History 138:  Science in the U.S.

Class 31 (11/4)
Science for better living
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Outline The Middleton family at the 1939 New York World's Fair

Better products for better living
  Useful devices and substances
  Consumer pleasures

Images and image problems
  Normal people, or eggheads and visionaries
  Negative images and societal maladjustment
  Public relations

The new progressives of the 1930s
Names and Terms
Primary Secondary
World of Tomorrow (1939)
Westinghouse
Du Pont
Wallace Carothers (1896-1937)
nylon
Bakelite (1909, a plastic)
Robert A. Millikan (1863-1953)
Science Service
American Association of Scientific Workers (AASW)		 Leo Baekeland (1863-1944)
polymer
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Century of Progress Exposition (1933)
Science finds, industry applies, man conforms
Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT)
Assignment Gregg Mitman, "Cinematic Nature: Hollywood Technology, Popular Culture, and the American Museum of Natural History," in Scientific, ed. Numbers and Rosenberg, 203-227. [Originally Isis 84 (1993): 637-661.]

 What techniques were used to bring animals "to life"?
 How did notions and techniques from entertainment enter into scientific practice?
 What is the "diffusionist model of popularization" (204), and what does Mitman want to put in its place?
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2002