History of scientific instruments

Nanoscale - Society's deep impact on science, technology and society in India, 2020
How does a lab create pioneering instruments in spite of resource constraints? How does a doctor-researcher engage with society that will let their girl child die because she might not be married in the future? What conversations might a modern nanoscientist have with a practitioner of ancient Ayurveda? What will be the fate of a nano-silver-enabled water filter that promises to be low cost, easy to use and effective?

Received wisdom tells us that scientific research and technological innovation brings drastic, even disruptive change and society has no option but to constantly adapt and to evolve in response. This is such a truism that we have stopped thinking it can be otherwise.

But ‘otherwise’ is indeed true. Society does deeply influence science and technology even if it is New Age. Based on six years’ research across five laboratories and three cities, Nanoscale shows us how and why as it provides an incisive, yet deeply empathetic account of scientific life, laboratory research and technological innovation at the cutting-edge of nanoscience and technology in India.
Ebook: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B086SN281N
Hardcopy: Write to psekhsaria@gmail.com

Drawing on the archives of American learning psychologist Neal E. Miller, this article investigates the role of instrumentation in the expansion and diversification of the behavior therapy domain from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Through the case of Miller's research on the use of biofeedback to treat idiopathic scoliosis, it argues that the post‐World War II adoption of electronic technology by behavioral psychologists contributed to extending their subject matter to include physiological processes and somatic conditions. It also enabled a technologicallyinstrumented move outside the laboratory through the development of portable ambulatory treatment devices. Using the example of the Posture‐Training Device that Miller and his collaborators invented for the behavioral treatment of idiopathic scoliosis, this paper considers how electromechanical psychological instrumentation illustrated a larger and ambiguous strategic shift in behavior therapy from an orientation toward external control to one of self‐control.

How does a lab create pioneering instruments in spite of resource constraints? How does a doctor-researcher engage with society that will let their girl child die because she might not be married in the future? What conversations might a modern nanoscientist have with a practitioner of ancient Ayurveda? What will be the fate of a nano-silver-enabled water filter that promises to be low cost, easy to use and effective?

Received wisdom tells us that scientific research and technological innovation brings drastic, even disruptive change and society has no option but to constantly adapt and to evolve in response. This is such a truism that we have stopped thinking it can be otherwise.

But ‘otherwise’ is indeed true. Society does deeply influence science and technology even if it is New Age. Based on six years’ research across five laboratories and three cities, Nanoscale shows us how and why as it provides an incisive, yet deeply empathetic account of scientific life, laboratory research and technological innovation at the cutting-edge of nanoscience and technology in India.
Ebook: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B086SN281N
Hardcopy: Write to psekhsaria@gmail.com

Dear  Colleagues,

the Scientific Instruments Commission  and the Commission of Science and Literature invite papers for two special sessions in the 26th International  History of Science and Technology Congress organized by DHST/IUHPST in Prague, 2021 that we are co-sponsoring.

Session I: Literary Instruments
Since at least the seventeenth century, scientific instruments and apparatus have appeared in novels, poetry, drama and other literary genres, including more recently cinema and television. Literary authors might refer to contemporary science (John Milton on Galileo’s telescope), to future science (Star Trek Original Series on the “tricorder” of the 23rd century), or to past science (Luchino Visconti’s recreation of a nineteenth-century astronomical observatory in his 1963 film The Leopard). Papers in this symposium will offer case studies of such literary representations of scientific apparatus, authors’ interactions with scientific practitioners or instrument makers, and audience and critical responses to these literary representations.

Session II: Behind Closed Doors: Crime Fiction in Museums and Labs
Since the mid-nineteenth century, a relatively large number of crime novels have been set in science museums or laboratories. In The Musgrave Ritual (1893), for example, Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes educate himself in the British Museum before embarking on his detective work; Agatha Christie’s A Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) is a veritable encyclopedia of poisons and their chemistry. How might crime novels perpetuate public images of the “museum” or the “laboratory”? Papers in this session will evaluate the circumstances of these settings, the crime authors’ sources for their portrayals of scientific institutions, contemporary scientists’ evaluations of the settings depicted in the novels, and readers’ responses to the settings.
Please submit by 10 April 2020 abstracts of not more than 250 words and a brief biographical sketch to either George Vlahakis (gvlahakis@yahoo.com) or Sofia Talas (sofia.talas@pd.infn.it).

Note that according to the usual rules, you can only present one paper at the Prague Congress.