Electrical Connections

Abstract

When the New York Sun reported that Thomas Edison had solved the problem of incandescent lighting, that purported invention generated immense excitement across many segments of the American population. The letters sent to Edison in the days following the September 16, 1878, story reveal the many discursive worlds that Edison's work touched on and had meaning for. They indicate how a technological accomplishment is also a multiple, complex social and communicative accomplishment, creating place and meaning for the new technology within the many discursive systems by which people assign value, identify uses, and create goals incorporating the technology. Edison's ability to connect with each of these meaning systems paved the way for the development of the technology, providing financial and social resources for Edison that his competitors did not enjoy.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barber, Bernard . Science and the Social Order. New York: Free Press, 1952.

Barnes, Barry . Scientific Knowledge and Social Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.

Bazerman, Charles . Constructing Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, forthcoming.

Bazerman, Charles . “Scientific Writing as a Social Act.” New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication. Ed. Paul Anderson , R. John Brockmann , and Carolyn Miller . Farmingdale, NY: Baywood, 1983. 156-184.

Bazerman, Charles . Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Ben-David, Joseph . The Scientist's Role in Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

Bloor, David . Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.

Callon, Michel . “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation.” Power Action, and Belief. Ed. John Law . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 196-229.

Collins, Harry . Changing Order. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985.

10.

Collins, Harry . “The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.” Annual Review of Sociology 1983: 265-285.

11.

Collins, Harry , and Trevor Pinch . Frames of Meaning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

12.

Coser, Louis A. , ed. The Idea of Social Structure. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

13.

Edison, T. A. Papers. Part I. Ed. Reese Jenkins . Microfilm. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984.

14.

Friedel, Robert , and Paul Israel . Edison's Electric Light. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

15.

Gieryn, Tom . “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science.” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 781-795.

16.

Hughes, Thomas P. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

17.

Latour, Bruno . Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

18.

Latour, Bruno , and Steve Woolgar . Laboratory Life. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979.

19.

Marvin, Carolyn . When Old Technologies Were New. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1988.

20.

Merton, Robert . Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

21.

Merton, Robert . The Sociology of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

22.

Miller, Carolyn . “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-167.

23.

New York Mail. “A Great Triumph.” 10 September 1878: 1.

24.

New York Sun. “Edison's Newest Marvel.” 16 September 1878: 1.

25.

Schnivelbusch, Wilhelm . Disenchanted Night. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

26.

Schutz, Adolph , and Thomas Luckmann . The Structures of the Life World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

27.

Shapin, Steven . “History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions.” History of Science 20 (1982): 157-211.

28.

Wachhorst, William . Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.

29.

Yates, JoAnne . Control through Communication. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.