Process

Green New Deal
2019 Parsing the Green New Deal

2019 New York City's Climate Mobilization Act

2019 Global Status of Carbon Capture and Storage, from Global CCS Institute

2020 Making Progress Happen, State of the State Address by Governor Andew M. Cuomo, January 8, 2020
Part 2 - Combat climate change and grow New York's Green Economy
Positioning  New  York  to  become  the  hub  of  the nation’s rapidly growing offshore wind industry, with nearly 2,000 megawatts already in development toward the State’s nation-leading goal of 9,000 megawatts by 2035
Part 3 - Expand Renewable Energy Power in New York to Meet Zero-Carbon Emissions by 2040

100% Wind, Water, and Solar (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for Countries, States, Cities, and Towns, by Mark Z. Jacobson

Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar, by Christopher T. M. Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D. H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C. S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, and Jay F. Whitacre, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (26) 6722-6727; first published June 19, 2017

Fossil Gas Has No Future in Low-Carbon Buildings, from the Rocky Mountain Institute

Project Drawdown

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Prepared by Morris A. Pierce