MMW exam 1 id

Morrill Land Grant Act

[1862]: Federal legislation allocating land sales to establish state technical universities (e.g., Purdue, Cornell, MIT expansion), balancing theoretical science with practical training for national industrialization.

Professionalization of Engineering

[1860s-1920s]: The transition of engineering from a 19th-century craft/shop trade into a university-educated profession with formal societies (ASCE, ASME) and codes of ethics.

Organizational Man

[1880s-1920s]: An engineer working inside a large corporate hierarchy (e.g., GE, Westinghouse); by 1925, 75% of engineers worked for corporations as bench engineers or engineer-managers.

Techno-optimism

[19th-20th Century]: The cultural belief that technological innovation inherently leads to human progress, social elevation, and civilizational development.

Engineers as 'Secular Saints'

[19th-Early 20th Century]: A cultural trope framing engineers as selfless, heroic figures using technical mastery to solve societal problems.

National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)

[1975-Present]: Professional and student organization founded at Purdue University in 1975 to support and advocate for Black engineers in STEM fields.

Technology (Concept)

[1930s-Present]: Things created by people to exploit or manipulate their living environment; replaced terms like 'useful arts' around the 1930s.

Useful Arts / Practical Arts

[18th-19th Century]: 19th-century terminology referring to craft, trade, mechanical skills, and inventive activity prior to the adoption of the word 'technology'.

Machine Age

[1860-1920]: An era marked by rapid mechanical innovation, heavy industrialization, and the cultural perception of machines as markers of civilization.

Sociotechnical System

[1880s-Present]: A complex network integrating physical machines with nonphysical components like organizations, natural resources, legal regulations, labor, and capital (e.g., telegraph, electric grid).

Technological Determinism

[20th Century]: The belief that technology develops autonomously and directly drives social, cultural, and political change ('granting technology agency').

Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)

[1980s-Present]: The historical theory that human actions, social groups, and cultural choices shape the development, adoption, and meaning of technology.

Do Artifacts Have Politics?

[1980]: Langdon Winner's concept asserting that physical technologies can embody specific forms of power, social control, or political arrangements (e.g., Robert Moses' low bridges).

Robert Moses

[1920s-1970s]: NYC urban planner whose infrastructure projects (parkways, expressways) reshaped New York while displacing low-income and minority communities.

The New Jim Code

[2019-Present]: Ruha Benjamin's concept describing how modern algorithms and automated systems can encode and replicate racial bias under the guise of neutral technology.

Normate Bodies

[20th Century]: A critical design template assuming a standard, non-disabled human body ('average' human) as the default subject for architectural and product design.

Anthropometric Data

[1940s-1950s]: Systematic measurements of the human body (e.g., Henry Dreyfuss's 'Joe and Josephine') used to establish standard dimensions in industrial and military design.

Eugenics

[1880s-1940s]: A progressive-era 'science' of human heredity that divided into positive eugenics (selective breeding) and negative eugenics (forced sterilization upheld in Buck v. Bell, 1927).

Buck v. Bell

[1927]: Supreme Court decision upholding state forced sterilization laws, reflecting the influence of eugenics on 1920s public health policy.

Misfit / Misfitting

[2011-Present]: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's concept defining disability as a dynamic interaction or friction between a specific body and an unaccommodating environment.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

[1990]: Federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities, enacted following activist campaigns like the 1990 'Capitol Crawl'.

Universal Design

[1980s-Present]: Design approach pioneered by Ronald Mace aiming to create products and environments inherently accessible to all people without need for adaptation.

Disability Culture Design

[1980s-Present]: A late 20th/21st-century movement that centers disabled people in design processes and critiques bare-minimum compliance standards.

Automobility

[1890s-Present]: The self-reinforcing sociotechnical system combining motor vehicles, road networks, suburban infrastructure, petroleum production, and driving culture.

Interpretive Flexibility

[1980s-Present]: A core SCOT concept showing that different social groups assign different meanings and uses to the same technological artifact during its early stages.

Dynamic Obsolescence

[1920s-1930s]: General Motors' business strategy (pioneered by Alfred Sloan) of annual style changes and status branding to encourage frequent car upgrades.

The Green Book

[1936-1966]: Victor H. Green's travel guide helping Black motorists navigate Jim Crow segregation, racial profiling, and unsafe roads across America.

Telegraph System

[1843-1853]: The first major electronic sociotechnical system (invented 1843, built out 1853), revolutionizing long-distance communication and market coordination.

