The mid-twentieth century emergence of multinational corporations wealthier and more powerful than many nations presented a problem for organizations tasked with overseeing international cooperation and development. How to create a regulatory framework around multinationals that would protect the interests of disadvantaged peoples and regions, while not limiting the ability of multinational corporations to deliver economic development. In turn, international business associations reacted to this push toward regulation with a well-organized opposition.

In her dissertation research, Maia Müller, PhD candidate at the University of Lausanne, examines the role of business associations in the struggle over regulation of multinational corporations between the 1960s and 1990s. These powerful lobbying organizations provided a unified and legitimizing voice advocating for the perceived interests of the business community, one increasingly dominated by multinational corporations. Her transnational study reveals the secret influence had by lobbyists in the construction and operation of the world economy.

In support of her work Müller received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at haglye.org.

Ice, ice, baby. In nineteenth-century America ice was everywhere. Extracted from northern ponds and shipped around the world, ice became a valuable commodity and a vital input in numerous industries.

In his latest research Dr. Andrew Robichaud, Associate Professor of History at Boston University, explores the ice industry in nineteenth-century America and its many and complex impacts. From fruit to beer, from cattle carcasses to human cadavers, American ice had its role to play.

In support of his work, Dr. Robichaud received funding from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, join us online at Hagley.org.

Roger Horowitz talks with Katherine Epstein about her new book Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

From the publisher: “A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security.

 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships. These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire. Seeing the need to account for a plethora of variables, Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked “smart” systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood’s invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns.

 

Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Analog Superpowers analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries’ commitment to individual rights and the free market. Katherine C. Epstein deftly sets out Pollen’s and Isherwood’s pioneering achievements, the patent questions raised, the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the legal precedents each country developed to control military tools built by private contractors.

 

Epstein’s account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn’t yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.”

For more Hagley History Hangouts, more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.

Far from the battlefield the First World War spurred a massive increase in industrial output in the United States. Arms and armaments, ships and steel, a vast stream of materiel poured from American factories, mines, and mills to feed the insatiable maw of war. The consequent strain placed on American railroad infrastructure left it vulnerable to environmental disruption, such as that caused by the great blizzard of 1916-17. These developments marked a significant chapter in the environmental history of American industry.

In this episode of the Hagley History Hangout we chat with Gerard Fitzgerald, visiting fellow at the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger and lecturer in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, whose latest research considers the environmental context of industrialization in the United States during World War One.

In support of his work Fitzgerald has received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

The experience of girlhood in early national and antebellum America was both circumscribed and liberated by geography. Spaces defined who American girls were expected to be. Spaces, too, allowed girls to redefine themselves and to defend themselves against irksome expectations. Looking backward, the geographies of girlhood can be read as evidence of lives both intimate and public.

While the “Southern Belle” occupies an outsized position in the popular imagination of the American past, does this caricature reflect actual lived experiences and identities? In her dissertation research Emily Wells, PhD candidate at the College of William & Mary, aims to find out. By investigating and recreating the geographies of girlhood in the American South, as defined by the legal practice of chattel slavery, among upper class white families, Wells seeks to go beyond the Scarlet O’Hara archetype to understand how girls defined themselves and understood their worlds. Wells suggests that before the Civil War, girls in the American South identified more strongly with their local, class, and extended family than with the South per se.

In support of her research Wells received finding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

Chinese plastic is cheap and abundant. It wasn’t always. The ubiquity of plastic in twenty-first century consumer culture belies its past rarity and the many cultural meanings it has borne over time. How did plastic come to play such a central role in the economy of China?

In her dissertation research Yaxi Liu, PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, reveals the story of plastic’s introduction to the Chinese market and the varied political and cultural meanings assigned to plastic in China. The first plastic introduced to China was acrylic fiber. The technology transfer necessary derived from Britain and from Dupont in the USA. The state reserved for itself a monopoly on plastic production for decades, and the material gained a reputation for scarcity and luxury. Following the emergence of plastic recycling and secondary manufacturing in rural districts, the material came to be associated with cheapness and low status.

The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society supports research in the Hagley Museum and Library collections with grants and fellowships. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Large technological systems can be vulnerable to manipulation, perhaps especially when they are centralized, monopolistic, and complacent. That was the situation in American telecommunications in the early 1960s when a generation of hackers developed techniques to manipulate the Bell telephone system to their advantage, a practice known as phone phreaking.

In his dissertation research, Jacob Bruggeman, PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University, digs into the technology and politics of hackers, tracing their trajectory from anti-establishment actors on the fringes of technological systems, to positions of influence and control over the very same systems. In parallel to these developments in the hacker community, major organizations, both public and private, adopted new positions and policies designed to secure the system.

In support of his research, Bruggeman received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org

What is jazz and when did it begin? Music scholars do not agree. Taking an archival perspective, however, clarifies the dilemma and allows us to see jazz where people at the time performed, recorded, consumed, and discussed what they thought of as jazz music. The emergence of jazz as an economic force, and a defining cultural aspect of an era, were tightly bound up in the prevailing system of racism, segregation, and inequality in the early twentieth-century United States.

In her latest book project, Stephanie Doktor, assistant professor of Music Studies at Temple University, explores the racial context within which the jazz recording industry developed, and the indelible mark left by the systemic racism of the period upon the music industry to the present day. Using the Victor-RCA records held in the Hagley Library, Dr. Doktor reveals how race, class, and gender mutually shaped the political economy of early jazz.

In support of her work, Dr. Doktor received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.

Tracing the circulation of ideas can cast light on patterns of interaction between various people and institutions in the past. During the mid-late twentieth century, a circuit of ideas linked business culture, industrial designers, academia, and related professional organizations. The movement of values, techniques, and perspectives between these distinct but interpenetrative spaces illuminates how they related to one another in historical context.

In her latest research Penelope Dean, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, uncovers this movement of ideas and uses it to bring business and design histories into conversation. Using numerous collections held in the Hagley Library, including the Raymond Loewy and Ernest Dichter collections, Dean identifies the spread of ideas between business and design, and the development of a shared language capable of communicating complex concepts across professional groups.

In support of her work Dr. Dean received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, please visit us online at hagley.org.

The positive image cannot exist without the negative, and the relationship between the two reveals the fundamental nature of the image as fungible, media as a process, and truth value as a matter of interpretation. Scholarship and conservation therefore have a profound responsibility to collect, preserve, and interpret media negatives for what they reveal about the relationship between positive images and the truth.

In her latest project, Dr. Stefka Hristova, associate professor at Michigan Technological University, theorizes the relationship between media negatives, their positive counterparts, and the truth value accessible through a careful study of both. Using the collections held in the Hagley Library, Hristova demonstrates that a photographic image cannot be understood without reference to its negative. Likewise, and with profound implications for our present moment, the images and other media generated algorithmically cannot be properly judged or interpreted without an understanding of their negatives, the data used as the means of generating the final image.

In support of her work, Dr. Hristova received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.