In a dual sense Brooke Hindle’s survey of needs and opportunities in early American technology is an appropriate sequel to Whitfield J. Bell, Jr.’s survey a decade ago of Early American Science. In terms of historical sequence pure science has usually illuminated the way for applied science, the natural sciences providing the basis for the useful arts, even though it be acknowledged that the latter often stimulate new discoveries in the former. In terms of historical research the history of science has antedated the history of technology; indeed, the evolution of science in certain contexts may be entirely unrelated to...

The central role of technology in early American history has only recently begun to receive some of the attention it requires. Strikingly, the craftsmen, mechanics, engineers, and entrepreneurs who built that technology were enthusiastically—even ebulliently—aware of the pervasive significance of their work. Historians have not been unresponsive, but they have often been uninformed and they have usually been too preoccupied with other investigations to give it serious study. Thus, the history of technology, invigorating and stimulating as it is, has not yet reached an academic status parallel to other fields of history. But increasingly specialists who have cultivated...

This bibliography offers a personal reaction to the available writings on early American technology. It has been conceived in the thought that such a tour by a general historian with a special interest in the history of technology would accomplish two purposes. It should identify the most fruitful descriptive, analytic, and synthetic works on technology in America before 1850, whether written before that date or since. At the same time, its organization and tenor should serve to sketch the terrain of technology through this period and to indicate the sort of work that has been done in the various sectors....

The aesthetic significance of such three-dimensional objects as glassware, fabrics, pottery, lighting devices, and spinning wheels has always interested historians of art, culture, and society. But scholars have generally overlooked the importance of using artifacts in conjunction with a wide variety of the more traditional research resources in their study of early American technology. Instead of their aesthetic form, the historian of technology can view three-dimensional objects in terms of their external appearance, their composition or internal structure, and the technical know-how associated with making and using objects.

From an examination of the physical appearance of objects, historians of technology...