Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson - Couverture rigide

Fouché, Rayvon

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0801873193 ISBN 13 : 9780801873195

Editeur : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003

Synopsis

According to the stereotype, late-19th and early-20th-century inventors, quintessential loners and supposed geniuses, worked in splendid isolation and then unveiled their discoveries to a marvelling world. Most successful inventors of this era, however, developed their ideas within the framework of industrial organizations that supported them and their experiments. For African-American inventors, negotiating these racially stratified professional environments meant not only working on innovative designs but also breaking barriers. In this study, Rayvon Fouche examines the life and work of three African Americans: Granville Woods, an independent inventor; Lewis Latimer, a corporate engineer with General Electric; and Shelby Davidson, who worked in the US Treasury Department. Detailing the difficulties and human frailties that make their achievements all the more impressive, Fouche explains how each man used invention for financial gain, as a claim on entering adversarial environments, and as a means to technical stature in a Jim Crow institutional setting. Describing how Woods, Latimer, and Davidson struggled to balance their complicated racial identities - as both black and white communities perceived them - with their hopes of being judged solely on the content of their inventive work, Fouche provides a nuanced view of African American contributions to - and relationships with - technology during a period of rapid industrialization and mounting national attention to the inequities of a separate-but-equal social order.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Rayvon Fouché is an assistant professor in the department of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Date d'édition: 2003
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0801873193
• ISBN 13: 9780801873195
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 242
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible