Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War - Couverture rigide

Munns, David P. D.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 082294474X ISBN 13 : 9780822944744

Editeur : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017

Synopsis

Promising an end to global hunger and political instability, huge climate-controlled laboratories known as phytotrons spread around the world to thirty countries after the Second World War. The United States built nearly a dozen, including the first at Caltech in 1949. Made possible by computers and other novel greenhouse technologies of the early Cold War, phytotrons enabled plant scientists to experiment on the environmental causes of growth and development of living organisms. Subsequently, they turned biologists into technologists who, in their pursuit of knowledge about plants, also set out to master the machines that controlled their environment. Engineering the Environment tells the forgotten story of a research program that revealed the shape of the environment, the limits of growth and development, and the limits of human control over complex technological systems. As support and funding for basic science dwindled in the mid-1960s, phytotrons declined and ultimately disappeared—until, nearly thirty years later, the British built the Ecotron to study the impact of climate change on biological communities. By revisiting this history of phytotrons, David Munns reminds us of the vital role they can play in helping researchers unravel the complexities of natural ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

David P. D. Munns is associate professor of history at John Jay College, City University of New York.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Date d'édition: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 082294474X
• ISBN 13: 9780822944744
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 384
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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