Steven Lubar

Representation and power

Les representations technologiques permettent de situer la connaissance technologique, et tiennent un role important dans le developpement socioculturel et economique

‘To Polish and Adorn the Mind’: The United States Naval Lyceum at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1833–89

Abstract The United States Naval Lyceum, a museum and library at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, offers a revealing insight into the history of American science, material culture, and museums. This article explores the Lyceum’s history to enlarge our understanding of the ways the nineteenth-century museums used artefacts of natural and human history to tell meaningful stories. The Naval Lyceum was a place where navy officers, as curators, could perform their worldliness, demonstrate their scientific expertise, and create connections to community and to the past, and where visitors might make emotional links to the worlds of nature and humanity.

America's economic heritage

Meyer Weinbergs documentary reference, Americas Economic Heritage, provides a first-hand view of our nations economic development. Volume I, From a Colonial to a Capitalist Economy, examines topics such as the growth of manufacturing and a home market, supplying a labor force, the change from imperial rule to self-government, agricultural expansion and industrialization, tariffs, slavery, the growth of transportation, wage labor, and the business-government relationship. Volume II, A Mature Economy, continues themes introduced in Volume I, and includes modern issues such as mass production, advertising, the world economy, and the modern labor force. The documents are grouped around nine broad themes--land, agriculture, commerce, labor, manufacturing, foreign trade, government, money and banking, and industrial research. Explicit cross-references and a detailed index help the reader to locate related materials in different periods.