The Morals of Measurement
Accuracy, Irony, and Trust in Late Victorian Electrical Practice
Seiten
2004
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-0-521-43098-2 (ISBN)
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-0-521-43098-2 (ISBN)
The Morals of Measurement is about the development of techniques for measuring electricity in the late nineteenth century. This text explores how difficult and controversial this was, in relation both to the work of engineers and the first domestic consumers of electrical lighting.
The Morals of Measurement is a contribution to the social histories of quantification and electrical technology in nineteenth-century Britain, Germany and France. It shows how the advent of commercial electrical lighting stimulated the industrialization of electrical measurement from a skilled labour-intensive activity to a mechanized practice. Challenging traditional accounts that focus on the metrological standards used in measurement, this book shows the central importance of trust when measurement was undertaken in an increasingly complex division of labour. Alongside ambiguities about the very nature of measurement and the respective responsibilities of humans and technologies in generating error-free numbers, the book also addresses controversies over the changing identity of the measurer through the themes of body, gender and authorship. The reader will gain fresh insights into a period when measurement was widely treated as the definitive means of gaining knowledge of the world.
The Morals of Measurement is a contribution to the social histories of quantification and electrical technology in nineteenth-century Britain, Germany and France. It shows how the advent of commercial electrical lighting stimulated the industrialization of electrical measurement from a skilled labour-intensive activity to a mechanized practice. Challenging traditional accounts that focus on the metrological standards used in measurement, this book shows the central importance of trust when measurement was undertaken in an increasingly complex division of labour. Alongside ambiguities about the very nature of measurement and the respective responsibilities of humans and technologies in generating error-free numbers, the book also addresses controversies over the changing identity of the measurer through the themes of body, gender and authorship. The reader will gain fresh insights into a period when measurement was widely treated as the definitive means of gaining knowledge of the world.
1. Moralizing measurement: (dis) trust in the people, instruments and techniques; 2. Meanings of measurements and accounts of accuracy; 3. Mercurial trust and resistive measures: rethinking the 'metals controversy' of 1860–94; 4. Reading technologies: trust, the embodied instrument user and the visualization of current measurement; 5. Coupled problems of self-induction: the unparalleled and the unmeasurable in AC technology; 6. Measurement at a distance: fairness, trustworthiness and gender in reading the domestic electrical meter.
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 1.4.2004 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Cambridge |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 630 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Elektrodynamik | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-521-43098-4 / 0521430984 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-521-43098-2 / 9780521430982 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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