System Builders

[1880s-1920s]: Entrepreneurs and engineers (like Thomas Edison) who created and integrated entire technological networks, managing both technical components and social institutions.

Annihilating Time and Space

[19th Century]: A 19th-century phrase describing how rapid transit (railroads) and instant communication (telegraph) dramatically reduced travel and news transmission times.

Frederick Winslow Taylor & Scientific Management

[1890s-1911]: The system of shop management (1911) using time-and-motion studies to optimize worker efficiency, standardize tasks, and deskill labor.

Fordism

[1912-1914]: Henry Ford's manufacturing model combining moving assembly lines (1912-1914), mass production of standardized goods, and high wages (Five Dollar Day).

Infrastructure as a Relational Concept

[1990s-Present]: The idea that infrastructure is not merely static physical objects, but becomes infrastructure through its relationship with human practices and systems.

Quebec Bridge Collapse

[1907]: A catastrophic failure during construction caused by inadequate engineering oversight, resulting in 75 deaths and driving Canadian engineering licensing reforms.

Sanitary Reform & Sanitary Engineering

[1880s-1920s]: A 19th/early 20th-century public health movement merging civil engineering and microbiology to build urban clean water, sewer, and stormwater systems.

Epidemiological Transition

[1850s-1950s]: The historical shift in population disease profiles from infectious diseases (e.g., cholera) to chronic diseases, made possible by public health infrastructure.

Public Works Administration (PWA) & WPA

[1933-1935]: New Deal agencies (1933, 1935) funding large-scale public infrastructure projects (dams, bridges, schools, airports) to stimulate economic recovery.

Redlining

[1935-1940]: Discriminatory federal housing policies using Home Owners' Loan Corporation maps to deny mortgages and investment in minority neighborhoods.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

[1933-Present]: A 1933 New Deal regional planning agency that built dams to bring rural electrification, flood control, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley.

Hoover (Boulder) Dam

[1931-1936]: A massive dam project on the Colorado River exemplifying large-scale public engineering and multi-state water management.

The Chemists' War

[1914-1918]: Term for World War I highlighting the central role of chemical engineering in developing mass chemical weapons (chlorine, mustard gas) and gas masks.

Big Science

[1940s-Present]: Large-scale, federally funded research projects requiring massive interdisciplinary teams, massive budgets, and complex facilities (e.g., Manhattan Project).

Military-Industrial Complex

[1961]: The structural alliance between the military, defense contractors, and research universities, famously warned against by President Eisenhower in 1961.

Vannevar Bush

[1940-1945]: Director of OSRD during WWII and author of 'Science - The Endless Frontier' (1945), advocate for federal funding of basic scientific research leading to the NSF.

Manhattan Project & Trinity Test

[1942-1945]: The secret WWII federal project that produced the first atomic bombs, tested at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, and used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Normal Accidents Framework

[1984]: Charles Perrow's theory arguing that in complex, tightly coupled systems (e.g., Three Mile Island, Chernobyl), unexpected interactions make failures inevitable.

Three Mile Island

[1979]: A partial nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania caused by mechanical and human errors, severely curbing public confidence in nuclear power in the US.

Chernobyl

[1986]: A catastrophic nuclear explosion in the Soviet Union during a low-power system test, causing widespread radioactive fallout and requiring massive cleanup ('liquidators').

Railroad development

1830s-1890s: Railroad expansion, transcontinental lines, standardizing time zones, and total displacement of Indigenous peoples and buffalo herds - many engineers employed by railroad companies

Key Cholera Pandemics

1830s 2nd Pandemic: Miasma Theory infection was caused by dirt, bad air, and a lack of piety

1860s 4th Pandemic: Starting to figure out it is a water born disease

1880s 5th Pandemic: Germ Theory is established

Chicago World Fair

1893 demonstrated the world’s technological advance

Highway Plans

1948-1956: Master highway plan aided by the federal aid highway act ignited suburban expansion and urban renewal but led to resistance movements like “humans over highways” in 1970-71

Sociotechnical Imaginaries

Collectively held, institutionally stabilized visions of a desirable social future linked to advances in science and technology

“Atoms for Peace”

Post WWII: sociotechnical imaginary promoting nuclear energy as a clean, peaceful, and abundant power source

The Big Dig

1991-2007: Mega-infrastructure project in Boston that depressed the elevated I-93 highway into the Tip O'Neill Tunnel, built the Ted Williams Tunnel, and constructed the Charles River Crossing while keeping urban traffic fully operational

Mitigation

Urban planning processes designed to address community disruptions