Thomas Edison and Modern America: A Brief History With Documents (Bedford Series in History and Culture) - Hardcover

Collins, Theresa M.; Gitelamn, Lisa; Jankunis, Gregory; Gitelman, Lisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031229476X ISBN 13: 9780312294762

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Synopsis

Thomas A. Edison remains rooted in the popular imagination primarily as the inventor of the practical electric light, but he also continues to function in the lexicons of advertising and politics as a symbol of American individualism, ingenuity, and know-how. Introduced here with a broad range of primary sources for discussion, the American inventor emerges as a prolific mind, a tireless worker, and an inveterate self-promoter. Examples of Edison s own experimental notes, his personal correspondence, as well as press accounts provide an opportunity to explore the themes of modernization and the American ideology of progress. The volume includes an extended introduction, headnotes to the documents, illustrations, a chronology, discussion questions, a bibliography, and an index.

About this title

About the Author

Theresa M. Collins teaches International History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The author of Locating Otto Kahn: The Banker-Patron in Modern Time (2002), and a co-editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers, her work is focused on business history, modernity, and cosmopolitan culture.

Lisa Gitelman teaches Media Studies at Catholic University and is a former co-editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers. Her work includes Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (1999) and the edited collection New Media, 1740-1915 (2002).

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031229476X
• ISBN 13: 9780312294762
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 205