history of science and tech buffs...

[nick128]

I'm working on finishing up my history minor with specialization in history of science and tech. Once again, for the 3rd semester in a row, i'm faced with writing a paper on something historically significant, or perhaps not, that happened in America, (due to the targeting of the class). Past paper topics i've written on for this same professor include the history of telescopes (For a class that covered the globe, from newton's time period to Einstein's) and the Hubble Space Telescope (for a class that covered from Einstein's time period on to the present). The paper on telescopes ended up being almost 15 pages (double spaced) and included a small model telescope made from PVC pipe and lenses sliced from the ends of a toy telescope. The paper on the hubble ended up being over 24 pages, plsu two bibliography pages and a title page. it was massive, got an A on both papers, but i'm dry on researchable, feasible topics for this semester's paper. Looking for some outside ideas.

Thanks!

 

[Jassi]

Microprocessor or even better, history of transistors. They went from being several inches big to micro-scale and are in the nanometer range now. Revolutionized computers and nearly every technical field in existance.

 

[JonnyStarks]

Light bulb?
Car?
Guns?

 

[CrazyPerson]

the history of Implicit Learning

 

[Atomicus]

Watch the History Channel.

 

[nick128]

Originally posted by: JonnyStarks
Light bulb?
Car?
Guns?

throw in the transistor here, there are so many avenues to take with each of those topics. it's not so much finding a topic, as it is finding one that won't make wading through all the BS sources a challenge. I looked at goign as far back as charles babbage, etc, but there's a lot of lines that blur there, and much of what history i've found of the transistor requires something of an electrical engineering background that i don't possess. Guns is something very american, and very much a valid topic, but another that would be hard to narrow down to a sub topic, and would overwhelem you with unusable sources you'd have to wade through. Cars, where do you start? henry ford? he didn't really invent the car, the engine, any of it, he merely was the first to mass produce it (though by doing so he did hammer out the whole assembly line thing...a whole nother topic.) Edison did a lot of fun things besides the light bulb, but even that simple invention could be a problem researching. IDK, just having a rough semster and hard time grasping any berth of information.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: nick128
I'm working on finishing up my history minor with specialization in history of science and tech. Once again, for the 3rd semester in a row, i'm faced with writing a paper on something historically significant, or perhaps not, that happened in America, (due to the targeting of the class). Past paper topics i've written on for this same professor include the history of telescopes (For a class that covered the globe, from newton's time period to Einstein's) and the Hubble Space Telescope (for a class that covered from Einstein's time period on to the present). The paper on telescopes ended up being almost 15 pages (double spaced) and included a small model telescope made from PVC pipe and lenses sliced from the ends of a toy telescope. The paper on the hubble ended up being over 24 pages, plsu two bibliography pages and a title page. it was massive, got an A on both papers, but i'm dry on researchable, feasible topics for this semester's paper. Looking for some outside ideas.

Thanks!

Since you're into atronomy you should write about radio astronomy. That's the field I work in btw but I'm on the engineering side, not the astronomy side.
Search for the history of Radio Astronomy and the technology used in receivers.
Cool stuff.
😉